I was spending the last bit of my vacations with my parents at home. In the afternoon i sat down on his laptop, opened Firefox and saw a suspicious 3rd party toolbar and addon (something to do with browser history) When i asked him if he knew exactly what that was doing, he replied No. Enraged i scolded them for being careless. Then i scolded them for using Windows. Lol. My mum does a lot of online banking and manages her stocks and funds from home. Considering that i told them they should be extra safe and that they should run a ‘safe’ Operating System. So i decided to end the reign of Windows Vista (eurgh) on his laptop (a Compaq F733AU). Since i was not carrying my Linux CDs (i usually carry a stock) i thought of going out an buying the latest copy of LinuxForYou and since they almost always include a Linux distro. Sadly, I could not find it at the bookstore in Chennai at that time. Surprising since a lot of Open Source activities take place here. Next choice was PC World. In the August issue was included PCLinuxOS 2009.2. Since they claim to be the simplest OS i thought of installing PCLOS first.
- Day 1 : PCLinuxOS 2009.2
Claimed to be the closest-to-windows Linux distro, PCLinuxOS is quite a popular Linux distribution. Its built on Mandriva Linux with RPM(apt) as its pacakge manager. It comes with a good range of softwares pre-installed. Multimedia codecs, Flash are amongst the packages included to give runs-out-of-the-box use. However open-office is missing, installable just one click away. With KDE 3.5 as its default; it prefers to stick to the older version of KDE-perhaps new users find KDE 4 intimidating. Installation was not very smooth though. The partitioner was very ambiguous about which partition it has selected. I selected a spare windows partition and asked it to delete. On hitting delete nothing happend. So i hit delete twice. Still nothing. After some hunting i finally manged to delete the partition. Selected / to be formatted as the new ext4. Clicked next.Error: Could not mount the partition /(Not exact words). Quit insaller, started again. This time in the partitioner i selected – Use existing partitions. I thought it would automatically detect the existing Liunux partition and install on that. It understood as : Delete D and C drive. WTF! It swiftly deleted both partitions before i could do anything. Oh bugger! With no OS left i installed Linux with a heavy heart. (Of course at this time my dad was busy admiring his son hard at work on the laptop drinking tea
) So the first thing i googled after installing the OS ( Oh after that the installer was smooth – already having done the damage! These Linux developers really hate windows!) on how to recover lost partitions. Popular links suggested Test Disk. I ran a preliminary check to see if its already installed on the system. It was! and After installing this distro i was pretty happy. Using it for about 2 hours it seemed to fade away the transition-gap between windows and linux. Firefox ran fast with all codes and java support. - Day 2: PCLinuxOS 2009.2 Still running smoothly I thought i had found the perfect newbiee Linux Linux OS. Another day where linux Just works!
- Day 3: PCLinuxOS 2009.2 3rd day is a bug! The PCLinuxOS dream crashed. Firefox was acting strange. PDF files even though associated with KPDF in Konqueror kept opening in GIMP when double clicked from the Downloads section of Firefox. After a lot of googling and repeated instructions to Fx to open PDF in XPDF i gave up. And suddenly more problems came to light. They were all there, we just never noticed it. KDE 3.5 is painful at doing simple tasks. Just simply the fact the Konqueror wants to open all files inline was getting on my nerves. Fx crashed thrice that day. The PCLinuxOS 2009 dream had crashed. It was time to get rid of it.
- Day 4: openSUSE 11:
A quick test on www.zegeniestudios.com reveled i should try this popular Linux distro. I had a live CD iso file lying on my external harddrive so i went ahead and put it on a USB stick(instead of wasting a CD) using UNetbootin. However openSUSE handles live ISO differently. Spent 10 minutes figuring out how and why. Googling revealed this : http://en.opensuse.org/Live_USB_stick
Sadly it required a pre-existing openSUSE installed. Sad. I thought i should be able to tweak the pre existing ISO dump on the USB stick to make it boot. Yes there was a way! Thanks to this link on a blog i managed to tweak some files and boot the Live CD. Once in it i manged to start install. Install blazed through rapidly and i had a installed Linux distro ready. The first thing i did was of course make a backup of the ‘D Drive’ which contained all the important files. Also put all recovered images and files in the external harddrive. Next hurdle was the Nvidia drivers. While openSUSE offers a magical one-click install system it doesnt work all the time. So when i installed the restricted Nvidia modules X crashed on rebooting. Struggled for some more time to get the resolution right. Removed resintalled and removed again. Tried some more futile attempts but nothing worked out. Several hours later it worked, magically! Well once that was done, i started installing the multimedia codecs. Took me a while to figure out how to do that. Being a 2year Ubuntu user i was little confused. Something didnt feel right. You know how they say that the person who really loves you knows exactly how to make things right? Who says that, Uhm People do, People say it! Well so when i would not take my girlfriend;s call and talk garbage (Xorgs and Kernels) while talking to her, she mailed me a copy of Ubuntu 9.04 Live Disc. Lifesaver she is i tell ya! - Day 5: Ubuntu 9.04!
I dont know why didnt i do this before. I took all of 10minutes to get this bad boy installed on the laptop and another 5 to get the resolution right and codes installed. In 1 hour this OS was merrily running with perfection. With a rich creamy blend of brown and red, Ubuntu is my perfect Operating System. I wish all Ubuntu developers good luck with the 100 papercuts drive and I will contribute to my best extent.
