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Exploring Linux - Part 1
by Alan German
Members may
have noted my recent interest in all things open-source.
So, from the title of this article, it might be tempting
to assume that I am now documenting my switch away from
the big-W and a move completely into the Linux camp.
Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I'm not that brave
at least - not yet, I'm not!
But, I have always had a hankering to take a serious look
at Linux. Unfortunately, I missed the club meeting where
members of the Ottawa Canada Linux Users Group provided
their demo. The good news is that one of our
always-friendly OPCUG members provided me with a copy of
the Ubuntu distro (a Linux distribution disk - see, I'm
already into the Linux jargon!) that was handed out at
the meeting, and so I thought I should start by giving
this a shot.
If you have one of those red and grey cardboard folders,
and have opened it up, you will have noted that there are
two CD's inside. The text on the left side of the inside
cover tells you that: The default installation will
erase existing software and data from your
computer. OK hands up how many of you
closed the folder and put it on a shelf somewhere to get
dusty? Big mistake! You should have read the text on the
right side of the cover that talked about the Live
CD. [In fact, you should have read the left-side
text a little further and taken note that, while the
default installation can delete everything,
there is also a manual installation process that avoids
such dire consequences but, that's a story for
Part 2 of this article.]
I cant believe that its so incredibly simple
to install and run a powerful operating system, together
with a fully-featured set of applications programs. The
Linux-Live CD's (the Ubuntu distro is only one such
beast) are marvels of technology. Essentially they are
boot disks that load the Linux operating system into the
memory of your machine, and provide a wide range of
system tools and applications that run directly from the
CD, so that you can try many of the features of Linux on
a temporary basis.
The process is simplicity itself. Put the live CD into
the drive and turn the machine on. A prompt indicates
that you should press Enter to boot the machine. Linux
shows its command line roots with dozens of lines of
information scrolling down the screen, as various
processes load and work their magic. In reasonably short
order, the strings of text give way to three prompt
screens that ask you to specify the language you would
like to use English, your location (country)
Canada, and a keyboard layout American
English. Now sit back and watch as the installer detects
the available hardware, loads additional modules, and
configures various options, preparing for the upcoming
live session.
After a couple of minutes (depending on the speediness of
your system) a screen opens with a graphical user
interface (GUI) featuring an almost blank desktop, an
icon for the CD-ROM, and menu-type bars across both the
top and the bottom. The top menu is especially
interesting as it has options for
Applications and System, plus an
icon in the shape of a lifebelt that suggests Help.
Hovering the mouse over the latter brings up a Get
Help with Gnome message so it is evident that we
are now using the Gnome GUI.
For me, the applications' menu proved to be staggering.
The Ubuntu distribution provides access to loads of
games, graphics packages, Internet applications, an
Office suite, multimedia programs, and a host of system
tools. The raft of available games includes the
ubiquitous Solitaire, Minesweeper and Mahjongg, plus
programs I have never heard of. The Graphics tab provides
access to GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program), a couple
of image viewers, a postscript file viewer and a scanning
program. Internet applications include the Firefox web
browser, mailer and chat clients. All the programs in the
OpenOffice.org 1.1 suite of applications are listed under
the Office tab. So, a special bonus is that you can run
OpenOffice Writer, Calc and Impress right from the Live
CD. If you want to play a music CD, run a DVD movie, rip
or record some sound files, or control various aspects of
sound reproduction, check out the selections under the
Sound and Video tab. So, you can see that, not only can
you very readily try Linux, you can also run many useful
applications directly from the CD.
Ubuntu desktop and apps
I have to
say that, at present, I find Linuxs file system a
bit of a mystery (but I havent spent any time
trying to find out how it works.) Under Applications
System Tools, you will find File Browser which is
a Windows' Explorer-like tool. However, it wasnt
immediately obvious how (or even if) I could access my
machines hard drive from the temporary boot setup.
But, one extremely useful feature became apparent when I
plugged in my USB key. A 262M Removable Media
disk icon appeared on the desktop, and a
usbdisk window opened up displaying the file
structure of the key.
