Tech Talk (08/09)
Linux On A Laptop
by Brian K. Lewis, Ph.D.*
Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc.
Last year I wrote several articles on using Linux
operating systems as an alternative to Windows Vista. I had intended to continue writing articles on various Linux
operating systems (OS) periodically as I gained more experience with
them on my laptop. But it has taken me longer than I anticipated to get
around to installing and using a Linux OS after getting rid of my
desktop systems. In the interim Lindows, an OS I’ve used for over eight
years, has recently been sold to Xandros and nobody really knows what
that will mean for either OS. I’ve also run across several articles on
the number of available Linux distributions (distros). One list I saw
had over 100 different distros. That makes choosing one for your laptop
more than a little complicated. So I have settled on using Ubuntu. It is
currently one of the most popular distros. I have used several earlier
versions on my desktop, but I am running version 8.04 (Hardy Heron) on
my laptop. Is it a different experience from Windows? Yes & No. Is it
easier to use than Windows? Yes & No. How’s that for a succinct answer.
Maybe after reviewing some of my experiences with Ubuntu you can decide
for yourself as to its ease of use.
One thing that has definitely improved in Ubuntu is
the ease of installation. I used a "Live CD" to start the test to
determine if it would even run on my laptop which is a five year old
Fujitsu C2230 model. It has a 60 MB hard drive, ATI Radeon graphics, an
Intel 2.6 GHz Pentium processor and 768 MB of RAM. So it is not the most
powerful machine available. The Live CD is a bootable CD that loads
Ubuntu into RAM and sets up a few temporary files on your hard drive.
This gives the user an opportunity to try out the OS without making any
permanent changes to the hard drive. In my case everything seemed to be
working with the exception of the printer and my Verizon wireless modem
card. I knew in advance that I would need to download some drivers or
other info to get some of the peripherals working. With the Live CD it’s
not possible to install drivers for some peripherals when the driver is
not included on the CD.
Since I had Windows XP loaded on this computer along
with a lot of data files that I didn’t want to lose, my first step was
to backup everything to an image file on an external drive. Once that
was done I restarted the computer with the live CD. After Ubuntu loaded
I clicked on the "Install" icon on the desktop. After a short delay I
was presented with a page that gave me several options with regard to
installing Ubuntu. One was to resize the hard drive and create the
necessary partitions for Ubuntu automatically. Another was to do the
repartitioning manually and the third was to use the entire hard disk. I
selected the automatic choice and sat back while the partition program
(gpartd) took care of the necessary changes. That took about fifteen
minutes and then the actual installation began. One of the first steps
was to ask for a user name and a password. This is important and should
not be skipped as many Windows users tend to do in their setups.
The whole process took less than thirty minutes,
including file copying. Then I was presented with the message that the
installation was finished and the system needed to reboot. I clicked on
"OK" and was told to remove the CD from the drive and press Enter. After
about another fifteen seconds the Fujitsu logo appeared followed by a
text message that Grub was loading. Just as quickly a menu appeared with
the first choice being to load Ubuntu. The fourth choice was Windows XP.
So just to be certain that XP had survived the process, I moved the
cursor down to run XP. What followed was the usual Windows boot process,
the password page and then my desktop started loading. Everything
appeared to be normal. After checking out a few programs and looking for
necessary files I told Windows to restart.
The Grub loader menu appeared rapidly and I pressed
enter to start Ubuntu. It took about forty-five seconds for the password
page to appear and then just a few more for the desktop to load. It
appeared that I now had a dual boot system installed.
The Gnome desktop is somewhat different from the
desktop in Windows. There is no start button, instead there is a menu
across the left top of the screen listing Applications, Places, System,
Firefox, Mail, and Help. On the right top line is the date and time plus
the battery or AC power indicator. The Applications menu list has many
titles including OpenOffice, Gimp Image Editor, Brasero CD/DVD burner,
DVD player, a long list of games and many other applications. These are
arranged in categories such as Games, Internet, Office, etc. The Places
menu lists the home directory which includes a folder for your
documents, one for music, pictures and videos. You can also create other
folders at any time. The Places menu also lists your drives and it
included the Windows partition. When I opened it all the folders in the
Windows partition were available. Any OpenOffice or MS Word docs in the
Windows side could be copied to the Ubuntu partition or I could open
them directly. OpenOffice would also save them in the original location
under Windows or I could change them to the Ubuntu side. So far
everything was looking good.
My next step was to install my printer. Ubuntu
provides several different means of installing new applications to your
computer. The easiest is the "Add/Remove" selection on the applications
menu. This shows you the applications available for installation as well
as those already installed. When you highlight an app you get a
description of it. It also has a popularity rating from one to five
stars. Installation is as simple as putting a check mark in the box by
the name and clicking "Apply changes". The next easiest is the Synaptic
Package Manager. It will download and install applications from specific
Linux locations on the web. It has about 25,000 apps available. The
third method is a command line method using the apt-get install command,
one to avoid unless you are comfortable working with command line
instructions. There is a printer manager for installing printer drivers.
