Saturday, May 12, 2012

VGA out and Aliases

This week I as trying to get the VGA output of one of my old laptops working. It has an ATI card that shares RAM with the system, I set it to 32MB out of a 512MB total.

This laptop is running a Linux distribution called wattOS R5 (which I'll talk about on the next post). I connected the VGA cable to both the TV and laptop before turning it on. The login screen appeared with a resolution of 1024x768 pixels on both the laptop LCD and TV, but the LCD on my laptop is 4:3 and the TV is widescreen (16:9), so the image shown on the TV was stretched. 

Using my wife's netbook (Xubuntu 12.04), which has a 16:9 LCD screen, the VGA output was automatically set up too. The netbook LCD showed a 1024x600 pixels login screen (which is ok) but the image shown on TV had a resolution of 1024x768 pixels. In other words, neither of them showed the correct resolution on TV. So how do we fix this?

When I get a problem like this the first place I search is the Arch Linux wiki. I uninstalled Arch Linux from this laptop so I could install wattOS. I'm still using Arch on my desktop though. The stuff on Arch wiki is not usable only on Arch Linux, as you'll soon see. The solution I found worked on wattOS (Lubuntu based distro). Here's the full article from the Arch Linux wiki concerning this VGA out problem.

To be able to set a desired resolution to any video output we need to see if it is already available by typing the command xrandr -q. Here's the output of this command on my laptop:
Output of xrandr -q
We can see that 1024x600 pixels is not listed and 1024x768 is being used on both displays (see the asterisk?). I'm gonna show how to add the 1024x600 resolution and how to set the VGA output to use it. Substitute the values if you want to add a different resolution.

To add the 1024x600 resolution to xrandr we first have to get the Modeline for the resolution with:


cvt 1024 600

Here's the screenshot of the output.
Output of cvt 1024 600

Now we can add the new mode on xrandr with the following command:

xrandr --newmode "1024x600_60.00" 49.00 1024 1072 1168 1312 600 603 613 624 -hsync +vsync

Note that the part after "--newmode" is part of the output of the cvt command, from "1024x600_60.00" until the end. There should be no output this time. To see if the new mode was added we have use xrandr -q again. Here's the output this time.
Output of xrandr -q with the new mode added
We can see that the 1024x600 resolution was now added on xrandr. Now we just need to do two more things: associate this new mode with the VGA output and actually set the VGA output to the new resolution. To associate the VGA out with the new mode we run the following command:

xrandr --addmode VGA-0 "1024x600_60.00"

There should be no output, but by running xrandr -q again (see screenshot below), we should see the new resolution available for the VGA out. I used "VGA-0" on the command above because that's how xrandr sees it. It may be listed as "VGA0", "VGA-1" or whatever in other cases.
Output of xrandr -q showing the new resolution associated with the VGA out.
Now, to tell xrandr to throw 1024x600 pixels to the VGA out we just need to do the following:

xrandr --output VGA-0 --mode "1024x600_60.00"

Now the device plugged in your VGA out (in my case, my TV) should be with the correct resolution.

We're not home free just yet. These commands, done like this, only work for this session. If you want to make the new resolution settings permanent, you need to do one more thing: make sure that at least the "xrandr --newmode ..." and the "xrandr --addmode ..." commands are run at X startup, so that the new mode is added and associated with the correct output. We could also make the third command be run at X startup, but in this case the VGA out would always be turned on and displaying this resolution, if you wanted it to display a 4:3 resolution you'd have to type the third command again with the correct resolution.


The Arch Linux wiki article suggests three options to make these settings permanent:


1) Edit your xorg.conf;
2) Add the commands to the /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc (or in ~/.xinitrc) file;
3) Use kdm (KDE Display Manager) or gdm (Gnome Display Manager) startup scripts.

I didn't want to mess with my xorg.conf and I don't use kdm or gdm on this laptop (wattOS uses lxdm). So I had to use the second option, but when I did type the commands on my /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc file neither screen (Laptop LCD screen and TV) would show anything after I rebooted. To fix this I booted from my Lucid Puppy USB flash drive (see previous post) and edited /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc to remove what I added. After that, I booted normally into wattOS R5.

