Look closely at the product this review is for: Ubuntu 7.04

Tags: ubuntu, humor

I was recently reading this artcle [lockergnome.org] and this article really annoyed me as I am a rather large supporter or open source, free software, and of course Linux. Linux is still of course behind Windows and OS X, but over the past couple years, it has truly become a viable operating system for the desktop and even the laptop.

My main complaint about this is that it's filled with all these half-truths.

It first starts off complaining about application compatibility with Linux. The truth of the matter is that many applications have a very good open-source alternative. And if you ABSOLUTELY need to run a Windows-only piece of software, wine does a decent job of running most pieces of software. Yes, there are some truths in compatibility problems, but the author of this article over-exaggerates the problems to the point where he makes it sound like EVERY piece of software can't be run under wine. I would've really chewed him a new hole if he complained about Microsoft Office not working on wine with OpenOffice gaining stock value in my eyes.

The second thing he complains about is the command line. Yes, Linux is still heavily based on the command line, but at the same time, more and more tasks can be easily done without even opening a terminal. GUIs and point and click functionality has been increasing in Linux distros to make configuration tasks simpler for the novice user to understand and use, and for the more advanced user, the terminal actions aren't removed, just hidden underneath the surface.

He talks about hardware support and lack of official vendor Linux drivers. Hello? Linux has such a great community that many produce great drivers for multitudes of old and new hardware that may very well end up being better than anything the companies could produce themselves. I myself have had very few hardware problems on any of my computers running Linux, most of the time, all hardware was found and installed just fine under Linux.

DRM. One word that pisses off many upon many a tech user. Yes, sometimes Linux has problems reading DRM'ed content, but so do Windows and even OS X. Problems with DRM are the root of an inherent flaw associated with DRM, and one of several reasons why I hate DRM. Saying Linux doesn't work with DRM is like saying Windows Vista doesn't work with my Pentium 2 processor, its absurd because DRM may not work period, with ANY operating system.

He complains about the saying "Ubuntu just works". I can partially agree with him on this one as Ubuntu may or may not work out of the box. But I will say that he again overexaggerated his point. With the exception of my latest desktop, EVERY computer I've tried to install Ubuntu on has worked right out of the box, with the only thing needing to be done is to install the official nVidia drivers which just took a couple mouse clicks. In fact, Ubuntu recognized all my hardware, whereas Windows XP and Vista needed at least a half-dozen drivers to be installed separately. I was even able to get Ubuntu running on my old Dell Inspiron 4000, wireless and all. My latest desktop does show that sometimes there are hiccups, but at the same time, all problems I had with it were solved with Ubuntu 8.04.

Making the switch to Linux is not something that one can expect to do in an hour, but it does not take months to set up either. In maybe a couple of days, I think even a new user could learn his way around. I would reccommend it to anyone, but at the same time, pushing it on someone is not the best way to spread Linux. If you do want to help someone switch to Linux, make sure you help them as best you can, but also let them do things on their own, that's how people learn, from hands on learning and experimenting.

DISCLAIMER: I'm not trying to bash Microsoft or any other operating system for that matter, I just think that articles that spread these half-truths aren't helping anyone or anything.

Tags: opensource, linux, ubuntu

It's been a busy week for me, busy with work and doing internationalization support. It's challenging, although a little annoying that every solution continues to breed new problems, although things are looking much better now, so hopefully that will maybe speed things up a little come next week.

I had a barbeque tonight, burgers came out well, but I got a lot left over...cheeseburgers all week!

I think one of my projects for tomorrow and Monday is going to be a SLIGHT overhaul of my server. I think I'm going to switch over to Ubuntu 8.04 64 bit. I've had good experiences with 64 bit Linux, unfortunately there were a few applications that gave me issues under 64 bit, most notably, flash. Well since its my server, that is a non-issue as I don't need flash to work as I'm not using it to watch the latest YouTube videos, I'm simply just using it to host files, and serve as a web and database server amongst other things. Such is the beauty of Linux, all my data will be safe as I just need to go over the system drive. Yes Windows can do it too, but I always found it to be simpler under Linux.

