Ubuntu/Linux. Need info.

[RedM]

I'm thinking of getting the Ubuntu for my laptop.

 

It's not a high spec machine. Pentium 2, 256mb ram, 10gb hard disk.

 

Will Ubuntu use less of my laptops meagre resources than WinXP?

 

Is it easy to get online?

 

Is Ubuntu secure, both online and off?

 

Any other thoughts you think I might need to think about?

[Jake]

Yes it'll run perfectly on that spec laptop.

 

Easy to get online? Like easy to get onto the net? Or like easy to get a copy of from the net? Answer to both is yes anyway.

 

Yes it's secure.

 

Finding drivers and compatible software can be a pain, like any *nix flavor

[RedM]

So it might not work straight out of the box then Jake?

 

It's free anyway so I might give it a go.

[Gaz6002]

It is VERY secure

[Alex]

Look for the torrent for the "8.04 Hardy Heron" release...it's the latest...but if you don't fancy release candidate warez then you want 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon

 

EDIT: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardyHeron/RC

 

Ubuntu rocks imo.

 

I use it in Virtual Workstation and it's really easy to use if you want a web surfing machine.

[Darren-K]

Ubuntu is very cool,.aesthetically pleasing to the eye with all 3d sliding windows etc and many options that you would normally pay for or a least have to download seperatley like

p2p software,audio editing software etc

But still much windows software will not run on it.

[RedM]

What do I do for a firewall and anti-virus?

 

Currently use Zonealarm Pro and AVG.

[Darren-K]

im pretty sure AVG do an option for linux., ill go and check .

 

* yeh they do .

 

from what i can read its a mixed reaction for ubuntu

 

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=136064

[Jake]

Anti-virus? What for?

[RedM]

Anti-virus? What for?

 

I take it that Linux users worry about viruses in the same way that Apple-geeks do?

[Jake]

Pretty much. Unless your running a web server I probably wouldn't bother.

[Gaz6002]

I take it that Linux users worry about viruses in the same way that Apple-geeks do?

 

Not exactly but it's very hard to hack. It is possible now though but extremely unlikely to happen.

[bmx1lew]

If your sticking ubuntu on you have to use beryl although your laptop sounds like tis from the 90s so i doubt it can handle it, But yeah Ubuntu is spot on very secure, I never bothered with a fire wall or anti virus doubt you will ever need one, my next system will be a mac

[G-NEMIE]

running 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon on my laptop

try it, it has some cool toys

and you wont need any antivirus

[Pete]

Anti-virus? What for?

Running on your firewall and email gateway to protect those poor Windows machines sat on the same network.

 

Seriously, a root kit detection app is useful, Linux boxes can get "pwned" quite easily. As for secure - PAH! Try *BSD if that's your concern.

[Thorin]

8.04 is released Thursday.

 

I personally use Kubuntu, it uses the KDE desktop instead of Gnome, but otherwise the same. There's also Xubuntu which uses XFCE and is even more suited to lower specced machines.

[carl0s]

It's absolutely the future With thanks to Vista, there's never been a better time to switch!

 

I have played with Linux for years. First time was when I was downloading slackware floppies via dialup. I've always given it a go, but always ended up switching back to Windows for various reasons. Currently these reasons are NetSupport Manager pc remote control & PPTP VPN connections, and Microsoft Outlook for Exchange Server. There is now a proper MAPI-RPC module in development which will give native Exchange connectivity to Evolution & maybe other non-MS PIMs. With the virtual machine setup (explained a bit below), I have no need to switch back.

 

Lately (last two years), I have always tried Ubuntu because it's meant to work out of the box with proprietary stuff like MP3, WMA, Flash Player, proprietary (ATI/nVidia) graphics drivers, proprietary wireless drivers etc. This means those things which aren't open-source just work.

 

With Ubuntu, you are presented with a "restricted drivers" dialog box which warns you that you may need to install a proprietary binary driver like a Broadcom wireless driver, or an ATI video driver in order for your hardware to work right. You click OK and it just does it.

 

So, if it's your first time then I would probably recommend Ubuntu, but I would wait a week or so for Hardy Heron (8.04) to come out.

 

Some hardware vendors are very good to open source though. Intel being one of them. If you have a laptop with Intel graphics, you're in the best position.