The reason for finding a writable disk was that I wanted
to capture a screen shot of the desktop (so that you too
can marvel at the Windows-like qualities of Gnome, the
powerful applications, and the neat games that Ubuntu
provides.) I tried running GIMP to see if it had a screen
capture facility, which indeed it does. It was when I
tried to save the resulting file that I ran into the
problem of where to actually store it. But, while I was
searching through menus, looking for a familiar disk, I
also came across System Take screenshot.
Evidently, Ubuntu Linux has this feature built-in. And,
so it is, that you get to share with me the wonders of
Mahjongg running under Linux from a CD-ROM!
The final thing you need to know is how to shut the
computer down. Not too hard to guess. System Log
Out Shut down OK does the trick very
nicely. A few more scrolling lines showing the system
stopping modules, terminating and killing processes, and
everything comes to a graceful halt and, next time, your
machine boots back into your familiar Windows
environment.
Another famous Linux-Live distro is the Knoppix Linux
Live CD, available for downloading from http://www.knoppix.org/ through links to a number of
mirror sites. However, be aware that the download is over
700 MB. Downloading the image and burning it to a CD-ROM
gives you the live CD which works pretty well the same as
described above.
The command lines displayed on boot-up are multi-coloured
(some would say gaudily so). On my machine, the resulting
desktop ran in a moderately-sized window,
which I couldnt expand by dragging a corner, as
opposed to Ubuntu which ran in full-screen mode. The
Knoppix desktop has more stuff visible, including a
Konqueror window, a sort of web/file browser, offering
instant help. Knoppix uses the KDE interface in which the
main menu/task bar is at the bottom of the screen. This
includes a number of icons linking directly to things
like Firefox and OpenOffice. The screen shot shows
OpenOffice Writer and Calc windows, and GIMP's main
window, open on the desktop. Note the multiple drive
icons down the left side of the screen. These have names
like Hard Disk Partition [hda1] (which is actually the C:
drive).
This distro seems to offer even more applications that
Ubuntu. The Windows Start item on the task
bar is replaced by a capital K (for Knoppix or KDE?)
which leads to many menus and sub-menus. Several text
editors, including Emacs and Xedit, are included on the
Editors tab; the Multimedia tab includes Audacity
(a sound editor), and the Graphics tab once again
includes GIMP. But, in this case, the latter program
isnt pre-loaded; it requires installation.
Knoppix desktop and apps
For this
article, under Knoppix, I used GIMP to capture the screen
shot and save it as a JPG file. Whatever GIMP needs in
terms of installation is done in seconds and the program
is ready for use. Capturing the screenshot was easy
File Acquire Screen Shot - Full
Screen - Grab. However, now I needed to save the image as
a JPG. Remember all those hard drive icons? It turns out
that, under this Live-Linux regime, most of these are
write protected. And, inserting my USB key didn't pop up
any windows, so I was initially unable to locate a
permanent storage location for my image file.
A little searching on Google suggested that I should try
inserting the USB key before booting into Knoppix and,
sure enough, once I did this, a viable option to save the
file became available. The USB key is hidden
from mere mortals as Hard Disc (uba) [/mnt/uba]. But, it
isn't too hard to guess that uba, being different from
hda, must be a different sort of hard disc.
And, indeed, running Konqueror provided a display of the
familiar file structure of my USB key.
Saving the screen shot was then simply a matter of using
GIMP's Save-to-desktop option and then copying the file
to the uba disk in Konqueror. There is no doubt a much
more efficient way to do all of the above but, hey, I'm
just learning my way around Linux! The good news is that,
if you want to run applications from the Linux-Live CD,
there are ways to save files generated so that they can
be used elsewhere later i.e. in a Windows-based
image manager, a word processor, or a spreadsheet
program.
So, don't be timid. Trying Linux using one of these live
CD's is a piece of cake. If you like games, there are
lots available on the CD. It's even possible to use some
of the Linux applications, such as the various modules of
OpenOffice.org, to produce useful output files. Insert
the CD into the tray, switch on your computer, and
enjoy...
Bottom Line:
Ubuntu Linux for human beings (Open-source software)
Version 5.04 for Intel x86
http://www.ubuntu.com
To request free Ubuntu CD's, visit https://shipit.ubuntu.com/
Current Version: Ubuntu 5.10
KNOPPIX (Open-source software)
Version 3.8.2-2005-05-05
http://www.knoppix.com
Current Version: V4.0.2-2005-09-23
Originally published: May, 2006
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