http://www.darteks.com.au A running commentary on a build of a test Linux PC. We hope to answer some questions we have on the readiness of Linux for the general public. darteksblog-13 http://www.darteks.com.au/linuxblog.php?id=darteksblog-13 Fedora 7 was a very easy installation.

After a few regular questions at the beginning, including registering a root password, the distribution began its installation with a minimum of fuss.
At the end, it required me to enter a user name and password (so don't forget to record them somewhere).
A few more routine settings followed, where I selected defaults pretty much all the way through.

With this distro, I was offered the type of software installation I wanted to choose:

• office & productivity -my choice -
• development or;
• web server

... and the system was rebooted.

In just under an hour I was all ready to start producing my first document in OpenOffice 2.0. , and I had internet connectivity. Too easy!

I also have a different SUSE installation, so I'm going to give it a go and see if it is any more user-friendly (should I say "beginner" friendly) than the enterprise version I tried the other day. Wish me luck!

]]> darteksblog-12 http://www.darteks.com.au/linuxblog.php?id=darteksblog-12 Knoppix 5.1.1 This was the quickest installation, or so it seemed.
You've got to read the fine print!
This distribution runs directly from the DVD drive and is what is termed a 'LIVE' distro.
This is the distribution you want to use to try out Linux
It is not installed on your hard drive by default. And it is not so obvious as to how to get it there.
I had to go through a fairly complex procedure to get it to install on the hard drive.
Again, the final result was an operating system with all the apps I would need installed.
At one extreme, the PC was user ready in minutes. Again, complete with apps.
TRY IT!!
As a permanent solution, Ubuntu still gets my vote.

We will be trying these three next:
Open Suse 10.2
Fedora 7
And just for fun, Damn Small Linux 3.1


]]> darteksblog-11 http://www.darteks.com.au/linuxblog.php?id=darteksblog-11 Suse - version 10. This was, by far, the hardest install I have ever experienced - including any version of Windows.
Not for the beginner or the faint of heart!!
Feeling quite smug after the Ubuntu experience, I came to a grinding halt with this one
They do say on the write up that came with the disk that it is meant for an enterprise environment which usually means that it would be installed by an IT person as part of a standard PC image. Not by a novice!
Eventually, I got there but not without help.
There was far more interaction required and a fair bit of technical knowledge was required to complete the installation.
There was a lot more security, networking etc in the set up.
The final result was an operating system with all the apps I would need installed - just like the Ubuntu install.
The PC was user ready in a couple of hours. Again, complete with apps.
Definitely one for the experts!

]]> darteksblog-10 http://www.darteks.com.au/linuxblog.php?id=darteksblog-10 Ubuntu - using the latest version 7.04 - Feisty Fawn. This was, by far, the easiest install I have ever experienced - including any version of Windows.
Type of installation. Where did I live? Select time zone. Name of the machine.
After answering these questions, the installation process was under way without a single worry.
The applications that were installed were fairly typical of a Linux PC with just enough programs such as Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice, which are also available on Windows, to make the transition more comfortable.
It was a pleasant surprise for me to find that the programs did not have to added after the operating system install was completed. I am used to spending the next several hours (or days!!) adding the applications I need to start using the machine.
The whole process for me only took a few minutes of my time. The rest was completed without my intervention.
The PC was user ready in less than an hour. (I still have to connect to the net but I'd have to do that with Windows anyway.)

I AM IMPRESSED!!

]]> darteksblog-9 http://www.darteks.com.au/linuxblog.php?id=darteksblog-9 I wondered if I should just stop this blog because I gave up on ever getting hold of that PC again. I decided to go another way.
We use virtual pc's (VMWare) for much of our server technologies and I thought that this will at least let me test the maturity of Linux for the masses.
Unfortunately, not all Linux distros are fully supported by VMWare but I thought we could concentrate on how it is to use rather than how fast or whether it interfaces with the latest and greatest hardware.
So... one more try - I'm going to start by repeating Ubuntu - using the latest version 7.04 - Feisty Fawn. This will be done tomorrow by my wife who has had minimal experience with Linux but is a seasoned Windows user.

]]> darteksblog-8 http://www.darteks.com.au/linuxblog.php?id=darteksblog-8 Well nothing seems to go right! Our PC used for this blog was seconded to more important tasks so I will continue this blog based on virtual PCs in a week or two.
We will still install Suse next. For those who follow this blog, sorry for the long wait. My appologies!

]]> darteksblog-7 http://www.darteks.com.au/linuxblog.php?id=darteksblog-7 Sorry for such a long delay on posting the next entry. Our current contract got us a bit snowed under and we had no choice but to put the Linux build on hold - besides, we needed to use the Linux PC for a bit.

We used the PC for various tasks that would normally occur in a small office and home environment and found that most could be serviced using the test PC. Only some processor intensive jobs fell a bit short of the mark - but this is hardware not the operating system.
We will install Suse next.

]]> darteksblog-6 http://www.darteks.com.au/linuxblog.php?id=darteksblog-6 Both network cards were detected without a problem (the SIS chipset and the Realtek 8139 PCI card).
So that's one up on CentOS but the serial mouse didn't work after reboot! I had to restart with a PS/2 mouse and all was fine so it was score even - not that this is a contest.
As for CentOS, I allowed Ubuntu to partition the drive automatically. The install process then proceeded with installing the operating system after which I added the remainder of available packages. The whole process only took 4 1/2 hrs. Remember this is operating system and applications and it was all done largely unattended.
The system performs better than with CentOS too. Loading times were definitely shorter for some of the standard apps such as Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org etc. Still more checking to do - this install used GNOME as the desktop whereas I chose KDE for use under CentOS and RH9. Some different stuff here. I think I like this one!
I will try out some of those issues identified on CentOS and see if they are common aspects of Linux or if it was distro specific.