 

I'm using Fedora 8 and it's perfect for me. I had to go through all the usual stuff of getting proprietary stuff working, but this is all fairly easily explained over at http://www.fedorafaq.org (I am told http://www.fedorasolved.org is the preferred reference now though).

 

For me I think Fedora is better than Ubuntu once you have got over the multimedia codecs/hardware drivers as explained at fedorafaq.org. On this occasion (choice between Ubuntu 7.10 and Fedora 8), things like virtualisation are so much better. Fedora 8 includes virt-manager. With this I click a couple of buttons and it fires up a virtual machine running XP Pro. I close the dialog box and the virtual machine is running like a service in the background. I have a shortcut on my desktop which opens an RDP (MS remote desktop) connection to that machine, and I have that screen showing on another desktop. My desktop appears as a cube (see youtube compiz / beryl for the cube and you'll get the idea).

 

Beryl is no more. It merged back into Compiz as Compiz-Fusion (a sort of compiz extras) AFAIK.

 

Fedora / RedHat give a lot more back, and I can see it being the more successful distribution overall in the end. A lot of the really cool stuff that makes the system what it is, is at least partly thanks to Red Hat. See here for a list of Red Hat contributions to open source in general.

 

The great thing about Ubuntu is that it's really pushing the Linux desktop to people who don't have the time or inclination to have to make things work.

 

IMO a good place to start if you're not ready to switch O/S, is this: instead of using and giving your mates/family dodgy copies of Microsoft Office and Photoshop, get them to try using OpenOffice and The GIMP instead. That way it becomes easier to switch OS later on, and have the tools you're used to. Those packages, and many others, really are up to scratch. It's not like Public Domain software of the Amiga days. It's a moral movement, or something

[carl0s]

If you like eye candy type stuff, another neat thing to look at is Screenlets.

 

There's an Ubuntu magazine (PDF) here too: http://fullcirclemagazine.org/ that's where I found out about screenlets from. It's a bit MS-bashing in its writing which is a shame but still an interesting read.

[JustGav]

I have played with Linux for years. First time was when I was downloading slackware floppies via dialup.

 

Hahahaha, I like you even more and more Slackware with the 3 million floppies labelled N1-4, A1-100 and that crap Kernel 0.90 I seem to remember back in 93

[carl0s]

Hahahaha, I like you even more and more Slackware with the 3 million floppies labelled N1-4, A1-100 and that crap Kernel 0.90 I seem to remember back in 93

 

yeah! I had no idea what the hell I was doing though, but I eventually got X started with twm (i think) and I was like "eugh. that's ugly!" Getting a dialup connection to the 'net was a milestone though (ppp chat scripts), and then lauching ircii.

 

I just tried to shoot a video of my desktop to show the virtualization stuff, but I think it's gonna look crap. See what I can do now.

[Thorin]

Good post Carl0s

 

I started with Slackware too but as a n00b back then I just couldn't get to grips with it. I then used RedHat, then Fedora for years... but got sick of RPM-dependency-hell. I've not used it for a long time though.

 

I moved to straight Debian but it was always to just far behind with package versions. Been using Kubuntu for a while now and everthing generally just works.

 

Commenting on a few of the things you still use Windows for... NetSupport have a Linux manager available which works fine, but missing a lot of features, all I need it for is to control a few legacy servers though and it works for that.

 

VPN access is something I just couldn't get working with our certificate base Checkpoint VPN... We're now moving to some Cisco solution and apparently it should be straight forward.

 

Evolution already has an Exchange connector which works... it's just not very stable. It'll lose the connection to exchange requiring me to close and reopen Evolution once or twice a day, but I can live with that... It also can be a bit dodgy with adding things to shared calendars.

 

For me the only things I use Windows for are HEAT (our support call logging system), and VMWare management console. I use Virtual Box's seamless desktop mode to basically run a windows virtual machine on one side of my cube, it also shares the same desktop folder location so I can just save stuff to the desktop and access it from the virtual machine the same... I suspect Martin's laptop would struggle running a virtual machine though.

