From Kubuntu to Mint

My Linux Story

As I write this article I recall with fondness my experience thus far with Linux. My first encounter with Linux was when I was in college. I encountered a Linux advocacy group in the University of the Philippines Manila. Being the PC enthusiast that I am I was genuinely interested, but I soon forgot about it. Sometime later I encountered Linux again over the internet, and I ordered some Ubuntu 5.04 CDs. I managed to boot from the CD, I was shown its neat and simplistic desktop, but with no way to back up my data back then (CD Writers back then were expensive and external hard drives were almost unheard of) I contented myself with just booting from the CD.

Then came the event that made me switch permanently to Linux. It was February 2008 when my Windows XP was almost infected by a virus. A friend asked me to scan his flash drive for viruses but the moment I plugged it in my PC my anti-virus shut down and my PC was vulnerable. Later we found out that the flash drive had a virus, but my PC was apparently uninfected. But that experience was enough for me to make the switch. I can't imagine what will happen if my PC does get infected.

I bought a hard drive and installed Ubuntu 7.10. It went without a problem, as I remember, and the only drivers I had to install were the proprietary drivers of my nVidia video card. My Epson Stylus C67 was detected automatically and so was my Sound Blaster Live sound card. From someone who had experience installing Windows, I was pleasantly surprised Ubuntu needed less steps to bring my PC to a fully functional state. Surprisingly, I found my Epson printer to work better with Linux. In Windows if I choose economy mode printing the text was barely visible, so I had to use normal printing which of course uses up more ink. But in Linux, printing drafts was fast and while a bit grayish, was definitely readable.

Also, I didn't need to install an Office Suite because Ubuntu comes installed with its own: Open Office. Firefox was already installed. I had to tweak my PC for Flash and mp3 to work but it was done simply by following instructions all over the internet. GIMP allowed me to edit photos. I used Totem movie player to play videos and Rhythmbox to listen to music and audiobooks. In short, Linux allowed me to do almost everything I used to do with Windows.

Then after a few months I decided to give Kubuntu a try. I installed Kubuntu 8.04. I must say I like Kubuntu's desktop better than I liked Ubuntu's. As before, my hardware was detected without problems, but when I bought a new printer (HD DJ2560) I had to download a driver and install it via command line. I know using the command line fills some people with dread, but it's really as simple as copying and pasting the commands over Terminal. I am sure anyone who has used a word processor over the last decade would know how to copy and paste text, so using the command line shouldn't be an issue.

Kubuntu ran fine in my ancient PC with Athlon XP 2400+ and 256 MB of RAM. But I knew I had to upgrade my PC to improve my productivity.

So this June 2009 I bought a new PC (Athlon X2 5200+, Emaxx board with built-in nVidia 8200, 2 GB of RAM and 250 GB hard disk). I decided it was time for change and so instead of installing the familiar Kubuntu 8.04 (which was supported till 2011) I installed OpenSUSE 11.1. I chose OpenSUSE because I have read that it supports MS Office's format better (don't know if this is true). However, despite hours of tweaking and fixing, I can't seem to get sound to work properly and installing proprietary nVidia drivers needed a 200+MB download. I cannot accept those. So I switched to Kubuntu 9.04 which features the much hyped (and criticized) KDE 4. I was pleased of the overflowing eye candy. I was pleased of its speed. I was pleased of its intuitive interface. But I was not pleased that there seems to be an issue with nVidia proprietary drivers and Flash. When I install the drivers, the sound in Flash disappears. That I cannot accept.

So after a while I downloaded (via Kubuntu's Ktorrent), burned (with Kubuntu's popular K3B) Linux Mint 7 (code named “Gloria”) and also successfully installed it. Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu and it is, in my opinion, more “desktop ready” than Ubuntu. In my next article, I'll do a review of Linux Mint 7 and tell you why I believe Linux Mint is an excellent Linux distribution for beginners and for those who want to be weaned off Windows. Stay tuned!

Installation Woes

Okay, so now I have installed Ubuntu. I am amazed by its simplicity and snappiness. Definitely more to my liking than Windows. However there are some problems that made my transition unnecessarily difficult.

The main draw of Windows 9aside from support from a wide variety of applications) is perhaps it's a no-brainer to operate. Installation is usually just a double click. Everything is where it's supposed to be most of the time. There is little cryptic jargon.

Linux -- Ubuntu Linux -- should be able to replicate such user friendliness for it to be able to be more accepted by the masses.

For example, the first thing I wanted to do after installation was to update the nVidia video card driver. In Windows, all I had to do is download the driver, uninstall the old driver (but some people don't care to uninstall, and that's possible) then install the new one. In Ubuntu... well. Let's say that it's not as easy.

I started by going to the arcane Synaptic Package Manager. I found some files which I took for nVidia drivers and downloaded them, but nothing happened afterwards. Then I searched the web for an easy way to do it, and I found Envy which installed the proper drivers. But still, for some reason, i can't seen to enable it. Finally, I enabled access to restricted drivers and then -- viola! -- it finally worked.

However, I don't quite agree that driver installation should be that complicated.

Next one is Firefox. I wanted to update it, but the Check for Updates in the Help Menu is not available. Fortunately, I was able to find a solution quickly in Google: Ubuntuzilla. However, this require typing or cut-and-pasting of commands at Terminal, which may scare some people, but really it's not that hard. Just ugly.

