Ben Kevan’s Blog

Switching from Windows to Linux, what you need to know

Switching from Windows to Linux and what you need to know:

Since we are in touch economic times the most important question is “How much will this cost me”? The answer is nothing, zero, zilch or nada. Whatever phrase you want to use (unless you’re really a stickler and want to divide your monthly Internet bandwidth cost against the time it took you to download the application and (well, you get the point). Hell, I would go on the edge and say it may actually save you money. How? You’ll be in touch with your computer, you’ll be excited to learn do stuff on it again, you’ll be heading the charge with changing the way a Corporate giant in Microsoft does it’s daily business, you’ll be FREE. (Man.. too much braveheart lately).

What is linux?
In the past years the phrase Linux has been mis-represented as a full blown distribution and not it’s original meaning. Linux, actually derived from the “Linux Kernel”, which was originally written by Linus Torvald in the early 90’s. So it is important to not refer a distribution as Linux, but as a Linux Distribution.

What is a distribution (distro)?
A distribution such as openSUSE (SUSE), Ubuntu, Fedora, PCLinuxOS, and Mandriva are all contain the basic Linux Kernel, and a bundle of applications which would provide your X support (GUI, Graphic User Interface), your Desktop Environment (Gnome / KDE / XFCE etc), and all your other basic and advanced functions. The major differences between distributions is their packages of choice (.deb (Debian, .rpm (RedHat package manager)), what packages come included with the distribution, and their management interfaces. The confusion of the many distributions may be one of the factors that turn people off of Linux, as they view it as “too confusing”.

What distribution is best?
This would be impossible for me to get up and say “Here is the best distribution for everyone”. Ever distribution has their good and their bad points, and each distribution does something better then the other. I personally use openSUSE, which is supported by Novell. I originally converted from Fedora Core (around the 4 days) to SuSE because the robustness of the distribution, and the choices it has always given. With that said, other popular distributions are Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva, Gentoo, Linux Mint, PCLinuxOS, and for historical reasons Slackware (one of the original distributions).

Can I still run my .exe programs?
The quick answer is no, but the more in-depth answer would be yes. Out of the box, the Linux Operating System does not allow you to run .exe binaries (which are Windows Binaries). However, there is a project called Wine (which Google has been great at helping advance) which allows us to install some Windows Applications and run some of these binaries. However, support for everything is not in place, and would be a per application basis.

What is a Desktop Environment?
I touched earlier in “What is a distribution” about Desktop Environments (typically referred to as DE). A DE is a an environment which consists of what most consider their “Desktop” and is comparable to what we see when we log onto a Windows workstation / server. These DE’s consist of our icons, wallpapers, folders, windows, taskbars etc. This is our functional GUI which runs off of the X system. The chosen DE is another thing that may separate one distribution from another.

What is the best Desktop Environment?
Much like Distributions. This is a hot topic especially between the 2 major DE’s Gnome and KDE. Another major player in the DE environment is XFCE, and a up and comer is called Enlightenment. The only thing I am going to say about these to not spark any type of debate is to try them all yourself to see which fits your need best. I personally find KDE 3.5.10 to be the sweet spot for me. KDE 3.5.10 is being replaced by KDE 4.X, but for my uses (every day production use at work) I find that KDE4 has not yet filled all the features in KDE 3.5 that I use. GNOME however is very popular in the enterprise work force, as it’s very easy to navigate (although I find KDE to be a friendly swap for you Windows users reading this).

Ok, now that you know what the Linux Kernel, Linux Distributions, and Desktop Environments are we’ll get down to the part where we replace Windows with Linux.

Here are some general uses for Windows users in the home space. After this we will go into what
you’re used to in each version of Windows, and try to compare it to Linux.

General uses:
Web Browsing: Some Windows applications for this task are: Internet Explorer, and Firefox comparable Linux applications that can do these tasks are Firefox (look familiar?), Opera (many more). For most home users, we use our computer as a way to browse the World Wide Web. A computer running a Linux OS, would be the perfect replacement, if this is your main need. Why you may wonder? Because a computer running a Linux OS is less susceptible to getting Malware / Viruses / Spam / Popups. This helps save the data on your machine, the personal data you type in at a web site, and in many other ways. I could write a million reasons here, but if you use your computer for only the internet, you should highly consider trying Linux, to save you heartaches with Viruses, etc in the future.

Word processing: Some Windows applications for this task are: Works, Word and openoffice, the major comparable Linux application is openoffice (again notice a trend? What is on Windows, may already be on Linux). If you run openoffice on Windows, a switch to Linux would a simple. You’re not doing anything different and using the same applications? So why the hesitation?

Spreadsheets: Some Windows applications for this task are: Works, Excel and openoffice, the major comparable Linux application is openoffice (again notice a trend? What is on Windows, may already be on Linux). See Word processing.

