ive found one of my old articles that I wrote on linux in 2001 – I thought id give it a new lease of life and its still worth a read!! well here it is please enjoy 🙂
Linux Information:
Well were doI start?! Linux for years now has been to me not very well known but in reality more machines are running linux than we know? including the majority of the internet is run on linux apache servers or Tux because it is so reliable and recently more user friendly than ever.
Recently there has been news on the new microsoft operating system whistler or .net which basically doesn’t come on CD ROM any more but it is just part of the machine?? is this saying your tied to that? I don’t know! Well I don’t like the idea of it plus I was getting fed up with windows be pretty unreliable for me – blue screens! I have heavy demand on a machine and windows just couldn’t hack it
Not even NT or 2000 could keep up the pace! Saying that 98 second edition is probably the best the microsoft product ever made in my eyes and it was what I have been using right up to before Christmas 2000 when a
guy called mathew mentioned linux to me and it sounded just what I was looking for a good stable operating system.
I borrowed a copy of suse linux 6.0 of my mate mark who used to use linux and Im trying to convert him back (nearly going for it!!) and I admit it was pretty hard for me to set up at first (not very user friendly) but bearing
in mind this software was about 2 years old, things have changed it is all now very easy to setup up you if you get your hands on the right flavour!! (I’d say mandrake for the newbie!!
One thing I couldn’t believe was was the amount of software it was offering to me during the install! Over 1000 programs I thought it was a joke i nearly rang my mate to verify! everything you would need was here in one installation and its free?!
Flavours! Yes linux comes in various forms (Makes) Mandrake – Suse – Open Linux – Red Hat and even corel have got a version out which microsoft just bought?? These are just a few different version – linux is basically the Kernel the core which is the same on them all nearly we are now upto 2.4 which is included on suse 7.1 – red hat 7.1 and mandrake 8.0 but saying that if you know what your doing you can upgrade your kernel and make it load up what ever sevices you require you can make your machine boot up in a matter of seconds!!
The rest of it is just packages that install on top of it! On top of the kernel and the packages is the X server which is what you look at – The GUI (graphical user interface) and from there you can pick whice ever windows manager you want KDE or Gnome Or Enlightment is just a few to mention. Kde Is at the moment at 2.1.1 which is default with mandrake and gnome at 1.4 default with red hat these two being the most popular. KDE is very like windows but much nicer to look at and you can have as many desktops as you like (i just use the default four) making it easy to switch between applications. KDE has a lot of tools and games built in and is very configurable so you cann set it up to do what you want it to do very easily.
Well any way a friend of mine give me a copy of mandrake 7.2 on two CD ROMs the first CD was bootable pop it in the CD ROM and of it goes! Giving you the choice to keep your windows partition (Dual Boot) in other
word pick between linux or windows which is pretty handy if you want to migrate to linux. The install asks the country – standard install which just does basically everything for you – or custom for the more technical
where you can even set it up as a server! And then pick which packages you want install or just go for default choices. The three choices depends on disk size 300meg – 500meg or 1200meg . Software Categories are
accessibility -Archiving- books – communications – databases – development – editors – emulators – file tools – games – graphical desktop – graphics – monitoring – networking – publishing – sciences – shells –
sound – system – terminals – text tools -terminals – text tools + toys & video & inside all them groups expand into more categories in that area. What you can do is do the standard install and then add them inside linux,
rpmdrake in mandrake which gives you a brief description of what the packages do is a handy tool for the begginer makes it easy to add and remove packages instead of doing it from a console in the old days!
The most important things that made me go linux was in my eyes a much more attractive and stable operating system as appossed to any Microsoft (Ugh!) operating systems plus the ammount of free advice and
software! To much to mention! Try www.freshmeat.net (no its not a porn sight!) a good start for free software! And if there isn’t enough software in linux for you can run wine which lets you install and run windows apps
like word and stuff! actually inside linux! try www.winehq.com
If you want a preview of the windows managers try www.kde.org or www.gnome.org these just being two popular ones there are many more to suite your needs! Enlighment is a very nice desktop manager and the good
desktop manager and the good thing about all the desktop managers is how customizable they are you can set them up to do all sorts!!
On the business side its crazy paying hundreds of pounds on a sever and then paying as much on software when you can get a linux OS for nothing. Lets say you have 15 workstations with windows NT or 9X on so that’s
nearly £1500 just for operating systems then a server where the operating system can cost you from £500 upwards and 15 copies of office at £100 (that’s cheap) so that’s what about three to four grand! Put linux on for
free if you want the original disks it will only cost you no more than £100!! You wanna save thousands drop me a mail!!!!! No seriosly the workstation install has every package you could ever need for a business –
spreadsheets – calculators – word packages – email clients – internet browsers any thing you need!
You dont even need sage you can use gnomes Gnucash top bit of free software works nicely!
My linux box has every office package I want! all the multimedia stuff I need – mp3 – audio – win tv -whatever you need! CD-writing software – loads of games to pick during the install and not just crappy card games!
I haven’t reinstalled my Os for ages with any version of windows I was doing at least every month it couldn’t keep up with me! I leave on my box all the time and it never burps if a app ever crashes (rare)In mandrake you have an icon called kill(ctrl+alt+Esc) select the crashed app with the mouse and hey presto keep on working!
I made this page with websphere home page builder which was a 20meg download from www.ibm.com
Not free though! 90 day trial then its about $50 dollars!!! everything else on my machine has cost me next to nothing – well about £6.50 every time I try to choose another flavour at the moment trying red hat 7.1 but its a toss up between that and mandrake! I would say though! if your new intrested go for mandrake!
MORE TO COME
Drop me a mail any questions!
info@wayneward.co.uk