Since the last try failed, I tried using the graphical frontends listed on the Arch Linux wiki article: ArandR and LXrandR. I installed ArandR using the Ubuntu repos (remember that wattOS is Lubuntu based) and, as for LXrandR, it was already installed on wattOS. On neither one (at least I couldn't manage to do it) you're able to set new modes. You can only set the VGA out for those resolutions already listed. If you consider that we had to use three xrandr commands, one to add the new mode, one to associate this new mode with the VGA out and another to actually tell xrandr to activate the VGA out, these two frontends only prevent you from typing the last command, since you have to add the new mode and associate it to the VGA out by yourself.

Ok, so I knew how to set the VGA out but I couldn't make it permanent. There was still a way to make VGA out easily available: using aliases. Let me explain what aliases are: aliases are "nicknames" you set to commands. For example, it's possible to, instead of typing the first command "xrandr --newmode "1024x600_60.00" 49.00 1024 1072 1168 1312 600 603 613 624 -hsync +vsync" (without the "") you could just type "vga1" (also without the ""), provided you added the line below to the bottom of your ~/.bashrc file:

alias vga1='xrandr --newmode "1024x600_60.00" 49.00 1024 1072 1168 1312 600 603 613 624 -hsync +vsync'

Just to make the post richer, below are the aliases I have on my ~/.bashrc file of my Desktop that is running Arch Linux:

# My aliases

## Pacman and yaourt
alias pacman='sudo pacman-color'
alias inst='sudo pacman-color -S'
alias upgrade='sudo pacman-color -Su'
alias update='sudo pacman-color -Sy'
alias fupgrade='sudo pacman-color -Syu'
alias search='sudo pacman-color -Ss'
alias infop='sudo pacman-color -Si'
alias uninst='sudo pacman-color -Rsn'
alias orphans='sudo pacman-color -Qdt'
alias yogurt='yaourt'
alias ysearch='yaourt -Ss'
alias yinst='yaourt -S'
alias yuninst='yaourt -Rsn'
alias yupdate='yaourt -Sya'
alias yupgrade='yaourt -Sua'

## Leafpad
alias slp='gksu leafpad'
alias lp='leafpad'

## Thunar
alias sthunar='gksu thunar'

## Samba
alias smbconfig='gksu leafpad /etc/samba/smb.conf'
alias smbrestart='sudo rc.d restart samba'

## Network
alias png='ping www.google.com.br'
alias pnr='ping 192.168.8.1'
alias netrestart='sudo /etc/rc.d/network restart'

## Navigation
alias cls='clear'
alias ..='cd ..'
alias ...='cd ../..'
alias ....='cd ../../..'
alias ls='ls --color=auto --group-directories-first' # add color, group dir
alias lsd='ls -lAtrh' # sort by date
alias lsl='ls -lAh' # long list, human-readable
alias lss='ls -shAxSr' # sort by size
alias lsx='ls -lAhX' # sort by extension
alias lsh='ls -al' # long list + hidden files
alias cdd='cd ~/Desktop'

## Misc
alias updatedb='sudo updatedb'
alias cupsrestart='sudo /etc/rc.d/cupsd restart'
alias mount='sudo mount' # sudo mount file.iso /media/iso
alias umount='sudo umount'


Take a look at the last line above. What this means is: if I type on the console "umount" (without the "") it's as if I had typed "sudo umount". So, if I wanted to unmount the partition /dev/sda1 I'd just have to enter "umount /dev/sda1" (without the "") instead of "sudo umount /dev/sda1" (also without the "").

So what I did to make VGA out with a 1024x600 resolution easily available on my laptop was add the following lines on my ~/.bashrc:

alias vga1='xrandr --newmode "1024x600_60.00" 49.00 1024 1072 1168 1312 600 603 613 624 -hsync +vsync'
alias vga2='xrandr --addmode VGA-0 "1024x600_60.00"'
alias vga3='xrandr --output VGA-0 --mode "1024x600_60.00"'

Now all I have to do to get my VGA out working now is type these commands in sequence: vga1, vga2, vga3. That's it!