Email: You are just doing mail via the web (ie Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail etc) then this does not actually refer to you, as that is considered “Web browsing”, and you should re-read the security implications I’ve mentions in Web browsing. If you use a client like outlook, you have 2 major replacements in Kmail (which ships with KDE), and Evolution (which ships with GNOME). If you are pulling from a Exchange Server, I would recommend Evolution (which could actually run on KDE (gotta love the flexability of Linux).

Multimedia: Some applications for these tasks are: iTunes, Windows Media Player, etc. The applications that would replace these in Linux are actually way better then both the applications mentioned for Windows. These applications are Amarok, Mplayer and VLC. I won’t get into the gists of why they are better, just know that they are in every way. Note with Mplayer and VLC, you can run nearly any format including formats that are for “Windows (yes, some video formats are actually Windows only). Also for DVD playback you can install libdvdcss (which is kind of a touch subject due to it’s legality in the US, I recommend checking it out, and fighting for the cause).

Ok.. off the high horse now, and on to migrating from Windows to Linux and what you can expect.

The Windows Vista user:
So there you are, with your new Windows Vista box, super excited because you now have something called Aero. You’ve been awiting years (about 5) to come out with something other then Windows XP, and now you got it an annoying thing that pops up every time you want to do something (User Access Control/UAC), and a kick ass way to switch between applications. You’re living in a euphoric stage until you find out that Linux did that before Vista was out, and can do about 90 even cooler functions. This is courtesy of Compiz/Comiz-Fusion. If you’ve seen someone with a modern Linux distribution, then you’ve undoubtedly been awed by their 3-D Desktop, and the different methods of seeing what applications are open. So you wonder, how can I get that? Easily, just install a new version of a major distribution. Yes, most major distributions ship with Compiz enabled by default. That means these awesome features right out of the box. You can enable them, and disable them by running their configuration manager (won’t get into detail here, but there is plenty out there to get you started). Now that I’ve broken your heart, and kicked you while you waited 5 years for the new version of Windows, I’ll let you know what to expect when you switch from the most prevalent Windows Operating System out there, Windows XP. (Vista users should also read the XP section).

The Windows XP user:
When you hear Linux many of you off the bat thing “It’s better, it’s this, it’s that”. I do agree with you on that front, but it is not without a learning curve, or without a possible headache or 2. Do you remember all the major headaches while learning Windows for the first time? All the crashes etc? Think of those headaches minimized by 85%. If you’re then willing to take the adventure, and going in with the mind set that there will be a learning curve, that may introduce some headaches, then please read on.

When you install, you’ll notice that the installation is very straight forward, very manager based and just as easy if not easier then a Windows XP installation. Once installed, and logged in you’ll notice that you won’t have to install tons of different applications (ie Office etc) as most packages ship with the distribution. You may or may not see an increase of speed (if you have a 3 / 5 year old installation of Windows XP then heck yeah, you’ll notice a speed increase). If you are a basic user, here you’ll notice no difference, other then the lack of Administrative privileges. These are not given to users, as it introduces un-needed security risks (we’re all just used to running as “Administrators” in Windows). To run something with elevated privileges we use sudo, but again this will only need to be done with certain administrative tasks, and most needs will prompt you for your or your root (or administrator in windows) password.

That’s it.. If you’re a regular user, that is all you’ll notice (if you even notice that). As a power user, or someone that like to tinker, you’ll notice that there is no registry, you’ll also notice you have the ability to modify a lot more, and have the freedom to do anything to your machine (include break it, which you power users will probably do while you’re in your “learning phase”, with power comes problems for us curious ones).

Sorry this is all over the place, I hope someone finds it useful, feel free to leave me a comment, and i’ll add to it. Thanks a ton.

Great external links:
openSUSE
Ubuntu
Mandriva
KDE
Gnome
openoffice

Here’s a great list of comparisons between Linux and Windows also (man, if I knew this existed before hand, I would have just linked this instead of writing everything out).
Wikipedia Comparison of Windows

Tags: linux, Microsoft, opensuse, ubuntu

Installing NVIDIA Drivers on openSUSE 11.0 & other Linux Distrubutions

You listened to many Graphics Card critics and went with an NVIDIA card for your Linux box. But just slapping the card in your machine or installing openSUSE 11.0 will not get you to fully utilize your card. Why? By default most distributions will setup your card using the nv driver which is included in the Xorg installation. So we need to download and install the nvidia driver from nvidia.com.

Now onto my installation. I downloaded the 173.08 Beta version (as I had some issues with the 173.14.05 driver (and when I did get it working it didn’t benchmark to the level the 173 driver did), so I am going to stay with the beta driver for now.

Download the appropriate driver x86 or x64

Switch to runlevel 3 (or init 3) you can do this by running init 3 as root.

Log into runlevel 3 and install the driver
sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-173.08-pkg1.run

Follow the onscreen instructions (really straight forward) and when done switch back to runlevel 5 by running init 5 as root.

