Number 305 - October 2008

Linux On A Laptop
by Brian K. Lewis, Ph.D.* 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 inthis 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.    Copyright 2008. This article is from the September2008 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.
Number 305 - October 2008