Ubuntu Linux - first impressions
From: JPB (news{_at_}europa{.}demon{.}co{.}uk)
Date: 10/31/04
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Date: Sun, 31 Oct 2004 09:37:26 +0000
Ubuntu Linux - first impressions
I've been a happy SuSE 9 user for the best part of a year, and seeing the
Ubuntu "warty" released it looked interesting, and worth a look. I tried
the LiveCD first, which booted fine, and gave me an idea of what to
expect. So yesterday I went ahead with the full installation.
The installation all went fine, and I agree with the Ubuntu decision to go
with a text-based installer. You only do installation once, and a
ncurses-style tab/cursor/highlight/enter is perfectly satisfactory - I see
little advantage in a graphical installer such as SuSE provide.
Partitioning could prove dangerous, as it would be very easy to press
Enter, and end up wiping out an entire disk. I chose manual partitioning,
instructing it to use the same swap partition also used by my SuSE
environment, and mounting / on hdb2 which I'd cleared for the purpose. The
guided partitioning offered to make hdb2 an extended partition, in order
to create a new swap and / mount as logical partition within that - but I
vetoed that as there seems no reason for two Linux environments not to
share the same swap file, since they can't both be running, and I feel
more comfortable sticking to primary partitions.
The bootloader setup correctly identified and setup my existing SuSE and
Win2k installations. Ideally I'd have liked to choose the 'no bootloader'
option, and added it manually to my existing SuSE-created Grub setup, but
to do that I'd have needed to know the Grub settings I needed for Ubuntu,
and the only way I knew to find that out was to let it install Grub and
see what it did. Anyway it worked fine, and once it was done I was able to
amend the Grub setup so it booted my SuSE by default. That was necessary
as my missus also uses the machine, and wouldn't want to see experimental
Ubuntu starting automatically.
My file system mount points I had to set up manually in fstab (hda1 & 2,
hdb2, 3, & 4) for vfat and reiser. That would probably be beyond a
complete newbie to Linux, and it was only easy for me since I was able to
compare to Yast-created examples that I was already familiar with from my
SuSE installation.
On the other hand, for someone new to Linux it is no bad thing to have a
mate familiar with Linux on hand when you first setup, just to get things
such as partitioning, mount points, and internet connections nicely
sorted. I did one of those using SuSE 9.1 for a friend last week,
resulting in a system that 'just works' with ease of use exceeding Windows
versions and which really is ready for any Aunt Tilly. Similarly, if my
non-computer-literate better half can use Linux happily, as she does, then
anyone can.
Next step was the internet. I'd been using an Alcatel Speedtouch USB/DSL
modem with my SuSE 9.0, which I'd set up with the aid of the
speedtouchconf sourceforge project. Yes, I know it's el-cheapo hardware
given away with broadband connections, but as long as it works it saves me
buying a router just yet, which is worth a bit of set-up hassle to me. The
speedtouchconf 1.2 script didn't quite work with the Ubuntu 2.6 kernel,
but after a bit of faffing around and also putting on the speedtouch 1.3
sourceforge project, I got it to work. First time I've seen Mozilla
Firefox on Linux - very nice!
Getting connected was pleasing, as I was especially interested to see apt
working in Ubuntu. RPM package management with Yast under SuSE is all
right, but I have found it to be a bit of a pain at times. Using apt with
Synaptic, I was immediately and happily picking out and loading the
applications I wanted to use, including the Pan newsreader I'm writing
this with. So I'm extremely impressed and delighted with how easy that was
- apt rocks!
In conclusion I shall be keeping my Ubuntu as an experimental environment
for now, perhaps putting KDE on it and trying other things as well. For a
complete newbie transferring from Windows perhaps Ubuntu is harder to get
going with, if only for setup tools like Yast and no doubt whatever the
likes of Mandrake etc have.
For me, Ubuntu is a strong contender for my next primary environment,
either with the current Warthog release or perhaps with the next
(Hedgehog?). The reasons for that are that I'm a little nervous of where
SuSE is going with the consumer distro (is it going to go down the Fedora
path?), I don't like the decision to omit gcc and make from SuSE Personal
9.1, I like the Ubuntu philosophy and Debian basis, and I really, really
like apt and Synaptic for my package management.
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