I also wanted to improve desktop appearance. So I went to Gnome-Look.Org to see the selection. However, I got lost in the terminologies. What's the difference between GTK, GDM, XMMS and other selections to choose from? The site obviously assumes that the visitor would know what he wants. Unfortunately, I am only familiar with KDE, not GNOME (see previous post to know how I ended up this way). So I just downloaded icons. Installation was easy enough: just drag-and-drop and customize. I also downloaded a wallpaper and log-in screen. Installation was also relatively painless, thankfully.

Now I wanted to download content from the internet, via torrent or direct download. I used uTorrent for torrents in Windows, and Flashgot for direct downloads. I went to Applications --> Add/Remove... to see what is available. It's quite simple to use, and even displays popularity of applications, and that should tell the user what's good. I typed in "torrent" in the Search field and I was presented with a selection of programs. I saw that Bittorrent was already installed, so I tried downloading a torrent. Unfortunately, it was rather too simple, and I could not see any means of selecting what files I want to download within a torrent. So I installed Azureus, which I think is quite popular. After installation, I could not get it to start. I clicked on it in the Applications --> Internet but nothing happened. I tried opening a torrent but I could only select BitTorrent. So using an old Windows trick, I uninstalled Azureus and reinstalled it. that did the trick, but I was disappointed that I had to do that.

Next is the download manager. I downloaded Flashgot extension hassle-free, but I could not find a Linux-compatible version of the manager itself. When I right-clicked on a download link and selected Flashgot Link, I was able to use only WGet. I was surprised that it's text-based. It completed the task, but I am not comfortable as of that time with text-based programs. Besides, I could not find a way to pause the download. So I tried GNOME WGet, again from Applications --> Add/Remove... But this one doesn't seem to work. It loads, but download does not seem to start, much less finish. Please, if someone knows of a better download manager, inform me. For now, I use WGet. It works, but it doesn't get points for good looks.

Overall, Ubuntu programs installation was messy. I don't know if I was just unlucky, but hey, it happened.

Perhaps on the next iteration of Ubuntu, the installation hassles would have been solved or at least partially addressed. I nearly pulled my hair off in frustration over installation of nVidia drivers. As I said earlier, some procedures in installation should not have been difficult. And one should not need to go to the internet to see a more workable solution to a problem. Proper documentation and ensured cooperation with the OS should be the solution.

So I managed to install some programs and had some running. I'm still testing the waters. In the next installment (haha!), I'll report my experience some programs, and some glitches I found.

What was I thinking?!

Greetings! I am Jason Estimado, a businessman located in the tropical islands of the Philippines. I welcome you to my blog, where I will put in my experience in switching from the ubiquitous MS Windows operating system to the more obscure -- but rapidly gaining popularity -- Linux OS.

What was I thinking? Windows is very user friendly, easy to learn, has a lot of compatible software and hardware and most people use it. It's a sort of THE standard OS these days.

But Windows is also full of bugs, sometimes unstable, and is the target of innumerable viruses, worms, hacks, spyware and other malevolent software and intentions. It's also a resource hog, consuming disk space and other PC resources when you are not looking (or sometimes, even when you are -- you just don't have much choice).

Recently, my Windows PC got nearly infected by a virus in my friend's thumb drive. The anti-virus inexplicably shut down and left my system vulnerable. I was able to remedy the situation immediately, but the threat of possible infection, downtime and data loss scared me. That's when I decided to take the plunge and dived into the world of Linux.

Linux has many strengths; namely, its tight security. There are very few Linux viruses in the wild, and does not share Window's threats. It's also rock stable -- IF you can get running properly in the first place. That's what made me hesitate in the first place. Linux was notorious for it being user-unfriendly. But now, several distributions (or "flavors") of Linux has emerged and matured to the point that many exhort it's ease of use for the common PC user.

I'll put that to the test.

While by no means am I a complete PC newbie, I am no expert also. I have built PCs from ground up and installed various versions of Windows. I even remember the days of DOS, that command-line OS that was popular in the 80's. I think being a PC user who does not demand special software makes me a valid subject to try Linux and see if it works for the average user

Deciding that preparation would be the best weapon against the possibility of Linux being uncooperative, I spent a lot of time familiarizing myself with the OS. I decided to concentrate on Kubuntu Linux, a distribution by Canonical which can be downloaded for free or ordered in a CD for free also.

And so last night, I bought a new hard disk (a hedge against data loss in case I screw up partition and installation in Windows hard disk) and installed Kubuntu. But to my dismay, after installation, the OS cannot access my old hard drive when I have my precious data! It can detect the disk, but cannot access the files. Also, no matter what I do, I cannot seem to install nVidia drivers, the desktop resolution cannot be changed and the multiple desktops don't seem to work -- switching only minimizes the programs running. Devastated, I booted from my old disk and found that it was fine. So I tried to boot Kubuntu from the CD to see if it's only the installation that was bad. Apparently, it was not. For some reason, it still cannot access my old disk. Then I tried to boot Ubuntu, the GNOME version (Kubuntu is KDE version). Lo and behold! My disk is detected! So the and there I, with a little regret, installed Ubuntu.


So was I successful? Fortunately, yes, but not without frustrating moments. In my next blog entry, I'll relate the troubles I encountered during and after installation and how I overcame them, the ones I did overcome anyway.