]]> darteksblog-5 http://www.darteks.com.au/linuxblog.php?id=darteksblog-5 I must admit that apart from the network card, path and update issues, I found CentOS to be stable and reliable in the time I have played around with it.
I have burned CDs with K3B, a CD/DVD burning and ripping utility. Using the software was quite easy, very intuitive. The difficulty was in finding the software in the first place. The program's name doesn't say what it does - I mean, K3B? Can you get any more cryptic than that? The purpose of a tool should be in the menu if these application names aren't going to describe their main function. Would it be so hard to put something like: "K3B - CD/DVD Burning" in the menu? Not even the icon gives a clue.
I guess Linux still has a way to go before you could call it intuitive. But, judging the entire OS based on one distro would be unfair and I'd say 80% of the apps are "usable". More importantly, those types of apps that get frequent use - browsers, email clients, word processors and the like are all of professional quality and perform quite well once loaded.
Time to move on to the next "flavour" - Ubuntu 5.1 (Breezy badger)
We will look at the various programs available on linux in both KDE and GNome desktops as we go.

]]> darteksblog-4 http://www.darteks.com.au/linuxblog.php?id=darteksblog-4 So that we understand what we get as a result of this installation, I think we should mention what software we will expect to see after the install is complete.
• The operating system and a set of utilities that will help manage and maintain it.
• A suite of software packages that will largely replace software that would be used in a Windows environment. eg OpenOffice.org (an Office alternative), Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird (Browser and email, respectively), a large number of games, utilities and programming tools.
• Support for the sound card and CD/DVD writer

...and here we go.
CentOS 4.2 is installed - the whole process took over 8 hrs for a complete install of OS and all packages. This would probably take much the same amount of time as for Windows but with much less user attendance. The only hiccup we experienced during the install was that CentOS did not use the serial mouse we had plugged in. The selections were done using the keyboard only! A bit tiresome and we can't think of why the serial mouse would be non-operational during install. We ended up installing everything (over 6 gb)
CentOS is a Red Hat derivative which shows in the similarities (based on my memory) during installation. Reports mention the stability offered by the OS as a server. It would be interesting to investigate this at a later date - at this stage we are trying to build a desktop PC to replace Windows.
The update process failed on at least one package update - this caused the whole process to abort it seems - hmmm! Not too good but I told it to update everything - which was a lot! I will retry with a smaller update list because the software allows the user to select which packages he/she is updating.
After the install all appeared to be working OK, with a few slight differences to the user interface when compared with Red Hat 9. The SIS network interface on the motherboard was not detected so a PCI card was used in it's place, Realtek 8139 based. The network was now working.
The user interface was easy to use and reasonably responsive for the capabilities of this machine.
Packages installed were comprehensive but I had expected later versions for a distro that was released so recently. For example, as a developer, I would have expected PHP5 not PHP4. We need to review the others to find out if this is across the board and the distributors are just going with "proven" versions.
Could we expect a beginner to adopt this? Well, the applications are there and Firefox and Thunderbird work pretty much as they did in Windows, so there should be no complaints on this. There are multiple choices of software to perform similar tasks - this could be confusing.
I wanted to find out what IP address I had been assigned by DHCP but the ifconfig command did not work - command not found. It seems the path does not include /sbin, where ifconfig is kept. Any person not already familiar with Linux would have a hard time following the directions in the books because there are a lot of commands stored here.

]]> darteksblog-3 http://www.darteks.com.au/linuxblog.php?id=darteksblog-3 Finally! The DVD drive is in and we have performed some testing of the install - we didn't realise before but the playback of CD audio is via audio cable not digital extraction.
This opens up an opportunity for picking up some extra distortion/interference which is not really a problem with the audio card in this PC but may be an issue for the enthusiast with an up-market sound card. Later distros may provide digital extraction. I guess we'll see.

We can now continue with installing the more current linux distributions, starting with CentOS 4.2

]]> darteksblog-2 http://www.darteks.com.au/linuxblog.php?id=darteksblog-2 Well, we already have the first hurdle to jump. The distros we mentioned are on DVD and our PC only has CD, so we decided to proceed with an earlier distro that we had on CD (Red Hat 9.0). We hope to be able to determine if the install process has improved in the last few years. A DVD drive will be installed in a couple of days.

The install took place without event. All hardware in the PC was detected and drivers installed including the network and sound devices. It would be hard to improve on the install process - probably could do with some less geeky defaults for things like networking. We chose the custom selection of applications but it is long winded. Compared to Windows, there is much more choice though

We will start the install of the other distros when the DVD drive goes in.

]]> darteksblog-1 http://www.darteks.com.au/linuxblog.php?id=darteksblog-1 We have a decommissioned PC from our office. A Celeron 600 with 256 mb ram. We will use this for our test pc to install and review each of the following Linux distributions:
CentOS 4.2 first, then ...

... Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy badger), Suse Linux 10.0, Mandriva 2006, Knoppix 4.0.2,
Debian 3.1 and Fedora Core 4.
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