I’ve tried to work with Linux a couple other times, but made a mistake in how I went about it. Trouble is, I would put it on a separate laptop or in a dual-boot partition on my main laptop, so I still had the Windows option. Well hell, I’m only human. It’s just too easy to do the familiar thing and use Windows, which gets the immediate task done but doesn’t expand my skills any.
One reason it’s worth the effort to try is that Linux can be a real problem-solver for certain purposes. And, we use Linux on at least three of our servers and our network administrator might like to take a trip somewhere or stay home with the flu once in a while. So it would be nice if I weren’t a complete dolt around penguins. (I don’t usually say Windows/Mac/Linux is “better” or “best” but they are variously suited to different purposes.)
This time I blew away the Windows partition on my main laptop, installing SUSE 10.x. So it’s sink or swim. There are friendlier “distros” of Linux, such as Ubuntu and – I can’t remember the other do-gooder distro – but I chose SUSE because it’s from Novell, a company that seems really serious about getting work done, and because that’s what we use on our three servers. This is one of the annoying things about Linux; once you’ve tried one distro, well, you’ve tried one distro.
Early impressions: installation was geek-easy but not user-easy. Some things aren’t working yet, like the SD chip reader so no pictures on the blog until I get that working. The wireless set up perfectly on the first try – easy if you have the right chipset, damn near impossible if you don’t. This laptop has an Intel ProSet wireless chipset. (You can use an NDIS envelope to run Windows drivers on other chipsets, but this solution displeases me esthetically). The oversize mouse pointer is beautiful – better than even Windows’ and much better than Mac, which was clunky and pixilated. The video drivers seem of above-average quality. I already managed to crash the file manager but it just restarted without a hiccup and the system went on running – very nice. And it comes with a tremendous array of software, most of which has goofy names. I spent an hour editing photos with “Gimp” last night and it is very comparable to Photoshop 6, maybe a bit easier to use (and runs considerably faster). But why the hell did they name it “Gimp?” And of course it comes with OpenOffice, which I do prefer to Microsoft Office because of its cleaner design.
UPDATE: I’ve got the suspend-to-memory configured so when I close the lid, it goes to sleep. Couldn’t get the SD chip reader working – Webs sez it’s a chip issue so I picked up a tiny Lexar USB chip reader for eighteen bucks that works fine. Slightly less convenient but now I can upload pictures again using “gnomeFTP”. The center IBM pointer button scrolls after some configuring. The wireless works great but I have to remind it to connect (which it does easily) when waking up the computer. So far SUSE is a lot less slick than Windows out-of-the-box, but looks like it can configure up very well. We’ll see if I go back to Windows after using it for a month.
I’m going with GNU Image Manipulation Program.
Very good guess Ted, <a > you were right on</a>!
For those of you reading this here are my recommendations for easy to use Linux distros:
- Ubuntu: cause of it’s easy install process
- Xpress Linux: fantastic compatibility with Windows
- Xandros: touted as the “Most user friendly Linux”
- SUSE: would be #1 but you gotta pay for it and install process is convoluted
- PCLinux: a cross breed of MAC and Linux
For anyone switching over I recommend keeping Windows and dual booting, cause then you can transfer files very easily. Once you finish with that then you can blow away Windows.
SUSE’s install process is just more complex than it needs to be. I like options when I install an OS, but they took it to the extreme. Other than that I really have enjoyed working on SUSE and will probably blow Ubuntu off my laptop and put on a different OS to try out at some point.
DOF, I know you had little to know troubles with your Linux install cause you have mostly Intel chipsets, which make a hug difference. Intel has always been good about having drivers for more OSs than just Windows.
For servers, we use Debian/stable. Yes, I’m well aware of the long release cycles and aging packages—but for our purposes, it’s an advantage. We prize stability and other than the occasional backport of OpenSWAN, we don’t need cutting-edge releases of anything. Once in a while I toy with CentOS, but I never found a compelling reason to consider switching.
For desktops, these days I prefer Debian/etch, which went stable a few days ago.
I have heard really good things about Debian. Three students in my Linux class used it for their project and had nothing but positive things to say about it, and only two of them were familiar with Linux. The other had only heard of Debian and Linux but never used either.
I think the other do-gooder distro you were thinking of is Mandriva, formerly Mandrake. Or maybe Fedora, the oper version of Red Hat. BTW there is an OpenSuse which is free, perhaps not as stable as the enterprise version, but more likely to get updated.
You might be able to get the SD card reader working if you recompile the kernel. But you might also totally bork your system. Just keep a backup of your /boot directory and you can recover easily.
I had one student in the class that picked Mandriva and he hated it. He couldn’t get his USB keyboard to work no matter what he tried, as soon as the system booted into Mandriva. And he wasn’t too impressed with community support either. But there is always a chance he didn’t know what he was doing.
DOF, glad to hear you got a work around for the SD card problem. I am positive you are having the same issue with your built-in SD card reader that I am. There is no solution because the manufacturer will not release their hardware information.
Unfortunately it’s the most prevalent issue in Linux today that is not truly solvable by Linux. This is why Novell buying SUSE is a good thing. Maybe Novell can use it’s power to get chipset and other hardware drivers written.
Doh! I originally put this comment on the PlayStation thread and meant to put it here. Must. Get. Coffee.
Here’s the little USB card reader dealie. I got it at Wal-Mart
The reader is made by Lexar and folds up dinky. PNY card shown but I also tried a Lexar card which worked fine.
GNU image manipulation program, yes.
it’s almost a standing joke that free software developers can’t seem to think up names worth a darn. there’s a softphone application for Linux that used to be called “gnomemeeting” as a take-off on “MS meeting”; that wasn’t very catchy, though. so it got renamed. to “Ekiga”.
it’s not too bad of a softphone, but i don’t even want to know where that name came from.