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

     VS   

By now, I'm sure you're all aware that Windows Vista, Microsoft's latest operating system is taking the world with a lot of criticism, and with Windows XP's end of life fast approaching at the end of June, many people may very well be in a dilemma on what to do.

First things first, Windows XP's end of life is June 30, 2008, less than 2 months away. What this means is that vendors are no longer supposed to sell Windows XP either standalone versions, or bundled OEM versions. Although there are a few exceptions to this, namely the budget laptops, but for all intents and purposes, the June 30^th date holds. Windows XP, compared to Vista requires far less system requirements to run so older computers normally will have no problem running the XP operating system. This in itself is what leads to the dilemma. People with older machines may want to upgrade their computer and may not want to spend the extra money for a computer that can truly handle the lofty Vista requirements. This can be particularly problematic for the current high school seniors who are heading out to college in August and September who will be buying new computers. Do you buy the computer now so you can get XP with it, do you suck it up and just deal with Vista on a computer that may not be truly able to handle it, or do you buy a standalone copy of XP and just wipe the Vista install on the new computer. None of the options are incredibly pretty. A lot of computer companies have deals late July and early August for the "going away to college" crowd which can save a fair amount of money, but this would be after the June 30th cut-off. Buying the computer now, should still allow for the purchasing of a computer with XP, but the price savings wouldn't be there. And of course buying XP now and installing it later on the new computer bundled with Vista would probably negate most of the savings since you'd pretty much be buying 2 operating systems and only using the one.

Despite all my criticisms of Vista, I have since installed it on my desktop and I don't hate it as much as I used to, especially after turning off the damned UAC. Vista for me has been running smoothly, some of the new UI features are actually pretty nice, but my desktop computer is for all intents and purposes, different from the norm. My desktop is not the run-of the-mill basic computer, it is relatively powerful and rates a 5.6 on Vista's hardware rating. Most basic laptops and desktops you would buy from companies like Dell are not specced nearly has high as my Desktop so they wouldn't be able to run Vista nearly as well as I can. And this is where my criticism of Vista really is rooted. Vista's system requirements are too high for an operating system. XP has a relatively good balance between minimum requirements and the computers capable of running it (at least as far as Windows goes). And it's because of this that consumers might find it tricky to figure out what they want to do about future desktop purchases and if they want to give Vista a shot or not.

A few things to note are that Windows XP SP3 support continues til 2014 so software updates will still be available to you after June 30, 2008. Another note is that Dell has mentioned that they plan to continue to sell XP even after the end of life date passes. Whether this means that Microsoft may again extend the June 30 cut-off or if Microsoft will put a stop to Dell's plans remains uncertain.

Of course Windows XP and Vista are not the only choices people have for new computers. Apple computers are growing in popularity and rightfully so. Macs have become solid machines of late and their OS X operating system is definitely a good alternative to Windows, and something I would personally reccommend. Another choice of course is Linux, particularly Ubuntu which in my opinion is a friendly Linux Distribution for someone new. In fact, Dell actually sells machines pre-installed with Ubuntu. You can check out these hints if you're trying to get someone to switch over to Linux.

Tags: microsoft, windows, vista, xp

Last week I showed you how to set up a home file server using Ubuntu Linux, this week I'll show you how to do the same thing only this time using Microsoft Windows XP.

The first thing you need is to make sure that your system has the minimum system requirements to run XP. They aren't nearly as high as Vista's so you should be okay.

Processor: 300MHz AMD/Intel
Memory: 128MB
Hard Drive: 1.5GB space

Those of course are the minimum requirements, personally I would reccommend the following

Processor: 600MHz AMD/Intel
Memory: 256MB
Hard Drive: 100GB (same as I recommended for Ubuntu for system and storage space)

The first thing to do of course would be to install Windows XP, so put your XP disc into the drive and turn on your PC. After it gets past the BIOS, it should prompt you to press a key to enter setup. So press a key and enter setup.

**Note: If it doesn't prompt you, it probably means its trying to boot off the hard drive first, in which case you need to go into the BIOS and change the boot order. See your motherboard or PC instructions for how to do that on your individual machine.

So go on through the setup and follow the prompts. When it gets to the hard drive partitioning and where to install Windows, set aside 10-20GB for the Windows partition leaving the rest for data storage, we'll set that up later. For the rest of the setup, just follow the prompts as they're presented to you. Make sure to note what you named your computer.

Ok, I'm now going to assume you completed the setup and are now looking at your Windows Desktop.  The first thing you're going to want to do is install Anti-Virus software. If you have your own, go ahead and use that, otherwise feel free to try out ClamWin, its free and pretty good. Make sure to get the latest virus definitions. The next thing to do is to install all of the updates for XP. You can just go to Microsoft Update to do that. Make sure to go there several times and restarts later to make sure you have all the updates. (yes it's annoying but sadly unavoidable)

I'll now assume your computer now has antivirus installed and all the latest updates so we're ready to go. If you right click on My Computer and click Manage, the computer management window pops up.

