Sarasota PC Monitor
Tech Talk (02/07)
VISTA ALTERNATIVES
by Brian K. Lewis, Ph.D.*
Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc.The consumer version of Windows Vista is scheduled to be available on January 30th. Some of you may be looking forward to purchasing and installing this new operating system. After working on the Vista beta and checking out the upgrade costs, both software & hardware, I have been looking at alternative operating systems. Most of these are based on the Linux kernel. For example I have been using Linspire, formerly Lindows, for several years. Although it did sell for $49.95 and a year's subscription to the Click and Run warehouse raised the cost to $99.00, that has changed. The CnR subscription is now Free. There is also a free version of Linspire called Freespire that can be downloaded from the Linspire website (www.linspire.com). I plan on doing a full review of Linspire and the CnR warehouse later in the year. For now, if you want more information, check out their website.
The alternative operating systems (OS) I am looking at this month are the Ubuntu (u-boon-to) and Kubuntu (ku-boon-to) software packages. They are both downloadable from www.ubuntu.com or www.kubuntu .org. The downloads include a number of software packages so you can immediately start being productive. In order to try out the system you can download a "live CD" version. This is one that boots and runs directly from the CD. Running this CD version allows you to check out the OS and how it interacts with your hardware and peripherals such as printer, scanner, camera, etc. If you decide you want to install the OS on your hard disk, the CD comes with an install package that you can access from the desktop.
Now let's get to the details. I downloaded both Ubuntu and Kubuntu for to try them out on a desktop as well as a laptop with a wireless setup. The reason for trying both is that they use a different graphic interface. Ubuntu uses a Gnome desktop which has similarities to the Apple Mac desktop and Kubuntu uses KDE which is closer to the Windows desktop. Other than that, there is very little difference in these two operating systems. So most of my time has been spent with Ubuntu.
The downloaded file is an ISO file. That is a compressed file containing all the components of the OS and any other included software. After you download this file you have to burn it to a CD. Now you can't just burn the ISO file as one file. You need to use burning software that specifically has a selection for burning an ISO file to a CD. That will open the ISO file and burn the individual components, including the boot files, to your CD. O.K., hope that's clear.
Now that you have a bootable CD put it in your computer and restart it. Most recent computers will have no problem booting from a CD. However, if you end up back in Windows, you need to enter your BIOS and change the boot device sequence so that booting from a CD comes before booting from a hard disk. Can I tell you how to get to the BIOS in your computer? Yes and No. When your computer first starts there may be a message on the screen telling you which key to press to get to "Setup". If that message doesn't appear, try the DEL key. If that doesn't work, check the information in your owner's manual. It seems these days that each manufacturer has their own method for entering the Setup or BIOS program of the computer.
Running either Ubuntu or Kubuntu from a CD is not as fast as using a hard drive. That is to be expected. But, I found the desktop of each of these to be simplicity in itself. Considering that neither of these applications retain any information on your system after you shut down, the install is simple. Using Ubuntu as the example, a menu appears with several selections, the first being run Ubuntu. You can either press enter or do nothing and when the timer runs to zero, the process begins. You get a very colorful Ubuntu logo with a progress bar. After about 30-45 seconds you get a color background and then another Ubuntu bar. Finally, the desktop appears. There is no start bar at the bottom. There is a menu bar across the top with "Applications", "Places", "System", a Firefox icon, a mail system envelope and a question mark in a circle. On the far right is the date and time along with an icon for shutting down the system.
OK, we have the system running from the CD, now what can we do with it? Clicking on Applications drops down an alphabetical list of the software that was included on the CD. The first item is accessories, which we can ignore except for the calculator. That can come in handy. The next item on the list is games. There are 16 games in the list including various versions of solitaire, mahjongg, mines, etc. Next comes graphics with a photo manager, image editor, image view and image scanner. This last is software for use with supported scanners. Next item on the applications list is Internet. This has software for a VOIP phone that can be used with a free SIP phone account like the Gizmo Project. There is also e-mail software, Firefox browser, Internet Messenger, and a terminal server client. Next comes the Office category. This has a complete set of the Open Office suite in the latest version plus Evolution. Evolution is a personal information manager (PIM) and e-mail management application. The last item on the list is Sound & Video. The software in this category includes a movie player, music player, CD burner, sound extractor and sound recorder.
