racoma.com.phJ. Angelo Racoma on technology, economics, writing, problogging, and getting things done

This is a lazy post, by the way. Lots of work to do, so here are some highlights.

• I installed Ubuntu Linux Feisty Fawn (version 7.04) yesterday. Finally got to archive some old files (via DVD) to get a big enough space on my hard drive to re-partition. The entire process took about 8 hours (most of which was spent working while waiting for the ISO to download via BitTorrent, Acronis to resize my partitions, and Ubuntu to actually install).
• Ubuntu detected all my hardware, and activation, setup and operation was seamless. Even Windows couldn’t detect my newly installed Intel Pro 2200BG wireless card. And that was an Intel chip supposed to come built-in with laptops of this vintage.
• Just faced some problems with sleep and wake-from-sleep while running on battery mode. The wireless network won’t work after waking up. Solution: I added ipw2200 to the MODULES line under /etc/default/acpi-support (be sure to edit this using superuser). Working fine so far, except for some instances when the laptop won’t sleep when lid is closed.
• Enabled NTFS write access, so I can still work on my files in the Windows NTFS partition.
• Imported my entire Firefox profile (which just involved copying over the profile from the NTFS partition to the Linux one.
• Installing apps was a breeze, wit the application manager. Just check the ones you want, and Ubuntu will download and install these for you.
• Installed Beryl. Wow! This was one of the main reasons why I was dead serious with installing Ubuntu on my V2000. It’s as good as OS X Expose. And it even has the 3D cube (which I believe OS X Leopard will feature as “spaces”.).

I’m not exactly a newbie to Linux, as I’ve been using Mandriva as my main work machine back in 2005. But I’m not exactly much of a Linux power user either. But still, I’m not alien to the command line (having started using computers when DOS was still in fashion), and there’s always Google for easy reference. So I’m not totally lost.

One stark observation: It’s easier to start using Linux coming from the OS X camp. Both being Unix-derived, a Mac user won’t get lost navigating through Linux, especially if one is used to tweaking Darwin using the OS X Terminal. If you’re primarily a Windows user, though, you might need some time to adjust.

And of course, the Beryl desktop manager makes all this even better.

Best thing is that even if my machine wasn’t too spiffy (it’s a Dothan class Celeron-M running at 1.5 GHz, with 512M of DDR1 RAM), it can still support all this eye candy without breaking a sweat. I don’t think Windows Vista or even XP can do that. I tried installing some 3D cube type desktop managers on XP and I wasn’t so impressed.

Ubuntu passes the J. Angelo Racoma test. It’s easy enough to install, and it works well enough without the usual headaches you would usually imagine having when doing a fresh OS install on your machine. But more importantly, it gets my seal of approval because I got through with installing Ubuntu even with my very short attention span. My previous attempts at installing Linux distros by myself (Red Hat, Slackware, Mandrake/Mandriva) were all in vain. I gave up too easily.

I think Ubuntu Linux will do well as a free OS for home-based computing, and as an alternative to Windows

More testament to Ubuntu Linux’s coolness over at Max Limpag’s site.

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