So far I like where my new project is going, not gonna say much more than that, but when its closer to being finished, I think it will be pretty nice.

Happy Day of the Jedi!

Tags: ubuntu, linux, server, bbq

So many people can get caught up in the operating system war that they may forget that multiple operating systems can coexist side by side. Many times people are so pro-Windows, or so pro-Linux, or even pro-Mac that they believe that their operating system has to be the end-all winner in the computer world.

Ubuntu just 2 weeks ago released their first version of 2008, Ubuntu 8.04 keyed Hardy Heron. I now have it installed as the primary and only operating system on my file server and have it set up for dual booting on my desktop along with Windows Vista. So far I have nothing but kind words to say about it as it has run very smoothly for me. In fact, it's the first version of Ubuntu that installed properly and just worked on my new Desktop hardware that I got back in December for Christmas.

My server since switching over to Linux from Windows has only ever really used Ubuntu starting out with 6.06 and then 7.10 and now 8.04. For me, it is stable, efficient, fast, and properly integrates with my entire home network pretty much flawlessly. It is the only operating system to date that I've worked with that can reach 30 days of uptime without a restart and still work without hiccups. I've even got it up to 100 days before and it probably would've lasted longer had my hard drive not died and my need to get into the box. And now that whatever issue my desktop was having with Ubuntu 7.04 and 7.10, has been fixed in 8.04 so it now "just works" on my desktop too. In fact, as I've said earlier, if it wasn't for games, I'd be booted into Linux a lot more than I am now.

This gets me to my point, Ubuntu, whether you like it or not has catapaulted Linux into somewhat of a mainstream operating system. Yes, it will probably never get ahead of Windows, and with how Mac OS X is growing, it will probably stay behind Apple as well, but does it really matter what percentage of the market share Linux gets?

Open source advocates and the Linux fanboys would say that it does, they tend to want Linux to win completely. They want to see Microsoft pretty much rot in hell. They end up so caught up in things that they fail to see that both Windows and Linux can coexist. And what would these fanboys say to those who want to play the latest and greatest computer games? Yes there is Cedega and Wine, both of which can do pretty decent jobs at running a lot of Windows games, but not all. And to get some of them to work can require a significant amount of tweaking and careful configuration that some users may not have time to do, or simply may not be saavy enough to do.

While I would love to see Linux gain market share, I realize at the same time, that at this point in the game, Linux can be very tricky for many to use. Yes, Ubuntu makes the setup and installation quite simple that a lot of people could have success in doing it, but what about trickier issues that may arise? For the most part, I have had a good deal of success with driver support out of the box for my hardware, but what about those that may have some hardware that doesn't have proper driver support? The "easy" to set up, just got a lot trickier, even on Ubuntu. Sure, the Linux gurus and even those with only moderate experience would probably be able to solve those issues, but what about the "even you mother could use it" crowd? And this is where Linux still has its pitfalls, on the surface, Ubuntu is very easy and very smooth, and a lot of people may never have to get into the nitty gritty of the operating system. Even most configuration will work fine using the GUIs that now exist. But not everything goes that smoothly which is what can make Linux tricky.

Ubuntu and Linux in general need to be able to improve upon its base and allow for those trickier situations to be handled in a more "ease-of-use" manner so that more of the general users can figure it out. Linux has a good group of followers and many I've found when going to message boards and forums for support to be very friendly and helpful to help me solve the problem, but not everyone wants to have to go there because a lot of solutions can require some heavy terminal useage that may scare the non-geek crowd.

In the end, as much as I hate to say it, Linux is not for everyone, at least not yet. It is becoming a better alternative to Windows than it was say 5 years ago, but it is still not completely ready for mainstream useage yet. Us Linux fans can only hope that it steadily improves, where maybe one day, it will truly become a viable alternative to the ever-prominent Windows operating system.