Although this software package doesn't include everything you might need, it is a great start considering that it is included on the basic installation CD. Also, it is all FREE with no catches or hidden advertising. You can also easily obtain more software. The very last item on the applications menu is Add/Remove Applications. Clicking on this brings up a window which has a list of categories on the left and applications in the right-hand window. Applications that are already installed have a check mark. You can add applications by clicking on the box by the application name, an short description appears in the window below the list, and then clicking on OK. The application will be automatically downloaded and installed. All of the software in this list is free. There is more software available through the Ubuntu web site and other Debian software sites. Instructions for obtaining software from these sites can be found in the Ubuntu documentation located at: www.help.ubuntu.com.
Now we can click on Places which is a selection on the top level menu of the desktop. The items on this drop-down menu are: Home folder, Desktop, Computer, CD/DVD creator, Network servers, Connect to server, search for files, and recent files. The first one I tried was Network servers. This brought up a window which contained an icon for Windows Network, I clicked on this and it brought up my home network and lead me to my Windows computer. It had folder icons for all the shared folders on this computer.
So, I decided to see if I could really read/write from Ubuntu to Windows. Opening a document folder I was able to read an OpenOffice document prepared in Windows in the OpenOffice included with Ubuntu. Any changes I made to the document were saved on the Windows computer, not the computer that was running Ubuntu. That's primarily because I was still running Ubuntu from the CD. I also opened some of my photo folders and clicked on some JPEG files. These opened up in the gThumb image viewer that was included with Ubuntu. As I continued working with the CD it was obvious that I would have no problems swapping files between the Windows system and Ubuntu.
Running Firefox from the CD was no different than running it on my Windows computer. Ubuntu had identified my Internet connection and we were up and running as soon as I clicked on the Firefox icon.
I did run into a significant problem with Ubuntu. My printers are connected to my Windows computer and are shared on my network. So far I haven't figured out just how to access them from the Ubuntu computer. There are two problems: first the network location and second specific drivers for my printers. My laser does seem to have a driver available once I can get the system to talk to it. However, my photo printer doesn't have a driver and Canon apparently doesn't supply Linux drivers for its printers. That's too bad, because it is a great printer. There is an answer to this, I just haven't gotten around to doing it. There is a web site that has free printer drivers available and I need to check there for Canon drivers. There is also a commercial software package that does support my printers at a price of about $40.00. They also have a free trial for this software so you can be sure I will check it out once I figure out the network problem.
I also tried the Kubuntu live CD and found it very similar to the Ubuntu. The main difference is in the appearance of the desktop. I also found information on the Ubuntu/Kubuntu web sites indicating that you can install Ubuntu to your hard drive and then install the Kubuntu so you can switch easily between the desktop styles. As I mentioned earlier, for Windows users, Kubuntu would be a more familiar desktop.
After playing with the CD versions for a while I decided to install Ubuntu to the hard drive of my test computer. This computer already had Vista Beta installed using the entire hard disk. I was prepared to wipe out the Vista installation if necessary. Anyway, I clicked on the install icon on the Ubuntu desktop. It gave me a message that it was checking my hardware. Next it came up with a window with several choices. One choice was to repartition the drive using the available free space to install Ubuntu, or another choice was to reformat the entire drive. I selected the choice to use only the available free space for Ubuntu. Then without any further input from me, it partitioned the drive and reformatted the free space, then it installed Ubuntu. At the end, it suggested that the system needed to be restarted, which I did. Quite frankly, it was easier than installing either Windows XP or Windows Vista.
OK, so far, with the exception of printing, Ubuntu is working very well. Not bad for a totally free software application. Next month, I will continue the Ubuntu story and relate my experiences with a wireless laptop and the network printers.
*Dr. Lewis is a former university & medical school professor. He has been working with personal computers for more than thirty years. He can be reached via e-mail at bwsail@yahoo.com.
Copyright 2007. This article is from the February 2007 issue of the Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., P.O. Box 15889, Sarasota, FL 34277-1889. Permission to reprint is granted only to other non-profit computer user groups, provided proper credit is given to the author and our publication. We would appreciate receiving a copy of the publication the reprint appears in, please send to above address, Attn: Editor. For further information about our group, email: admin@spcug.org/ Web: http://www.spcug.org/The Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc. has 1,100+ members and was established in 1982. We are members of the Assoc. of PC User Groups (APCUG), the Florida Assoc. of PC Users Groups, Inc., and we are members of the America Online Ambassador Program.
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