Linux Journal 11.1.13: Almost There

I find myself in the unexpected position of having made huge Linux progress since the last post.

• I think that the intermittent broken greeter issue has been fixed. Reinstalling the mpm package seemed to fix it.
• Scribus is installed and seems to work fine. I will need to learn it, but it's not like I was an expert with Microsoft Publisher.
• VirtualBox is running a Windows 7 virtual machine in seamless mode, which is incredibly slick. It will handle any non-game Windows application I might need to run.
• WINE is installed and working. Using it, I can run EverQuest II without any obvious issue, although it could use more of a stress test. Vanguard was less successful and seemed to break the greeter as described above, but I have not yet given up on it.
• There are a few other games I'm going to try to install, notably GW2.  Steam is going to be a question mark for now.
• An attempted install of Campaign Cartographer 3 under WINE appeared to fail... but I can use it nonetheless. A few files will not open without erroring out, but this is nothing new.
• Fractal Terrains installed and runs fine under WINE but did not associate .ftw files with the application. I will need to do this manually.
• WINE is updated and still works.
• Minecraft is set up and runs natively in Linux.
• Using Netflix Desktop (which runs Silverlight under WINE) I can watch Netflix.

 So... yeah. I am not "done," but there has been major progress.

Linux Journal 10.29.13

Since the last post there have been some hurdles. Some stuff got broken and I ended up doing a full clean reinstall, which I debated using Ubuntu for. In the end, though, by carefully reinstalling and keeping track of absolutely everything I'm doing, I have Mint humming so nicely that I'm almost afraid to do anything more for fear of breaking it.

Nevertheless, there is more to be done. The few Windows programs that I need, including some games, will be run for the moment through VirtualBox, which I have not started to set up on this machine yet. Minecraft is already installed to run natively. There is likely to be some legwork involved with graphics drivers. I have some media files that still need to be moved over. A few assorted additional utilities aside, everything else is all set up in Linux.

Linux Journal 10.28.13: The Switch is Made

It took me several days to get all the backups set up to my satisfaction, but I am now running Linux (Mint 15 with Cinnamon 1.8.8+Olivia) on my main PC. This is a permanent development, not a trial... although I may switch versions at some point.

I've also gotten Steam running. This was more or less seamless — although I did create a repository for it. I haven't tried to actually run any games through it yet, though.

What did come up, in the writing of this very post, is how to type special characters in Linux. The emdash or long dash seen in the preceding sentence is one of these. In Windows you hold down the alt key and type the decimal value of the special character — 0151 for the emdash — on the numeric keypad. There are a couple of ways to do it in Linux, but the most straightforward way is to hold down CTRL+SHIFT, then type U plus the character code... but in hexadecimal, not decimal. This means I'll need to re-memorize the codes for the characters I use frequently, but I also have this page for reference.

I do — as of now — still have a Windows 7 partition on this machine. But by default it boots into Mint and I can, and plan to, wipe it out as soon as I can be rid of it.  I have already washed my hands clean of that malodorous load of filth, iTunes.

Linux Journal 10.21.13

This occurred over the weekend. Not sure why I took the shot then, as opposed to when VirtualBox was actually up and running successfully, but such are the perils of photography.

At any rate, this is a major hurdle out of the way in the quest to switch permanently to Linux.

Linux Journal 10.18.13

On the testbed PC, Ubuntu 13.04 is installed. WINE and VirtualBox, Clementine and GIMP are installed, and all tests run OK. Various applications are copied to an external hard disk for additional testing under VirtualBox or WINE. UnbuntuOne, which I plan to use for syncing files up to and down from the cloud, is all set up.

Right now the whole thing is waiting for the rather slow update to 13.10. Note for the future: if I want the current version, install the current version. Or plan on starting the update and then catching a movie or something.

Linux Journal 10.17.13

Cleaning up a copy of Windows to use as an image took more time than I'd expected. Back on track, I've installed Mint... the Cinnamon version. But I then went and manually did the updating and installation of MATE from the command line, just to do it. I haven't gotten any further yet. To be honest I am probably going to switch back to Ubuntu, even even though it really doesn't matter and matters even less when the choice is between these two. But Ubuntu is what I have been using, and generally it has a bit better documentation.

I'll make that call by my next Linux session. Either way, though, the next stop is VirtualBox, which took a little bit of fussing to get running the first time. This time around it shouldn't be an issue.

10.16.13

Today we take a short pause with Linux, to revert temporarily to Windows XP for the purposes of burning a fresh .iso to use through VirtualBox. Once this is done the test PC gets Windows washed away for the last time and has Mint installed.

Linux Journal 10.15.13

Ubuntu puts some barriers between the user and Linux. The biggest one that I encountered so far is the Ubuntu Software Center, a combination package manager and software manager. In principle it's a nice idea for those intimidated by Linux; it works like an app store. You just browse to the app you want and click install. For some stuff, like GIMP, this works fine. For a bunch of stuff that one might need but that does not come onboard, like Java for example, or WINE or VirtualBox, it might not.

