A brief history of how I came to use Linux.
I first tried Linux when I was having problems with Windows ME, I could actually get Windows ME to work fairly well with the help of Norton Utilities, but it was inclined to get itself in a terrible tangle. In a way, I am grateful for a less than perfect experience with Windows, as I gained a lot of experience having to sort things out, and my friends still ask me to help them with their computers, which is a social benefit.
Careful Beginnings.
I found a magazine at our local shop with a little Linux Magazine and a couple of CD disks with something called Fedora Core 2 on it. I read the little magazine and took the plunge! I gingerly partitioned up my hard drive, having never done that task before, and installed Fedora Core 2 on the space that I created for it. There were some very alarming warnings and instructions that came with the CDs, and I was very excited when my computer successfully booted up without blowing up and I soon saw an attractive and very modern looking new desktop. I enjoyed playing with Fedora for a little while, but I ran into problems trying to get the computer to connect to the Internet with my computer's internal modem, and trouble with my scanner, and eventually gave up, because I did not have the knowledge to sort such things out.
I was intrigued though with my first glimpse of a Linux operating system, and some time later bought Mandrake 10.1 on a set of CDs. I had considerably more success with this, and actually managed to get my modem to work, and my scanner.
Could XP keep Me?
With the arrival of Windows XP, I thought my Windows problems would be over. XP was a huge improvement over ME, and I actually bought a copy! Eventually though XP seemed to need more and more resources to run it. I always suspected that all the patches and updates took their toll. Certainly, the freshly installed system seemed far faster than one that was patched and supposedly more secure. I found that my old computer simply wasn't up to the task of running such a heavy system, and working on it was frustrating. My old computer had (and still has) 250MB of RAM and a Celeron 1.2 GHZ processor, don't laugh, it was fairly sprightly in 2001! My final straw was when an XP patch broke my system, and a warning pop up complained that I didn't have a legal copy of XP. This was rather annoying to say the least.
To the Rescue, Mepis and Sarge.
I bought another magazine, this time one with an early version of Mepis on the accompanying CD. Mepis was actually very impressive. After playing with Mepis, I eventually added a second hard drive to the computer and installed Debian Sarge, which I ran for more than a year. (Mepis was based on Debian, so Debian seemed a logical choice).
I have heard that Debian is a difficult system to set up, especially for the beginner, but I managed it fairly easily really. I also found that my computer would run a little faster than it did with Windows XP, and was more reliable.
Open Source Applications.... mmmmmmmm!
I also began to discover the wonderful open source applications (software) that are available to users of Linux, thanks to the great work of mostly unpaid enthusiasts who create, develop and test applications for just about anything that you might want to do with a computer.
Windows Free!
Later, I installed openSuse 10.3 on my old computer, which it coped with reasonably well. About that time I also gave Windows XP a final heave-ho. I had been running occasionally from a second hard drive on my computer, but I found that I was able to manage without it.
I recently bought a new computer (a basic box with some good components that I specified, and no operating system pre installed). I installed openSuse 11 on this, and changed to Zenwalk on the old computer. Zenwalk is a very light system that runs very quickly on elderly hardware.
I am currently using openSuse 11.1 with KDE 4.1.
Let's play with Virtual Computers!
I often try out other Linux distributions, either as Live CDs, or with a useful application called Virtual Box. Virtual Box allows me to install all sorts of operating systems onto my computer into a virtual computer! Sounds complicated, but is easy to use, and fun! The new system goes into a folder rather than completely taking over your computer, if you don't like it you can get rid of it again safely.
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Thanks Peter,
ReplyDeleteYour comments on Linux & Suse could be helpful to some frustrated Windows operators too.
I've had the benefit of having you to install SUSE 11 on my computer and give me lots of instruction. I now use SUSE in preference to Win XP for most apps. and only use XP for Quick Verse 7 and Logos Lesson Builder, as I can't get them to work via 'Wine'.
The Digicam photo editor is far superior to what I had on XP, though it took time for me to tune in to how it works - ditto for The Gimp.
I do have some problems with printing however.
I have to go to XP to run the HP Photosmart Diagnostics, which has the 'low ink' monitor on it, and I have to tell CUPS twice which printer to use, because of a quirk in its interface.!
Digikam is a wonderful application for viewing and editing photos. Most of the tweaks that you will ever need can be done to photos with Digikam. The essentials such as adjustments to colour and contrast are easily sorted, and there are also really excellent tools for sorting rotation,perspective, white balance, and so on. A big thank you to the Digikam developers.
ReplyDeleteRegarding viewing ink levels with HP printers, I have good success using hp-toolbox, which is almost certainly installed on your system. OpenSuse puts a shortcut to it under GreenButton/System/Monitor/hp-toolbox. You can also launch it by typing hp-toolbox into Konsole (a terminal). hp-toolbox has utilities for cleaning and aligning cartridges, monitoring ink levels, adjusting hue, saturation, brightness, and gamma, and setting default paper sizes and the like.
P.