Tags: thoughts, linux, opensource, windows, ubuntu

Computers are starting to get cheaper nowadays and many people are upgrading, and getting new computers leaving them with older desktops that either are just thrown out or left sitting around collecting dust. One use for these computers is to run as a home server for the family or the individual. Servers don't need to have the latest hardware so that makes the older computers the perfect candidate to be turned into a server. Servers have a whole range of possible functionalities, the most popular for home use being a file server where all can share their files in a central location. All a server really needs is some hard drive space and a network card (along with functional components, but for this, I'll assume that the computer works). I would recommend at least 100GB of hard drive space, the more, the better, but 100GB should do for starters.

The first choice is what operating system will it run. If you're more comfortable with Windows and the desktop will run XP, you can go with that. The other choice is Linux, which as I've stated before has become significantly more easy to use, and in my opinion Ubuntu is the perfect candidate for this. Linux does have a slight learning curve, but its nothing that can't be overcome with some time and effort, so if you're willing to try it, Linux makes a perfect candidate to run as a server. I chose Ubuntu to set as the Linux distribution for this tutorial. Windows 2000 can also be used, but I would strongly recommend Ubuntu over Windows 2000. And if you're worried that if you host a file server under Linux, Windows and OS X won't recognize it, worry no longer, the shares will be accessible for all operating systems.

Ubuntu Linux 7.10

Ubuntu Linux 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon is Ubuntu's latest version of their popular Linux Distribution and it's a pretty good one. The first thing you want to do is go to http://www.ubuntu.com and download the i386 desktop CD. I'd say the server version but I want to gear this tutorial to a basic user so it'd be a help for them to have a graphical desktop to help them out. Once you finish downloading the .iso file, burn the image to a CD using your CD burning software such as Nero or Roxio.

Okay, now you have your CD burned so insert it into your CD drive and boot your computer up from the CD. At the initial menu, choose the option to Install Ubuntu. This will actually start Ubuntu as a live CD which means that you will be able to see basically how your system will look when its all finished. Keep in mind though that any changes you make won't be saved at this time. When you're ready, you should see an icon on the left of your desktop that says "Install". Double click on that to bring up the installer. Follow the prompts and choose the selections until you get to the partitioning menu. Make sure to note what you named the computer in the Hostname field.

I don't have any real way to actually get screen shots for you easily so here's a link that will help with the entire setup, including partitioning. http://psychocats.net/ubuntu/installing

My personal recommendation is that you set aside double the amount of RAM you have (so if you have 512MB of RAM, use 1GB) for your swap partition, give 10-20GB for the root (/) partition and then use the rest for data storage. You have to choose a name for the mount point which must begin with the forward slash (/). I mount my drives as '/data1', '/data2', etc but you can choose whatever names you'd like. The swap partition should be formatted as 'swap' and the others are probably best formatted as 'ext3'. After this just follow the prompts and let the system install.

Ok, I'm now going to assume that the system is all installed, you rebooted and are now looking at your brand new Ubuntu desktop. The first thing you're going to want to do is to get the file share tool up and running. To do this, open up your terminal and type in the following

sudo apt-get install samba smbfs

It's going to prompt you for your password. That command will download and install Samba and the Samba file system. The next thing you will need to do is set up the shares. Now is the time when you have to decide how you want to arrange your files and shares. You can share multiple folders so don't worry about trying to fit all the folders and files into one folder if you want to organize it differently. If you open up your home folder, and then click on Filesystem, you can then navigate to where you mounted your data partition during the install. you can create folders in here for the directories you want to share, just remember what the locations are.

The next part we're going to do the old fashioned way because I've always had more success this way so bear with me. The way I configure my shares is through the configuration file. It may sound difficult, but its actually not terribly difficult so bear with me. The first thing we want to do is to set up a samba user account. This is necessary for other computers to be able to connect as it sets up the credentials.