Click on Disk Management towards the bottom. You'll be presented with the disk management tool.

You should see your C partition and next to it you should see unpartitioned space. (it won't look just like mine so don't worry) You want to right click it and select Format. Create a partition on it taking up all the free space. The partition should be Primary NTFS partition. Let it do its thing and when its done, you should have a new drive letter for the partition.

Ok, now that your data storage partition is all set up, open up My Computer. In the Tools menu at the top, select Folder Options. In the View tab, scroll all the way to the bottom and uncheck Use Simple Sharing. Apply your changes and close the box.

Now go into your data partition and create the folder structure you want to set up. Once you have all the folders created, right click on the folders you want to share and click on Sharing and Security.

Give your share a name. You can give it a comment too if you want, but its not required. Next thing to do is to click the Permissions button.

You can leave Everyone there if you want, just make sure to only give read access. Otherwise just click Everyone and then click Remove. Now you need to add your user. First, click the Add button.

Type in your username and then click OK. Now we want to give your user the ability to write to the share. If you don't need or want this, ignore the following step. Click on your username and click the checkbox Full Control. All the boxes should then be checked under the Allow column, so hit Apply and then OK. Repeat the steps on any other shares you want to make, just make sure you note the share names.

OK, your server is pretty much all set up, all you now need to do is map them on your normal machine. From last week here's the set of instructions.

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

\\servername\share

Where servername is the computer's name, 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.

Again, if you have any questions, comments, need clarification, or have an alternative method, feel free to let me know.

Tags: windows, microsoft, howto, server

Rumor has it that Windows XP SP3 will be getting released this week. For all of those who prefer sticking with Windows XP over the blighted Windows Vista, keep your eyes out for the last service pack on Microsoft Update.

Engadget is however reporting that there might be a show-stopping stability problem in SP3 which could prevent its rollout. In any case, keep your eyes peeled for its release should it get rolled out anyway. This does lead to the question, "should you upgrade to SP3 right away?" The choice is yours but with this reported issue, it might be wise to wait a couple days to see if any major problems are being commonly reported.

Windows XP's end of life is fast approaching, with sales slated to end this June. Service Pack 3 is set to be the last major service pack for the still popular XP Operating System.

Update: It looks like SP3 is now being prepared for release next month, so an update this week seems unlikely, although SP3 Release Candidate 2 is now available for the public so if you're brave enough you can get Microsoft Update to install it.

Tags: microsoft, windowsxp, sp3

Everyone knows by now that Microsoft is the leader of the pack when it comes to market share with the Windows Operating System. Over the last few years though, both Apple and Linux are starting to gain ground.

Apple & OS X

With the introduction of Intel-Based Macs, Apple started a new chain of events that has only seen their market share rise. OS X, their operating system I feel is significantly ahead of Windows in terms of usabilty and the whole user interface. I used to bash Macs, mostly because I didn't realize their full potential and what they can actually do. Once I got my iBook G4 a couple years ago, that all changed. The smoothness and the intuitiveness of the operating system and its base programs I thought, and still do think make OS X what it is. So many of the programs are all integrated together, something Windows has a problem with at times. And the base software itself rivals that of Windows. You get so more with OS X than you do with Windows, and if you buy your PC from Dell, HP, etc, you don't get all the crapware that comes preinstalled.

Linux & Open Source

Linux, once the operating system for the true geeks and nerds (no offense to anyone), now is proving to be much more user friendly, and a viable option for those who choose to try it. Ubuntu Linux is probably one of the key reasons for Linux's success recently with its ease to install and use. However though, as many point out, Ubuntu is not "Linux". It is a Linux distribution, but Linux is a lot more than just Ubuntu. I've been using Linux for 2 maybe 3 years now and honestly, if it weren't for games, I probably would have wiped Windows from my desktop entirely by now. It's probably wishful thinking, but I wish that more game developers would consider writing games for Linux. Sure, games like UT2k3 and UT2k4 had a Linux installer, and there's WINE and Cedega, but overall, hardly any mainstream games will run on Linux natively. And running on Linux doesn't mean that the software has to be open-source. You can install closed-source and proprietary software on Linux just as easily if written properly. The idea of proprietary software may be against the "true" open source ideals, but in my opinion Linux and open source are more about the freedom of choice rather than whether or not something is proprietary or open source.

It would be wishful thinking that either Apple or Linux could overtake Microsoft anytime soon combined or separately as Windows simply just dominates, but with the sad state of Windows Vista, Microsoft might end up seeing both Macs and Linux gain a little more of the market share.

Tags: windows, linux, apple, microsoft, ubuntu