Now, just for the record, here are the aliases I have on the laptop (aside the vga1,vga2, vga3 above):

## apt-get
alias inst='sudo apt-get install'
alias update='sudo apt-get update'
alias upgrade='sudo apt-get upgrade'
alias search='sudo apt-cache search'
alias uninst='sudo apt-get purge'
alias autorm='sudo apt-get autoremove'
alias infop='sudo apt-cache show'

Monday, May 7, 2012

Portable OS anyone?

Around a month ago a friend from work told me how he installed Ubuntu to a USB flash drive. Now he walked around with his desktop with him! Any computer that could boot from USB could be his desktop. I had to try this.

While I read about the subject, I found out how flash memory has a limited number of read/write cycles. This can be a problem if you’re running a entire OS from your USB flash drive, as a regular OS writes stuff in its host partition regularly. I had to find a Linux distro that limited the number of read/writes to its host partition.

I found several Linux distros that ran directly from RAM. I wanted a distro that:

1) Could be run entirely from RAM on a PC with 256~512MB of RAM;
2) Only saves the session periodically or once it’s shutdown (to reduce the wear of the flash drive).

I googled for this and found PendriveLinux and LinuxLive USB Creator and some distros. PendriveLinux and LinuxLive USB Creator break the first rule, so they’re out. Here are the distros that could run from RAM that I found:

- SLAX;
- DSL (Damn Small Linux);
- Puppy Linux (and its derivatives) ;
- Slitaz.

I tested them on my friend’s ex-laptop (see post #4). Here are the specs:

Semprom 1800MHz CPU;
Onboard ATI video card;
512MB of RAM (32MB shared with video card);

Porteus is actually the successor of SLAX. SLAX’s latest version was released in 2009. Upon booting Porteus 1.1 CD you’re presented with several options like using KDE or LXDE as DE, running from RAM (that’s what I was after), run without saving session, etc. To be able to copy the whole OS to RAM you need at least 768MB. I chose to run with LXDE as DE. It was nice and fast but since my laptop only has 512MB of RAM (actually 512MB minus Video RAM) I couldn’t boot it entirely into RAM, so it doesn’t fulfill the first requirement I listed above. I tried it briefly on my desktop which has 3GB of RAM and I liked it, It seems to be a hell of a distro. Computers with at least 1GB of RAM are very common these days, just that I wanted something... slimmer. Porteus 1.2RC1 comes with XFCE as DE but has the same limitation as the LXDE version I mentioned above, 768MB or more of RAM for the OS to be able to copy itself to RAM. Below are screenshots of LXDE and XFCE desktops.

Porteus 1.1 -  LXDE 
Porteus 1.2RC1 - XFCE


DSL, which has seen his latest release in 2008, and Tiny Core are FAST but seemed “too old school” to me. With this USB flash drive setup I want to be able to boot from almost anywhere, but I’m not gonna use this on really old hardware. After what I have seen on Porteus, I thought I could dismiss DSL and Tiny Core. These were TOO slim! :)

The last two distros, Puppy Linux and Slitaz, I had already tried a few weeks after I started using Linux. I had read about these very lightweight distros. I even downloaded the isos (they’re really small, around 230MB for Puppy and around 30MB for Slitaz).

I had downloaded Slitaz 3 a few months ago and it was as fast as Tiny Core and DSL. I didn’t find it very user friendly and I remembered that some of the software I wanted wasn’t available in the repos. Slitaz 4 just came out (April 10th 2012) and I downloaded it. I tried, but Slitaz 4 CD just booted to the command line. I gave up on Slitaz for now, let’s see if Puppy works well enough.

Puppy Linux is a very lightweight (and popular, if you check distrowatch.com, you'll see puppy ranks to 9th on most page hits) distro that copies it self to RAM if the computer has at least 256MB. It can be installed in a way that it uses the whole partition on hdd or USB flash drive, or you can do a frugal install, where it copies some files to a hdd or flash drive. Your flash drive can use any file system you like, the save file that Puppy creates contains a ext2/ext3 file system inside it. Puppy Linux also has several puplets, user-made versions of Puppy with special features.