In Linux, though, the command prompt is very powerful, and no less so in Ubuntu. In all of those cases above, I was able to get the application running with a bit of research and fiddling. So first barriers are overcome. Granted that I have not yet gotten WINE or VirtualBox to actually do what I need them to do, yet, but I'm confident that it can be done and will happen.

Another quirk of Ubuntu is that there is an installer called Wubi, the details of which I don't quite understand. But essentially it lets you set up a dual boot configuration without worrying about partitioning drives, mount points or any of that stuff. Playing to the strengths of Ubuntu, it's click and go. Unfortunately because you set the install size up front, you can run into problems later when trying to run, say, virtual sessions of Windows 7 inside that Ubuntu install. And for me at least  the Wubi install seemed to make Windows behave funnily. I can't prove that, but a couple of weird sound and bluetooth issues started when I installed via Wubi and went away after I uninstalled.

So where we are today is back to 100% Windows on my main PC. I think it needs to stay that way until I can get my must-have applications running smoothly on my backup PC... which I may switch over to Mint, now that I think on it, because that's the distro I intend to use on the main PC when it's ready.

Linux Journal: The Story So Far

For those who haven't been following my G+ posts regarding my Linux adventures, I have two laptop PCs here in my home laboratory: an old Toshiba M105 and a much newer Asus G74 powerhouse. The old one had been sitting idle for some time; a flaky and oft-repaired power cord means that it's not really very portable anymore without a replacement, and with my much more powerful PC alongside my wife's somewhat more powerful PC there really wasn't much use for it.

I'd been meaning to get into Linux for some time for a variety of reasons; this article sums up some of my thinking. In addition to those reasons, though, as an IT professional and budding computer programmer, I felt like Linux would remove some of the barriers between me and the guts of the computer. Which is less true of say, Ubuntu, but maybe we'll get to that later.

At any rate, what had really been stopping me was a matter of physical space. I just didn't have the room to set up a PC, desktop or otherwise, and leave it there for any period more than a day. Being primarily laptop-bound reinforced this. Our new place with its very nice basement, along with a very secondhand but wholly serviceable desk has finally given me room to set up "shop." This is really still in the process of being organized, but it's functional and I've been able to settle in a little bit and do some work.

All this having been accomplished, once the older laptop was unpacked (which of course took weeks) I set it up and started looking at Linux distributions to get a start with. Ultimately the choice of distro means very little, as Linux is extraordinarily customizable and you can add what you want and cut what you don't need, but I settled on what is for a lot of folks the Linux standard-bearer these days — Ubuntu.

Installing Ubuntu clean — that is, over any existing operating system — is very easy and requires absolutely no technical knowledge whatsoever, just a basic familiarity with computers. Get the download here; it comes in the form of an .iso file, or image, which you can then burn to a DVD (or CD if the image is small enough, but Ubuntu's isn't.) You can then boot from this disc. For some PCs the screen will show what key to hit during startup to get to the boot menu, while for others you'll need to look it up, but usually it's Escape or F12. Boot from the disc, follow the onscreen instructions, and Linux and everything onboard will be working hitchlessly in just a little while.

That was my experience, anyway; one of the hallmarks of Linux is its stability and reliability, and I had absolutely no issues with using any of the stuff that came with Ubuntu, which includes the really surprisingly nice LibreOffice suite, all for media playback and wireless networking, a bunch of system tools and other stuff. The whole experience was almost disturbingly smooth, not at all the troublesome installations some tales might lead one to expect.

From there I did a few things: installed some new apps including Steam, burned image discs of a bunch of different distributions to try out a few different things running Linux off a Live disc and played a bit with getting Linux on my primary PC. This has turned out to be trickier, since there are some Windows apps on my "working" computer that cannot be dispensed with, and I need to get that business straightened out before I can migrate entirely to Linux.  There have been a few minor triumphs and misadventures since then, but that's the story so far.

Linux Journal 10.14.13

So I have decided to start a blog as a vehicle for chronicling my adventures in Linux. I've been fooling with it for about a week and it's been alternatingly enthralling and frustrating. Linux takes a whole layer of crud out from between you and the guts of the computer, and that's both refreshing and educational.

At the moment I have an old Toshiba laptop running a clean install of Lubuntu 13.04. Performance is far better than it was getting under Windows XP. But this laptop doesn't really have the guts to run some of the applications I need. My main PC is running a dual boot setup with Ubuntu 12.04 and Windows 7, which is likely to remain the configuration until I get everything settled down.

One lesson learned is that it is flatly better to install stuff via the command line rather than whatever software manager is bundled with your distribution. Perhaps it's just the Ubuntu Software Center that's throwing me; the tools in Mint (for example) seem more intuitive. The primary struggle at the moment is with WINE, needed to run, minimally, Campaign Cartographer 3 and Fractal Terrains 3. It would be nice of it ran some games as well. Thus far FT3 runs seemingly without issue, while CC3 runs not at all, nor can I seem to get a fresh install to work. So I'm continuing to work on it.