What is Linux anyway? and what is a Distro?

"It is often rumoured that if you play a Windows CD backwards it will summon Satan.
Well that's nothing, if you play it forwards it installs Windows"...Anon.

Pronounced "leen-ucks" or "linnucks" (but NEVER "Line-Ucks" or everyone will know you are a newbie), Linux is the brainchild of Linus Torvalds (pronounced Leen-ous), a Finnish computing genius who wrote his own Unix based operating system as an undergraduate around 1991 because MS DOS/Windows 3.1 was not up to the job of reading his Unix email online. What started as an off-syllabus project at Helsinki University to find out how the new 386 chip worked, within a week or two had already outclassed MS DOS in multi-tasking; Such was, and is, the genius of Torvalds, but the most innovative development was to open up his code to all the other "hackers" to comment and improve upon.

Despite negative connotations of the word, real "hackers" are the self motivated software enthusiasts who persist in finding a way of making software and hardware work together out of pure enjoyment, the best way they can; as opposed to corporate "suits" (like I was) who got paid to program to a fixed design using a fixed systems-life-cycle and project-management methodology. History has shown that despite the claims of corporate clients demanding 'CMM compliant' methodologies, hackers tend to produce better quality bug-free code than suits, usually faster and more cost effectively. It's all down to motivation. For someone who used to teach CMM that's a very sad discovery.

Over a period of time the development of Linux was being shared with hundreds of like-minded programmers. Thousands are involved in producing over 300 "Distros". It is now the largest collaborative project of all timewith two million registered users of Linux in some form or another.

The Free Software Concept

The Free or Open software principle is that all code is freely available to anyone, new code is shared openly with the rest of the world, Nobody can make serious money out of the kernel code through copyright of the code, although it has to be patented to protect its free status. That means generally that Linux is always free to download to us the potential users. Torvalds still retains the right to steer the direction that the kernel is taking.

What organizations can do is to combine the kernel with a number of Office type applications and an installer system, and call it a "Distribution" or "Distro". People can make money out of support, particularly selling to other organizations. Companies producing the SuSE and Red Hat distros for example can legitimately charge for support and installation services. Even so there are many who think that large software companies may put commercial considerations before the principles of Open Source Software if the going gets tough. Some also feel that distros produced by groups of enthusiasts in their spare time, like PCLinuxOS are closer to the concept.
IBM are one of the biggest hardware manufacturers to support Linux, pouring in over a billion dollars into its development.

Many people say there are more "pros" than "cons", for example it is very unlikely for a virus to attack Linux because a program has to know the Root user passsword, and so you NEVER use the internet logged-on as Root.
In similar fashion you can stealth your Windows machine by everyday usage (email, surfing) with a Username which has restricted user authority, rather than having "Administrator" rights that you are given by defult on installing Windows. Also you can disable file sharing etc, but as soon as you neeed to install a minor piece of software in Windows or do a defrag you need to log on as Administrator again. Also Microsoft cannot download their "updates" when you don't have Admin rights so they don't like it. Most home Windows users plod along with Administrator rights and get all sorts of rootkits and trojans installed without knowing about them.
In most cases with Linux the system asks for the Root password and carries on - much safer. This idea has been taken up by Vista and Windows 7.

Viruses can be passed-on to friends and colleagues by emails however, so if you run email servers you need anti-virus tools, though if you communicate with others by email most providers now have some virus checking built-in.
If you like to have control of your OS implementation, then the Linux shell commands (which are like DOS in a way) give you that control. Nowadays however, most Linux distributions ("distros") have good Windows-like graphical user interfaces and inclusive applications.

What is the catch?

Well some of your applications that run on MS Windows will not run on Linux. Some will run under "Wine" but that's another story. However there are hundreds of applications that do the same job. For example OpenOffice.org will do almost everything that MS Office will do, including read and write .doc .xls .ppt etc files,and since 2009 will write .docx and other Office 2007 files. There is a version of OpenOffice.org that will run on Windows as well, by the way, and many foreign government departments are choosing it especially the far east and the south americas.

One reason I retain Windows on my PC is to run my Canon 9950F scanner which will not run under Linux. Also some apps like HP photo printing, DVD shrink will not run in Linux, but these days BBC iPlayer, DVD playing etc are much easier. Using distros like Mint 8 or later have almost everything ready to run. Again you need to decide if you want the challenge of learning a new environment on Linux but without the constant attacks from Malware, or simplicity of use of Wondows but need to be vigilent and run anti-malware suites and firewalls.

User Support

Another problem is that you will not get any "support" from the Linux suppliers if you didn't pay for commercial support. There is nobody to "complain" to. It's an operating system you load for FUN and for a mental challenge. But then the on-line and forum support is as good as for any paid-for operating systems, except that you don't "complain" to the on-line forums, you work with them! If you do want helpdesk support then go for a paid-for distro like Linspire. However you need to decide how much free support you get from Microsoft, Mac etc before you decide this is an issue.

So how did I do?

Well when I started on Linux in 2005 it wasn't easy for someone who had been a Windows user for 22 years, but then I was a programmer once upon a time, so it took a couple of weeks of reading Linux mags, books and online forums to get to grips with the terminology at least. I would recommend one little book - the Linux Pocket Guide by Daniel J Barrett ISBN 0-596-00628-4 (published by O Reilly). This pocket book gives the essential shell commands, because sometimes you might need them to do basic admin. It also tells you how the file system works, for example.