First navigate to samba's directory. Open up a terminal window and type:

cd /etc/samba

when there type the following command to add a user to the list:

sudo smbpasswd -a username

The first thing its probably going to ask for is your password for the server itself. The next two prompts will be for you to enter the samba user's password and then to re-enter for confirmation. After that is done, the user is all set up and you're ready to go set up the shares themselves.

In the same folder you're in now, you should see an 'smb.conf' file. This is the file you need to edit to add the shares. The first thing you should do is create a backup of it just in case something goes wrong, so run this command:

sudo cp smb.conf smb.conf.backup

This will create a backup file called 'smb.conf.backup' in the same directory should something go awry.

Ok, now lets get into the actual configuration. Type in the command:

sudo gedit smb.conf

This will bring up a text editor to edit the file in. scroll all the way to the bottom of the file. This is where you're going to put the shares. It's important to know that each share will follow the following template:

[share name]
path = /path/to/share (the directory of the share)
comment = enter comment here (not neccessary but helpful)
writeable = yes/no
browseable = yes
guest ok = no

One more comment, on the writeable section, you want to put yes if you want users to be able to write to the share (aka delete, move, copy files to). If all you want is just for a read-only share, then by all means put no instead.

So now lets show an actual example. Lets say I want to share a family pictures folder with other computers in the house. I want people to be able to copy their photos into the share and be able to view the pictures. Let's also say that I created a directory /data1/photos to store the pictures. Here is how I would add the entry into the smb.conf file

[photos]
path = /data1/photos
comment = Family Photos
writeable = yes
browseable = yes
guest ok = no

That's it, not too hard at all, right? You can add all the shares you need to just make sure to put the share name in [ ] brackets to separate them.

After you're done with that save the file and close the text editor. You should be brought back to the terminal window. There's one last thing you need to do in order for it to work. You need to restart the samba server for the changes to take place. To do so, just type the following command:

sudo /etc/init.d/samba restart

It will tell you that the samba service is stopping and then starting back up. Once you get to a prompt, thats it, the shares are all set, so go ahead and give it a try.

In windows, go to Start - Run and type in:

\\servername\share

Where servername is the computer's name or hostname, which you set during the install process. So for my photo share if I named my server "Darker" then I would enter:

\\darker\photos

This should then ask you for a username and password (the one you set up using the smbpasswd command earlier), or if your windows username and password are the same as the samba username and password you set, then it should just bring up an explorer window with your share. In Windows, you have the option of mapping shares to drives so a share would be given an actual drive letter like a hard drive and DVD drive are given. To do this, right click on My Computer and select 'Map Network Drive'. The following dialog box should come up.

The first field will let you choose which drive letter to assign it to, it doesn't matter so pick one. (it won't let you choose one that's already in use). The second field is where you type in your share name, which we went over in the last paragraph. The final checkbox determines whether the share should connect every time you log in. Since I'm going to assume that you want to be able to access the share all the time, you can just leave it checked. Just click 'Finish'. If it asks for a username and password, then enter it, otherwise it should pop up an explorer window showing the contents of the share.

So there you have it, you now have your very own file server to host your files on. While this may sound obvious to some, in order for people to be able to access the shares you create, you must keep the server turned on.

Some other uses for your server could also be as a MySQL database server, an Apache/PHP web server, if you're a developer, a subversion repository, as well as countless other possibilities. If any of this peaked your interest, feel free to do some research into them, Linux has a lot of potential that if you choose to put some time into, you can unlock. Also if you're brave enough, you can set up an ssh server on your server so you can access your server's terminal remotely.

Next week, I'll go over how to create a server using Windows XP as the operating system.

If you have any questions, need clarification, have comments, or have an alternate way of doing things, or more insight or help, then please, comment and let me know.

Tags: ubuntu, linux, fileserver, howto