I downloaded three versions of Puppy:

- Lucid Puppy 5.2.8.005 (compatible with Ubuntu Lucid Lynx);
- Slacko Puppy 5.3.1 (compatible with Slackware 13.37);
- Saluki 0.20 (puplet with XFCE as DE);

I downloaded Saluki just because it used XFCE as DE but the performance compared to the other two is a bit worse (Slacko and Lucid use JWM as window manager, and that’s way lighter than XFCE) and Ubuntu and Slackware repos are full of good software for installing, unlike Saluki’s repos. So, I really liked the idea of using XFCE on Puppy but I gotta dismiss Saluki for now.

Between Lucid and Slacko the fight is tough. Slacko is compatible with the latest Slackware release and Lucid with Lucid Lynx, last Ubuntu LTS release (supported until april 2013, according to this). Lucid is more mature and less buggy though. I can’t recall exactly the problems I had with Slacko, but I did have some problems related to my laptop’s touch pad and wifi card. I decided to test Lucid Puppy then.

I booted the Lucid Puppy CD and used the Puppy Universal Installer to make a frugal install on my FAT32 formatted USB flash drive. It asks a few questions and after you’re done you should logout. After logging out Puppy asks if you want to save your session. I answered yes since I wanted a persistent system on my USB flash drive. I chose to use ext3 file system and it created the file lupusave.3fs on the root of my USB flash drive. Now I just had to reboot and set the BIOS to boot from USB to try out my Puppy system.

When I got into BIOS, a surprise: I couldn’t set it to boot from USB (it’s an OLD laptop!). I googled to see if there was a way to make it boot from USB and I found one: PLoP boot manager. On this laptop I was testing Puppy on, I had Arch Linux and GRUB as boot loader. Following these instructions, I managed to add an entry on my GRUB menu for PLoP and now I could boot from USB! Just below those instructions for GRUB are the ones for GRUB2. On my other laptop I have Xubuntu and GRUB2 as boot loader. Those instructions didn’t work for me though. Here’s what I had to do to make it work:

- Added the text displayed for GRUB2 on the link above to /etc/grub.d/40_custom/;
- Actually on mine I had to swap root=(hd0,1) to root=(hd0,msdos1). The reason why is: I checked my /boot/grub/grub.cfg and all the boot options used (hd0,msdos1);
- Run “sudo update-grub” (without the “”, of course).

Anyway, I managed to boot Lucid Puppy on my USB flash drive using PLoP boot manager. Puppy asks some questions at the startup and configures everything for you. Wifi was also very easy to setup. The JWM desktop is simple and functional. ROX is the default file manager. It’s kinda awkward at first but you get used to it. As for office applications, Abiword and Gnumeric are the default word and spreadsheet processors, respectively. Several other useful software are installed by default, such as Mplayer, dvd burning software, etc. Dillo is the default browser but you can use another by downloading your favorite browser with the package manager, just update the package list of the repos (it’s very user friendly) and grab what you want. My default browser on Lucid Puppy is FireFox. You can also easily install flash player and java from the package manager. Another handy tool to be downloaded with the package manager is Wine (specially with this portable OS setup, you may have to use this on a Windows 8) Computer). Since Lucid Puppy is compatible with Lucid Lynx Ubuntu, you can get anything available on Lucid Lynx repos and use on your Puppy. Here are some screenshots I took while booting my USB flash drive on my wife’s Netbook.

Default Lucid Puppy desktop screen.

Firefox running on Lucid Puppy.

Firefox + Flash = Youtube video.

All in all Lucid Puppy is great. Tons of software on a light and easy to use interface. ROX file manager needs some "getting used to" though. I'll see if I can switch it to PCmanFM (LXDE default file manager) or Thunar (XFCE default file manager).

For now Puppy is saving the session every half hour (I think) and on shutdown. I’m looking for a way to save sessions only every hour (to reduce the wear on the flash drive) and at shutdown. If somebody knows, please tell me.

PS: Porteus 1.2RC2 has just been released (today, may 7th).

Convinced the wife!