However, it works only with drivers that were included with the
installation CD. My printer was not in this list. Finally, there is the
Debian package manager. This is the one I had to use to install my
Brother printer driver which I downloaded earlier under Windows. Brother
is one of the few printer manufacturers that writes and provides drivers
for its newer printers so they can run on Linux systems. The file was
stored in my Windows partition.
First I copied the Brother files to the Linux
partition. I double-clicked the file and the Debian package manager
opened and asked if I wanted to install the package. After clicking OK,
the process seemed to go ahead. However, the Brother printer never
appeared in the printer installation menu. It took some searching, but I
found that the program was trying to install the files in folders that
were locked and couldn’t be written to by anyone but "root". In Linux
"root" is a superuser like the administrator in Windows. Even though I
had entered my password, the files stayed locked. My only alternative
was to open the file manager using the command line and change the
folder permissions. Then the installation proceeded normally.
Interestingly, when I installed the drivers for the scanner on the
Brother multi-function machine, this problem did not occur. Both the
printer and the scanner are working as well under Ubuntu as they do
under Windows.
The next step was to get on-line using the Verizon
wireless modem card. I had found in the Ubuntu User forum two different
means of doing this. One used a graphical interface called Gnome PPP
which is the equivalent of a modem dialer. However, to set this up, I
needed to use the Add/Remove package manager and it could not get to the
Internet to download the file. So, I back to a command line setup to get
the initial access to the Internet. This required a series of commands
to identify my Verizon wireless modem. Once that was complete I was able
to download Gnome PPP software and install it following the instructions
I had found on the Net. After that was done, I had no further problems
accessing the Internet. I could have continued using the command line
but it would have involved more programming to get it to run from a
single click. Installing Gnome PPP was easier, especially using the
Add/Remove package manager. Gnome PPP connects me to the Internet as
effortlessly as the Windows software provided by Verizon. Actually, it
connects much more quickly. Many other applications run much faster
under Ubuntu than under Windows. OpenOffice is a good example of that.
The browser provided with Ubuntu is Firefox so that
did not involve any additional learning curve. I also had previous
experience with both OpenOffice and Gimp. So it was like working with
old friends, just the Desktop was different. However, I was able to copy
pictures from my Windows partition and add them to the pictures folder
in Ubuntu. Then, they were available for use as wallpaper on my Ubuntu
desktop. I also exported my Bookmarks in Windows Firefox and then the
Ubuntu Firefox was able to import them directly from the Windows
partition.
Security on a Linux box is not as much of a problem
as it is in Windows. The Add/Remove package manager does provide a
firewall application and the graphic front end for the ClamAV
anti-virus. The firewall is called Firestarter and installs quite
easily. I consider a firewall very important on any computer linked to
the Internet. As for the anti-virus application, many Linux users run
their systems without one. The reasoning being that there aren’t many
viruses designed to target Linux systems. However, I did install the
Debian version of the Avast anti-virus software because one virus
invasion would be one too many. It’s probably my Windows experience that
convinced me to add this to Ubuntu.
You may have noted that several places in this
article I referred to commands or command line operations. If you have
ever used the Windows command line, or your computer experience goes
back to DOS, then you know what I mean. For others this is probably less
intelligible. There are times in a Linux OS (as in Windows) when you
don’t have a nice graphic icon or underlined text to click on. Instead
you have to open a window (terminal in Ubuntu) and type a command to get
the computer to carry the desired operation. The primary requirement of
any command is that the syntax be absolutely correct and every word
perfectly spelled. The command line does put you one layer closer to the
inner workings of the computer. In most Linux distros you have to become
more familiar with the command line than you do in Windows. Most of
these commands are related to functions that can only be carried out by
"root". This separation of the user from the administrative layer is
part of the security of the Linux OS. Anyone gaining access to the
computer via an internet connection would have to have access to the
root password before being able to make any inroads to the computer
other than accessing user files. Just one of the things that Linux does
better than Windows.
Since this is only the beginning of my experience
with Ubuntu, I will continue this odyssey in future articles. Also, I
hope to include information on running Windows applications under Linux.
Frankly, at this point, I am really amazed at how well Ubuntu performs
for an OS that is free. I have not had a single crash (no blue screens).
*Dr. Lewis is a former university and medical school professor of physiology. He has been working with personal computers for over thirty years, developing software and assembling systems. He can be reached at bwsail at yahoo.com.
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Copyright 2008. This article is from the
September2008 issue of the
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