I try a new linux distro only to end up with Ubuntu again, it just works. Have to keep XP for the projects though.
I have been using Ubuntu ever since I first used it. Previously, I had Fedora. Never enjoyed working on it as much as Ubuntu.
Yeah and the best thing about Ubuntu is the strong community support it has. You have people using other distros coming to ubuntuforums.org and asking questions and then trying a parallel solution! And Launchpad is fabulous for catching bugs. With a widespread commmunity even the rarest bugs are found and active development means its fixed asap. Hail ubuntu !
After years of distro hoping I now have my perfect distro – Arch linux – Its faster than any other (except a good gentoo installation),
Check the benchmarks (compared with ubuntu) here – http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=arch_200908_benchmarks&num=1
Arch isn’t as user friendly as ubuntu, but when you get the hang of it you realise that it is an easy system to update.
With arch there are no versions, just constant upgrades, and you usually get new packages the day they are realised , i.e – I saw a day ago that KDE 4.3.1 was released, I checked my updates with pacman and sure enough it was already in the stable repos.
I use ubuntu on my work desktop though.
I have been using PCLinuxOS for a couple of years as my main home OS without issue. I switched from MEPIS a couple of years ago because PCLOS saw my wireless card without too much fuss.
I have two laptops, one dual-boot XP/PCLOS and one dual-boot Vista64/PCLOS. Never really had any installation issues. I also run a server with BEL (which is a deriviative of PCLOS) and find it to be quick and quite stable.
I have used Ubuntu, and give away copies to newbs frequently, but I just didn’t find it intuitive for the way that I work (plus I don’t really like Gnome…and yes…I’ve tried KUBUNTU).
Regardless of your choice of distro…it is good that you have introduced it to others who might not have been aware of it :^)
I was very excited to Arch too, but it would not boot from the PenDrive. It gave an error. I shall try it again sometime, since Ubuntu can be slow on a netbook (Asus 1000HE, the one i use) I have heard some really good things about arch. But it is no where near a “Newbie OS”. But thats the beauty of Linux. Its one thing metamorphosed into anything you want it to be! Server, Jukebox, Maya developing OS , heck there is even a Hanna Montanna distro ! And with choice, you have true freedom to choose what you want and use it to your liking and exploit the best of of it. I think that, to me is Linux’s true strength.
Igor, Thank you. Oh also , i hate KDE !! Haha
[...] Hunt for the perfect Operating System I took all of 10minutes to get this bad boy installed on the laptop and another 5 to get the resolution right and codes installed. In 1 hour this OS was merrily running with perfection. With a rich creamy blend of brown and red, Ubuntu is my perfect Operating System. [...]
Ummm… Did you bother asking your parents what THEY wanted?
Why not just reinstall Vista, update it and let them use Firefox?
I like Ubuntu and my mom used it for years til I gave her on a 1Ghz machine til I gave her a Mac Mini and she likes it better, mostly only because its faster.
I just don’t understand zealous Linux advocates who insist on forcing their preferences on others.
[...] included OpenSUSE. A person who had attempted to install OpenSUSE on the long road to Ubuntu wrote the following: Day 4: openSUSE 11: A quick test on http://www.zegeniestudios.com reveled i should try this popular [...]
Actually I did. I laid down the choices in front of them,
1. Windows – familiar, not very secure and causes PC to slow down/hang etc. Also dont have the Vista CD anymore so its expensive.
2. Os X – Uhm, cant install , needs a Mac System (More expensive)
3. Linux – Free, Not familiar, Easy to use, Very secure, Stable.
I dont understand why people think Linux users are pompous over-zealous aggressive people. We are warm cuddly people.
Dear Aman,
We are extremely sorry that you couldn’t find a copy of LINUX For You Magazine in Chennai. Could you please be a bit more specific about the location so that you don’t get disappointed next time around?
Regards,
Sayantan Pal
LinuxForU.com Admin
Sayantan,
Wow, thanks for reading this post. I was in Besant Nagar,Chennai. He was over with the stock (thats what he said).
I stopped reading after I saw that completely lacked to give any explanation why you wanted them to change OS, when you initially got mad about toolbars?
For christ sake, give your parents the possibility to actually use their computer for something useful, rather than being bothered with Linux. Install Win7. It’s fast, stabile, secure and very self descriptive. Not something linux has ever had to offer. “Linux is only free, if your sparetime has no value.”
For me, the best operating system is Linux because it rarely hangs.::~
@Sune: They called me each time windows locked up and refused to boot up properly. Aslo my mohter had an idea about linux and she was always afraid of keyloggers since she used the laptop for internet banking. Windows 7 may be faster and more secure , but surely not simpler. Def not easier. Simple operations take more steps. Also they found vista complicated too.
Linux is still the best when it comes to stability and Windows for ergonomics,,*
Not exactly, windows is best when it comes to software support and again it not the operating system thats the reason but simply because we have much more developers getting paid to develop for windows.
there are many different operating systems but of course i would still prefer to use linux for stability *”
I do consider all of the ideas you’ve presented in your post. They are really convincing and can certainly work. Nonetheless, the posts are very short for starters. May just you please prolong them a little from subsequent time? Thanks for the post.