After a few months trying, I managed to convince my wife into swapping that SLOW Windows XP installed on her Netbook for Xubuntu. Her Windows XP install was so slow she had to turn it on 10 minutes before using.

Since she knows nothing of Linux I’m gonna help her the best I can to make her transition to Linux as smooth as possible. She’s used just Windows all her life. Let’s see how that goes. To help her out, I ditched Debian and installed Xubuntu on my sister’s ex-laptop (see post #4), so we could have similar systems and I could better help her in case anything goes wrong. Her Netbook is a Acer Aspire One, 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU with 1GB of RAM. Xubuntu runs well in it and has recognized all of her hardware correctly.

It’s been a few weeks and, for now, she likes it. For the regular user, Xubuntu is fast and does everything Windows does (just with different software), so my wife just needs to learn the new names of the applications, and she’s doing very well for one with no computer background.

Now that there are only Linux systems in my home I can get rid of Samba on my desktop for sharing files and printer. I’ll see how to fix that later.

Waking up the dead laptops and Debian x Arch Linux.

Okay, so Debian testing with XFCE was pretty fast on my desktop. I remembered my sister had a old laptop that she hadn’t used in a while, so I was determined to install Debian on it to see how it would perform. Here are the specs:

- Sempron 1800MHz CPU;
- S3 video card;
- 1GB of RAM (shared with video card).

I told this desire to install Debian on an old laptop to a friend and he said he also had a old laptop and he was considering throwing it away. Here are the specs of his old laptop:

- Sempron 1800MHz CPU;
- Onboard ATI video card;
- 512MB of RAM (shared with video card).

My friends laptop arrived first (I was living far away from my sister) so installed that same minimalistic Debian with XFCE as DE. Indeed it had a respectable performance. The batteries of this old laptop are still good so I ended up getting a free laptop! Just like I posted on my second post, a up-to-date OS on outdated hardware. The install was pretty easy to do, since I had already done it on the desktop. The only particularity was that I also installed the “laptop” package (listed in the install program).

Now I had hardware to spare! I didn’t really needed a laptop, so I could leave my desktop alone and play around on this old lappy! I decided to install yet another distro on my friend’s laptop: Arch Linux. I read a lot about this distro and I wanted to see how it compared to Debian.

Unlike Debian, Arch Linux is a bleeding-edge, rolling release distro. Bleeding-edge because the software available in the repositories are very up-to-date. Rolling release because Arch doesn’t have versions, you don’t download the Arch version X or Y iso, you download a snapshot of Arch and then, after installing everything you need you just keep your system updated by downloading the newer versions of the packages installed in your system, so you just have to install Arch once and then you’re set.

Another two (and very related) characteristics of Arch Linux are: the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) philosophy and the fact that it proclaims itself to be a lightweight distro. Summarizing the KISS philosophy in a single line: the user is the one who should choose what to install and how to maintain his/her system, it’s up to the user to configure his/her system. For example, after installing a CUPS daemon, if you want it to run at startup, you have to manually set it by editing your rc.conf, and adding cupsd to the daemon array. And that’s why Arch is a lightweight distro, the only processes running are the ones you told it to run. Just a side note, on Arch you’ll end up using the terminal more than most distros, you should get comfortable with using the command line.

I read on the web that Arch’s install was a pain and that you had to do a lot of things manually. But I thought: “Okay, it might be a pain, but if this thing works as advertised I should only have to do it once.” Indeed, you have to do a lot of manual editing, but another strength of Arch Linux is that the wiki is very well written, there’s even a install guide for newbies. I didn’t use the guide on the wiki though, I used this one (in Portuguese) instead. So, the install was a “pain” (in the sense that it took me some time to do it, but it was great for the reason below), but there’s a good thing about it, you end up learning a lot about the OS as the install goes, simply because YOU have to do much of the work. If you’re nerdy like me, you’ll like it, but if to you a computer is just a means to an end, then stick with another distro.

The “bad” thing about arch is that you sometimes have to do manual interventions when you update the system. In my experience these are rare though (below you’ll see that I’ve been running Arch for a while). Also, I read on some places on the web about people braking their system after updating. Never happened to me though.