Which Distro did I opt for?

Over the years I have tried many distros. There are hundreds, but the current biggest are Ubuntu and Mint. Mint is Ubuntu but with all the streaming codecs required to run DVDs and CDs, plus the browser extensions for web graphics and sound etc. In Feb 2010 I went for Mint 8 (Helena)and you can see how I installed it and set it up HERE

Features of Mint in summary are
Contains Open Office and several other major software packages.
Will read and write Windows NTFS files and Open Office will write Office 2007 format files (.docx etc)
Supports my mobile broadband modems, including Orange E160E and the Dell 5510 business modem.
Will stream iPlayer and similar products, Has all codecs in place for playing commercial music CD and DVDs (unlike Ubuntu where they have to be downloaded and installed). Uses Gnome desktop, and has Synaptic software manager to download thousands of additional appls.

What about my Broadband supplier? - I thought you were obliged to run Windows or Mac.

Well no, in a nutshell. People like BT only "Support" Windows but that means they can't help you if you have problems - it still works if you use ethernet, wifi or mobile modems (USB will not work without a lot of work). You will not get any help from AOL, BT or Virgin if you call them and say
"my modem will not connect, and by the way I am not using your bloated software, or your nasty little error prone hub/modem, oh and I am not using Windows either, and it's plugged into my study, not the BT master socket which is in the hallway.". They politely tell you to reinstate their system and then call back, by which time broadband has come back anyway (I know, I tried it, and they did, and it usually did).
Another problem is that you will not be able to manage your ISP email using their CD-ROM supplied tools. If you want to know what the experience in Linux will be like, load Firefox onto your Windows machine, browse bt.yahoo.com (or whichever) in Firefox and connect to your email. What you see is what you will have in Linux. If you enjoy the Buddy system, online help, shopping channels, parental controls, etc, stay with Windows and the crappy ISP software! (Now that you've downloaded Firefox, like 15%+ of the market you will not want to go back to IE!)

After a couple of years of Linux I found the challenge in 2007 just too much faff and I bought Windows XP, then Vista (yuk!) replaced by Windows 7.
Then a forced change from ADSL broadband to Mobile wireless Broadband (WWAN) led me to try to get as much speed as possible and reduce the laptop overhead, so I started looking at Linux again, and selected Mint 8 (Helena)

Preparation

1. Get the Distro.
If you are going the free route you will need some means of downloading the Linux software. DO NOT use Internet Explorer. For some reason there is a bug in IE6 which corruptsthe .tar.gz and the .tgz Linux zipped files - funny Microsoft haven't been able to fix that bug eh?? So the first thing is to download Firefox which is a brilliant fast un-bloated browser. Search for Firefox Download on Google.
However I used The Linux Man and for £3.99 or so I got the CD 48 hours later
2. Most people will have a PC with Windows on and wish to retain it, so the main thing is to create space on the hard disk for Linux to reside alongside Windows. Vista and Win7 have a partition tool, but older Windows need another tool to do this - Google for "GParted" and download it. The idea is to "shrink" one of your existing partitions, preferably the one at the far end, by about 10GBytes, or more if you want Linux to have all your media files under the linux filesystem. I chose to keep all my music and photos in my Windows D Drive and to mount the D drive in Linux (See my article).
3. Learn as much as you can by reading books and certain mags, but don'tread any Linux library books older that 2009!! Linux is improving faster thanks to the dedicated worldwide "hackers", than the Mega Corporations can manage with an army of "suits". What is more, any bugs are found faster due to the open nature of the code.
4. Get Linux. either:-
a) Buy a book and disk combo e.g. SuSE or Fedora - around £40
b) Buy a Linux magazine with a cover disk - around £10
c) Go to the The Linux Man- around £3 or
d) Download an .iso file from a distro's website and burn to CD - Free!

You can see how I managed my latest distro HERE and find out what advantages are now available.

Broadband Modems

Most people use Ethernet router/modems now but if you still have USB connected modems by Speedtouch or Voyager, get rid! Old fashioned and slow. For BT based broadband look in ebay for Netgear DG834G wireless ethernet modem or similar.
All ethernet router modems will connect to ADSL or Cable broadband simply by connecting the PC to the modem by ethernet, Switch on the PC and you are surfing.
People with WWAN Mobile Broadband dongles will be surprised to learn that latest distros will almost certainly support modern dongles. See HERE to find out how I connected to Orange Mobile.

Conclusions and post script.

In 2010, Linux is in a very advanced stage, and well up with Win 7 and in many ways more advanced than XP. I have already got my ipod music to work with Banshee, and if I can get my Canon scanner to work I will have little use for Windows.
I have also noticed that Linux uses much less of my 3GB a month download limit than Windows 7, and is faster, and Firefox is much clearer on the screen.
AND I can now call everyone "dude" (you need to read Torvalds autobiography "Just for Fun" to understand that one!)
Look at my Linux Linkspage for some interesting resources.

Designed with QuantaPlus and tsWebEditor