Note: You will need the build packages. (ie gcc, kernel-source etc).

This works just fine across distributions like Fedora Core 9, Ubuntu, etc.

UPDATE: There is now a repository you can add for the NVIDIA Drivers. You can setup the repo by running:

sudo zypper ar ftp://download.nvidia.com/opensuse/11.0/ “Nvidia Driver”

Go into YaST –> Software Manager and install the driver that matches your running Kernel.

Tags: drivers, linux, nvidia, opensuse

Fedora Core 8 First Impressions

Downloaded Fedora Core 8 “Werewold” today and decided to install on my Dell Latitude D820. I was and am quite disappointed. First off the installation didn’t detect my wireless card (Intel 3945) and I wasn’t allowed to add additional software repositories. So then I switch my DE from Gnome to KDE (which is my preference) finish the install. Weird.. Knetworkmanager isn’t coming in the tray so I try to start it and it says nm-applet is running, but I don’t see it in the tray. I kill nm-applet and run knetworkmanager, to no avail. I don’t really have a very easilly accessible hardwired connection so it made it hard to want to go further, but I did. So now I am attached get the extra software but can’t find the Nvidia driver. Ah, found out I need the linva repository (ok, well where is my software manager? I have synaptics install but it won’t start says it cannot be found). Ok that’s all I am going to do tonight. I am going to attempt to use it for the whole day tomorrow (need to throw VMWare on it) and i’ll give a better review). But for now? openSUSE it is, I must say FC8 made me appreciate openSUSE 10.3 quite a bit more.

VMWare Workstation not working with Wireless (Kernel 2.6.20)

So you may be using VMWare Workstation on a nice shiny Linux box, just to find out you cannot use your Bridged networking over the Wireless Card, confining you to the sofa nearest to your Router sitting in an obscure place. So what do you do? You fix it of course.

How?

Download this patched version of vmnet.tar created by Hauke-m from the VMWare Forums and Funderburg over at linuxquestions.org.

New vmnet.tar

Replace your current vmnet.tar file (mine is located in /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/vmnet.tar) and re-run your vmare-config.pl (for me sudo /usr/bin/vmware-config.pl)

Your all set FINALLY..

Hopefully VMWare will fix it on their releases

Linux, Apache, MySQL & PHP on openSuSE 10.2, Kubuntu 7.04, Ubuntu 7.04 & Fedora Core 7

So today I decided to give a few linux distro’s a shot in setting up a LAMP server (LAMP is Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP). The distro’s I went withwere: openSuSE 10.2 (my default), Kubuntu 7.04 (decided this on top of Ubuntu since some things are different as much as people want to say they are the same thing), Ubuntu 7.04 and for yucks, Fedora Core 7).

The first distribution up for the works was openSUSE 10.2. The installation was done during the installation and to my suprise everything was great right when I booted up, although I had to enable apache2 and mysql in the RunLevel Services to start in both Run Level 3 and 5. Once this was done, I tested PHP and Apache and both worked fine without any configuration changes. I logged into MySQL and changed the root password, and then decided to install phpMyAdmin from YaST and tried to log on and got “Access Denied”, well it seems that when installed on SuSE that it wants to login with root with no password. So I logged back into mysql and changed the password (Just in case you wanted to know the commands they were:

mysql -u root
mysql> USE mysql;
mysql> UPDATE user SET Password=PASSWORD(’assign_new_password’) WHERE user=’root’;
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

If you change the root password on the openSuSe and need to change it back login to the DB with:

mysql -u root -p mysql

I did the same on all distros)

Ok, was all done with that one. Now it was for Kubuntu / Ubuntu:

As expected the Kubuntu / Ubuntu installations had to be done after the installation of the OS with apt-get. This was kind of a bummer since I kind of like doing it during the installation of the OS packages, but this is one of the downfalls of the single CD installation. Once installed all went as planned and testing fine. So I install phpmyadmin, and login with the mysql root account that I had setup. All went well, I was pleased and moved on pretty quickly.

Fedora Core 7 I was able to install during the installation and tested good. One thing I didn’t like at all, was my user wasn’t added to the sudoers file and I think that is REDICULOUS. But with all that said, it all went well, and phpmyadmin was tested without issues, this was quick painless and Fedora Core 7 looks alot better then the last Fedora distro I used which was FC4.

I would honestly have to say from all the installs Fedora Core 7 was the easiest for a LAMP server, since it was installable from the beginning and did not need any configuration post installation like openSuSE needed. If Ubuntu / Kubuntu ever decided to make a DVD install, and included the install during boot, it would have been marked as the best during my test.

openSuSE 10.2 is still my desired distro, but if Ubuntu 7.10 outshines openSuSE 10.3 I may have to switch, hopefully Novell and get their heads together and fix their package manager and zen updater.