 

Bottom line, give it a go, personally I find having to use Windows a pain now! I'd possibly try Xubuntu as the laptop is pretty low spec, you might get more performance out of it. If it's already got windows on it you could use Wubi http://wubi-installer.org/screenshots.php to install it along side windows (although disk performance would be better with a straight install, but there is a walkthrough on how to move the Wubi install to it's own partition later I believe).

[Thorin]

If you like eye candy type stuff, another neat thing to look at is Screenlets.

 

Yeah screenlets is cool too....

 

I also forgot to put in the last post, I've been thinking of giving Arch a try now that I know what I'm doing more with Linux. Based on Slackware, just with the basics installed from scratch so very lean and 686 optimised from the start too.

[JustGav]

Yeah screenlets is cool too....

 

I also forgot to put in the last post, I've been thinking of giving Arch a try now that I know what I'm doing more with Linux. Based on Slackware, just with the basics installed from scratch so very lean and 686 optimised from the start too.

 

Consider Gentoo... A lot more work but you can tweak the compilers at install level before it even starts compiling the base system... be aware that I've not honestly seen much performance gains in the Gentoo system compared to others...

[Thorin]

Consider Gentoo... A lot more work but you can tweak the compilers at install level before it even starts compiling the base system... be aware that I've not honestly seen much performance gains in the Gentoo system compared to others...

 

Nah, not for me, I don't have the patience and again I've not seen any real difference in performance either. If I wanted to go down that route, I'd probably give Linux From Scratch a go http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/

 

I may do at some point anyway if I get the time, to help me learn more about Linux.

[carl0s]

Good post Carl0s

 

I started with Slackware too but as a n00b back then I just couldn't get to grips with it. I then used RedHat, then Fedora for years... but got sick of RPM-dependency-hell. I've not used it for a long time though.

 

I moved to straight Debian but it was always to just far behind with package versions. Been using Kubuntu for a while now and everthing generally just works.

 

Commenting on a few of the things you still use Windows for... NetSupport have a Linux manager available which works fine, but missing a lot of features, all I need it for is to control a few legacy servers though and it works for that.

 

VPN access is something I just couldn't get working with our certificate base Checkpoint VPN... We're now moving to some Cisco solution and apparently it should be straight forward.

 

Evolution already has an Exchange connector which works... it's just not very stable. It'll lose the connection to exchange requiring me to close and reopen Evolution once or twice a day, but I can live with that... It also can be a bit dodgy with adding things to shared calendars.

 

For me the only things I use Windows for are HEAT (our support call logging system), and VMWare management console. I use Virtual Box's seamless desktop mode to basically run a windows virtual machine on one side of my cube, it also shares the same desktop folder location so I can just save stuff to the desktop and access it from the virtual machine the same... I suspect Martin's laptop would struggle running a virtual machine though.

 

Bottom line, give it a go, personally I find having to use Windows a pain now! I'd possibly try Xubuntu as the laptop is pretty low spec, you might get more performance out of it. If it's already got windows on it you could use Wubi http://wubi-installer.org/screenshots.php to install it along side windows (although disk performance would be better with a straight install, but there is a walkthrough on how to move the Wubi install to it's own partition later I believe).

 

I think RPM dependency-hell is a thing of the past. yum takes care of it all really well now, and you can do "yum --localinstall ./downloaded-package.rpm" and it'll find all the required deps for a package that you just found on some random website too.

 

I reckon VPN stuff would probably be OK for me now. Network Manager does PPTP and might actually work properly now, but it just works so well from XP Pro. Vista has seriously broken the PPTP support. If you have 15 PPTP connections in your Network Connections folder in Vista, it takes about 30 seconds for the "connect to a network" dialog to even appear. It's totally broken.

 

I should really move over to a proper VPN protocol instead of PPTP.

 

I know about evolution-exchange, but it's a waste of time. It doesn't work right and it uses HTTP/WebDav or whatever it's called (OWA). There's now a proper MAPI implementation on the way, some sort of collaboration with the samba folks (http://www.openchange.org/ ).

 

I'm interested in the NetSupport thing though. Last time I looked there was a client available, which I suspected was just a tweaked VNC, but no Control. I'll have another look. Thanks for the heads up

 

I'm still a newb myself though really because like I said, I have previously always reverted back to Windows. But this time it's a permanent thing and I'm very happy. I still have XP on the laptop for now and that suits me.