Welcome to Ordinary Linux User!
At some point, years ago, I became a proficient DOS user. (I know - these days that and $2.00+ will get me a large coffee at Starbucks.) The more I learned about DOS, the more I chafed at its limitations. Sometime after I reached proficiency / disillusionment with DOS, I was asked to help out doing very junior admin work on UNIX systems, and I was astonished at the comparative "power" available on a UNIX system compared to a DOS / Windows system. Why... you could even write "batch" jobs on UNIX that would execute (cleanly) on a schedule and email the results of the batch job.
So... I was impressed with UNIX a long time ago, but never quite got around to actually doing much with UNIX - keeping NetWare, Mac, and later Windows servers going kept me pretty busy. Then Linux happened, and oh my gosh did the computing / networking world change from that!
So, I've experimented with Linux several times. I've installed Red Hat and used it a bit, played with other distributions, including Knoppix which was very cool that it would boot from a CD and could shut down and leave nothing behind on the host Windows sytems. I played with that quite a bit at my former employer. There were some other significant developments in Linux that tempted me, like Redmond Linux / Lycoris and Lindows / Linspire putting a "Windows" face on Linux with a very good desktop interface. But with all that, I still never got seriously around to getting a personal Linux system up and running.
One major reason was that for my "production" system, I switched from Windows to a Mac, mostly because I decided that 1) I needed to get work done, not have long learn/experiment/repeat cycles, 2) The Mac was Windows-like enough that I could transition to it pretty cleanly, and I could maintain my writing productivity by using Microsoft Office for Mac, and 3) the Mac uses BSD "underneath" and all the power and stability that I admired with UNIX/Linux was there on the Mac when I wanted it, and I had the very nice Mac Graphical User Interface (GUI) when I didn't want to deal with "raw" UNIX/BSD.
Then Linux changed again with the advent of Ubuntu.
Wow... Ubuntu seems to be about as good as Linux needs to be. There's a
real company behind it, paying programmers to make it better and fixing
things that need to be fixed and making it easier to use (and actually
documenting things?) It's also free (enough) and contributing back into
the open source movement. But, most of all, it's 1) real Linux/UNIX,
2) easy enough to use, and 3) will run on reasonable hardware. All the
things you need to do are there in an initial installation with little
"fussing". It seems that you can install it and actually get some work
done - the Internet stuff you expect is there, there are applications,
it recognizes hardware and auto-installs itself, and has a pretty good
desktop / GUI interface.
In short, Ubuntu looks good enough that I could install it and do useful things on it, and I plan to get it up and running on some leftover hardware that I have laying around. One thing I will do is upgrade RAM on the selected machine to whatever the maximum is, hopefully at least 1 GB.
Another Linux Distribution... actually, I'll take a moment to discuss "distributions". As an Ordinary Linux User... I generally don't care about distributions. I just want it to work, reliably. I have no real leanings one way or the other towards a preferred "distro".
That said, another Linux distro that I'm intrigued with is "Damn Small Linux" (DSL). What little I know about it is that it is a very resource-efficient, but full-blown implementation of Linux. That appeals to me in getting Linux up and running on some "low-end" systems that I want to dedicate to specific functions. For example, I have a "cute" 386SX system that I'd like to find something useful for it to do besides run DOS. I have some interesting routing tasks in mind that involve sorting out multiple Internet Access options and selectively bridging my (soon to be active again) Amateur Packet Radio systems, home Local Area Network, and Internet Access. Etc.
So, I consider myself nothing resembling "guru-class" when it comes to using UNIX / Linux / BSD... and I plan to write about what I learn about - here.
Thanks,
Steve
By Steve Stroh
This article is Copyright © 2008 by Steve Stroh. Excerpts and links are expressly permitted (and encouraged).
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