Anyway, I did a minimalistic Arch Linux install with XFCE as DE and as far as I can remember I installed almost the same software comparing to the Debian minimalistic install. Indeed, Arch is faster. I didn’t do any benchmarks (had uninstalled Debian to install Arch) but everything seemed faster. It was the same feeling I had when I swapped Xubuntu for Debian, only that the difference was somewhat smaller (I felt more performance gain on the switch between Xubuntu and Debian than between Debian and Arch). I searched the web and the majority of the pages I found said that the performance between distros would depend only on what you had installed. But there I was, I knew I had installed almost the same packages on those two distros and the performance difference was noticeable. I was decided to test this out, so I used Arch a week or so, trying to time mentally how fast the system felt, that is, how much time applications took to run, boot time, package unpacking and installation time, etc. After a week I formatted the drive (yes, I know, if I had to install Arch again I’d have a lot of work to do) and installed Debian.

Arch indeed seemed faster. Like I said, I have no evidence, only my perception (which to me is a lot!). So, again, I formatted the drive and installed Arch on my friend’s lappy again. To this day, that’s what’s running on that lappy. And after the good experience with Arch on the lappy, I decided to replace Debian with Arch Linux on my desktop. I never looked back and Arch is still my distro of choice. Thanks to it’s install process I have a very good idea about the OS, I know how to configure a lot of stuff and I know what’s running and what’s not.

Around a week later my sister’s lappy arrived and I ended up installing Debian on that as to have a stable system in case Arch broke, like I read on the somewhere on the web. Arch NEVER broke on me (yet, anyway). Below is a (bad) picture of my sister's ex-laptop running Debian.


PS: Another cool aspect of ressurecting these old laptops is that it is the "green" thing to do. What I mean is that these laptops were going to the dump, and maybe they would be polluting the environment. Giving these laptops some extra life I avoided this potential environmental damage and got two free laptops! :)

Debian...

After trying the taste of Linux using Ubuntu/Xubuntu, I decided I was ready to try something new: Debian. For me, at the time, a good thing about Debian was that it also used apt as package manager, the same as Ubuntu (actually, Ubuntu used apt just like Debian, but anyway...) which I was already familiarized.

Debian is already a grandfather distro (Ubuntu was based on Debian and there are distros based on Ubuntu) known for it’s speed and stability. Who doesn’t want a fast and stable system? It seemed perfect. Put that along with XFCE and you’ve got one hell of a system (or so I thought). Another good thing Debian is known for is it’s helpful community (indeed, hey do help a lot, check their forums!). Anyway, I downloaded the first DVD of Debian stable. Debian is divided in 3 branches: stable, testing, unstable.

Debian had a graphical install with some presets. You can choose a regular installation with almost any desktop environment. I installed the default desktop with XFCE as DE. I soon found out why Debian was not perfect: I don’t remember the XFCE version I got on that install, but I can say it was very different from the one I was using on Xubuntu, it was an outdated version. It was indeed faster than Xubuntu, but in order to get the stability Debian is known for, you have forfeit the newer software. Okay, learned my lesson. As for hardware detection, I can’t say much as this setup didn’t even stay running for more than one day.

I did not give up on Debian then. Kept reading about it and decided to do a “minimalistic install” of Debian testing, which has newer software on it’s repositories. Minimalistic because you just install what is absolutely necessary. So I downloaded the netinstall iso of Debian testing, which only installs the base system and after you’re done you only get a command line. You have to download everything else by yourself. I followed these instructions (in Portuguese) I found on the web and ended up with a bare minimal XFCE desktop. I don’t remember the version of XFCE I got but I do remember it was slightly outdated compared to the one I used on Xubuntu. I thought, “okay, I can live with that”. I had a very fast system, not as bloated as Ubuntu/Xubuntu, only running things I had installed myself. I can’t remember if the scanner worked out of the box, but everything else worked. I did have to install CUPS and gutenprint driver to get the printer to work properly.

Then I thought: “if Debian runs so fast like this on this desktop, it would run decently on a old laptop”. But that’s gonna go on the next post.


The Switch!

