Ubuntu

Just got done reading, "Confessions of an Ubuntu Fanboy". While I'm glad the author has decided to be more practical in his promotion of Linux and Ubuntu, I strongly disagree with some of his conclusions and I'll cover them below.

I have been using Linux for about 15 years now and over the course of that time I've helped more people than I care to count with Linux installs, removals and everything in-between. I've seen people try Linux out for a few days and give up on it. I've seen people tough it out and become valued members of our local Linux community. Linux isn't for everyone and choice is good. I no longer advocate Linux for someone who isn't willing to learn new things. I quit trying to push it on people and now I'm somewhat selective in helping people the second they say they want to try Linux. I state up front that there is a learning curve and that they will need to expect it. If I sense that they don't have patience to learn new things, I don't even bother.

The problem with the article in question is that the author seems to want to try to make Linux for everyone and in doing so, he advocates violating some important tenants. He primarily focuses on Windows users but it could be any proprietary OS or applications.

Regardless of your preferred OS, you may be familiar with Keir Thomas.

Keir Thomas has released a new book (January 2009) , Ubuntu Pocket Guide and Reference and interestingly a pdf version is freely available for download.

http://www.ubuntupocketguide.com/download.html

I have taken a brief look at the PDF and it contains some interesting information and there are chapters on the command line interface (bash) and security, including encryption.

Enjoy :)

Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex didn't come with the newest version of Open Office, due to Open Office 3 not being released early enough for the developers to test it. If you don’t want to wait for the developers of Ubuntu to release Open Office 3, you can open synaptic package manager and add:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ubuntu intrepid main

to your third party software sources. Then update. Worked like a charm for me.

Just thought I would let everyone know that we have a public Ubuntu mirror on the Montana State University campus Bozeman. Feel free to use it as much as you would like. The mirror server is connected directly to our backbone network with gigabit speeds. Anyone on campus and at our regional campuses (Billings, Great Falls, etc) should benefit from very fast updates as well. Anyways here is the information:

Ubuntu
rsync://mirror.msu.montana.edu/ubuntu
ftp://mirror.msu.montana.edu/ubuntu
http://mirror.msu.montana.edu/ubuntu

Ubuntu-Releases

I have a good friend, a fellow math major here at Rocky. He's a smart guy, but never really "got into" computers- he uses them for school and is as good as anyone researching on Google, but he never really had the time to learn about what makes a computer work. Not to say he's not interested, or wanting to learn- he's just been involved in other things.

My first Linux installation took place circa 1992, I pulled my hair out for a month or so while I was trying to figure out how to install this very interesting and FREE operating system.

I considered myself an intermediate level user who at this point was trying to learn how to program using the C programming language. Why not C++? At the time all the "beginners" books assumed that you knew the C programming language.

I was reading an article somewhere, probably in the now "merged" C/C++ user's Journal, that introduced an operating system that was "built for programmers by programmers". Needless to say, the best place to learn how to solve coding problems or learn about coding was to look at working code.

A whole operating system with the code! Perfect.

Backups are something that are generally ignored until they are needed. Having good backups will save you much time and headache and maybe even money. Having had backups fail before and having to pay thousands of dollars to recover the data is an experience that I hope to never have again.

Virtualbox (http://www.virtualbox.org/) is a virtualzation platform. I use it to test out new Linux distributions as well as to run some limited tests of new software for customers. It can run on Linux or windows hosts and can run quite a few guest operating systems. Installation in Ubuntu is a snap. First enable the VirtualBox repo if you don't want to use the open source edition. Edit your /etc/apt/sources.list. I added this to mine for gutsy:

deb http://www.virtualbox.org/debian gutsy non-free


FOSS bookkeeper wanted for busy solo practice law office running gnucash on ubuntu 7.04. VPN option available. Knowledge of gnucash template editing and other tweaks more helpful than bookeeping knowledge though both are needed. Compensation competitive for independent contractor or employee status or service trade. Contact Monte at mjewell[at]openmissoula.org.

After last night's Bozeman LUG meeting, I decided to take the plunge and install Ubuntu on my newly (more or less) built AMD dual core machine. It was really rather anti-climactic. It installed itself, everything worked, no problem. I sniffed around a little and got my printer hooked up through the network and the existing windows box. No command line, no profanity, no bloodshed. Ubuntu loaded the NVIDIA drivers with the usual disclaimer about proprietary software and put them to work. Who says that Linux isn't ready for the desktop? Now to learn about VMWare....