Now I’m going to tell why and how I switched from using Windows to using just Linux.
Around september of 2011, there I was with a 3 and a half year old Desktop with the following specs:

- Intel dual core 2200 MHz (this was already an old CPU when I bought it in 2008).
- Gigabyte mobo with onboard video and ethernet card;
- 1GB of DDR2-RAM;

I had already installed Windows XP twice on this machine (when I bought it, and then 1,5 years later) and it was slow as hell again (You might have noticed it, fellow Windows user, that after a while your PC becomes really slow. Have you noticed it?). Anyway, the computer was taking 5 to 10 minutes to boot and once it booted, it’d take like 5 more minutes before I could load any application. I was all set to start backing everything up and then to format the hdd (yes, using NTFS file system).

I had used Linux (Mandrake distro) on my old Desktop in 2002 by the time I got into university. Back then I used to game a lot on the PC so after a few months, I stopped using Mandrake since playing new games on Linux was... I don’t know if it was impossible, but it at least needed a lot of tinkering around. Back then I chose Mandrake because it was the “noob distro” at that time. I always liked the philosophy of the Linux system, it is fast, efficient, clean and free!

Anyway, I was ready to start backing everything up when I remembered how Linux was clean, fast and had no viruses, and since I was not gaming on the PC anymore, I might as well try it again. I simply don’t know what triggered my memory but something did. I also remember thinking of why I was using Windows, actually, there was no reason why! I was using Windows just out of inertia! Right there, I think it was around 11pm, I decided I’d give Linux a try again. When I woke up the next day, before I went to work, I googled around for “Linux distro for newbies” and found out about Ubuntu. Before leaving home to work I left my Windows Desktop downloading the Ubuntu 11.04 iso. Before getting home I bought a new hdd (I didn’t want to have to make a backup of my Windows hdd), a cheap video card (nvidia 64-bit 512MB card, I did not need anything fancy) 2GB of DDR2-RAM (it was cheap as hell, so I bought it :P). When I got home, sure enough the Ubuntu iso was already there on my Desktop. I burned the CD, installed the new video card, the extra RAM and the new hdd on my Desktop and installed Ubuntu 11.04 on my new hdd.

The install was smooth and easy. I do have some experience with computers so I don’t know if someone with little experience can easily install Ubuntu (I don’t KNOW but my guess is yes). You just have to answer a few questions and the installation program does the rest. Anyway, I rebooted the system and there I was with a menu (GRUB bootloader) listing 5 or 6 boot options, with the one saying “Windows XP” being the last. I just chose the first one and waited.

I was presented with a login screen (I had defined user name and password during the Ubuntu install). I logged in and that was the first time I saw Unity running. I fell in love with it. It seemed like a perfect interface to me. I played around with it for a few days and on the web all I saw was people complaining and saying how much it sucked. Bear in mind that I was using Windows XP for last few years and a slow one for the last year. Unity was perfection. It seemed fast and I could find what I wanted very quickly (thanks to Zeitgeist and the Unity dash). I was also amazed how fast Linux booted, went through pdf files and how fast applications started. Also, Ubuntu detected almost of all my hardware automatically. The only thing that wasn’t working by the time I booted into Ubuntu was the scanner. I did find the solution of how to get the scanner of my Epson Stylus CX5600 working in 5 minutes, and it took me 10 minutes to get it solved. It was a surprise to me how easy it was to get hardware working, since when I used Mandrake a few years ago, I had to do some tinkering to get some stuff to work.

I played around with Ubuntu, exploring the “Ubuntu Software Center” and reading about the Linux kernel, different distros, different desktop environments and window managers, how to use the command line, etc. After a week I had learned about apt-get and was not using the GUI (“Ubuntu Software Center”) anymore, I installed and uninstalled applications and updated the system using the command line:

sudo apt-get update;
sudo apt-get upgrade;
sudo apt-cache search <application/package>;
sudo apt-get install <application/package>;
sudo apt-get purge <application/package>.

It was much easier and faster than using the GUI. Now I was infected! I had to learn more! Speaking of infected and viruses, I was also thrilled by not needing a AV application, no more nasty viruses lurking around.

After two weeks of using Unity, I decided to test other desktop environment I read about: Gnome. I remember using it from the days I used Mandrake but I honestly couldn’t remember much more. So I installed Gnome and played around with it as well. Found it to be way more of liking, very customizable and it felt faster than Unity. Gnome was perfection (yes, I know I just said that Unity was perfection, but Gnome was “more perfect” than Unity :P). I was thrilled by the fact that there was something better than Unity. I remember thinking, “if there’s something better than Unity, there may be something better than Gnome”. And I found it: XFCE. And how easy it was to put a XFCE interface on my Ubuntu system:

sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop

XFCE did everything Gnome did but it was lighter, leaving more RAM for the applications. It was uglier than Gnome and Unity though, but I didn’t care, I was amazed by how fast Linux ran and I wanted a even faster system. Up to now XFCE still is my favorite desktop environment. To me it’s the perfect compromise between ease of use/configuration and resources needed between all DE/WM I tried (Haven’t tried all DEs/WMs yet, there are too many!). With XFCE my 3 and a half year old desktop with a VERY outdated hardware was as fast as lighting.

After a few weeks fiddling around with my “Ubuntu turned Xubuntu" setup, I logged in my Windows XP setup again just to see if the new hardware would make any difference on the OS performance. Turns out it didn’t. The additional 2 GB of RAM didn’t make any difference. I still have this NTFS formatted hdd with Windows XP on my Desktop, but I have not logged in it for a while, I’ve been using just Linux ever since. Besides, on my Linux system I can still access and use the files and applications (using Wine) on my NTFS formatted hdd.

The only trouble I remember facing during my Ubuntu/Xubuntu days was setting up Samba to share my printer and hdd for my wife to access from her Windows XP netbook. It took me a few days to get a smb.conf that worked the way I wanted. I tried several files and interfaces (like SWAT) and can’t remember where I found the one that worked. But I did find it in the end. I did learn a lot while I was solving this. That’s a great thing about Linux, if you don’t want to be “just a user” you can get to know the inner workings of the OS, something you can’t do on Windows. Windows kinda dumbs up everything for you.

All in all, I used Ubuntu/Xubuntu for nearly two months (I think, but I’m not sure). I read a lot about the Linux world during this time and decided I’d try a “faster” distro, known to be more stable and has been around the Linux scene for years: Debian.

PS: In case you’re wondering, I still use this now 4 year old desktop as my main computer. Considering how fast Linux runs, I see no need to upgrade. In other words, I have a up-to-date OS on a old hardware.

Sunday, May 6, 2012

Introduction

Hello, all.

Since I did not tip anyone about this blog, you probably found this googling around, and since you do not know me, I might as well introduce myself. I’m a 28 year old Brazilian electric engineer, married and I have no kids as of yet. On this first post I’m going try to sum up what this blog is about. Around 8 months ago I dropped my Windows setup and started using Linux (the second post will tell this story with a bit more detail...) and I’ve been happier using a computer than ever before. What I’m primarily going to try to do on this blog is:

Post all my past, present and future experiences as a new Linux user and consequently try to help other Linux newbies and, who knows, maybe help some windows users to switch to Linux too. It’ll also help me to keep all my impressions and solutions to any Linux related problems documented. I’ll try to post as much details as I can (or remember).

Secondarily:

a) Since besides Linux I have other hobbies like reading, science (specially cosmology and biological evolution) and gaming on the Wii, etc, I might post about those too;

b) Although the official language in Brazil is Portuguese, I’m writing in English because I stopped studying it a few years ago and I thought that blogging would be a good way of practicing. Fellow Brazilians who do not speak/read/write English, I’m terribly sorry, but I’m not going to translate this blog to Portuguese.

On the first few posts I’ll try to describe how I started and the journey to where I’m at (concerning Linux, that is). I wish I had the idea of the blog sooner, as I can’t remember all the difficult and “easy” moments I experienced. I also have no screenshots to post from my past Linux experiences. I’ll try to do the best I can though.

Well, that’s it for the first post. On the next one, I’ll try to tell the story of why I ditched Windows and started using Linux in the first place.