Xubuntu followup

Compgeeky stuff. Just skip on down the page if such bores you.

Less than a day on this iteration of Xubuntu, and I’m pretty much sold on it. Oh, little things like, where the heck are some files/folders I know are there. For example, I expected to find a lot more in my /home/[username]/ folder after installing Wine and (just to see if I could–NOT to actually use the infernal thing!) Internet Exploder (vers 4, 5, AND 6). Internet Exploder works as well as Internet Exploder does, but where the heck are the dlls I wanted to inherit for other Windoze apps to use? I know they are there cos IE is working, but am so far having no joy finding them.

Hmmm, had no trouble finding the things under Puppy Linux or Ubuntu/Kbuntu, so what’s so different about Xubuntu? It’ll be fun solving that and other lil quirky things as time permits. Probably involve the very thing I really need to ease into more and more: more command line stuff in Linux. The GUI is powerful and mostly “intuitive” for an experienced Windoze user (with a lil flexible thinking)–ceetainly not really much of a learning curve over flipping between Win98/Win2KPro and WinXP Home/Pro.

In fact, I think I’ll just approach this pretty much that way. There are a lot of GUI and even file organization differences between the various flavors available in different Linux GUI-based distros–even among the relatively similar Ubuntu distros–and each one has different system utilities to handle system management tasks. It’s just a matter of getting a firm grip on those differences, I think.

For example, Freespire’s CNR (“Click and Run”–although it’s not quite that easy–close, but no cigar, as Bill Clinton might say) is a pretty slick way to find and install Linux apps, but it flubbed installing Wine. Puppy Linux’s PupGet installer is pretty slick, but has weaknesses of its own. Apt and Synaptics Package manager–the defaults for the different Ubuntu distros–are very powerful, easy to use and install most apps very smoothely (Wine was a snap to install with Apt, for example). But sometimes, the only way to install a package effectively it’s still necessary to drop into a Terminal session, and each of the different flavors have different tools available to access a terminal–command line–session from within the GUI.

“Aunt Tilly” friendly? Well, each of the three distros mentioned here pretty much are–dertainly as much OOB “friendliness” as any Windows version I’ve seen recently for folks who just want to browse the web, play media files, do email and various office app things. Heck, the wireless networking setup app in the tiny little 60-85MB Puppy Linux is easier to use than the various Windoze wireless setup apps that come installed with woreless-capable Windoze computers. But folks wanting to do more will have to dig a little and tweak here and there, learn to handle command line sessions, etc., at the very least.

It seems Linux distros have reached the point where it’s unlikely that a new user will have to learn how to compile his own kernel, write his own drivers, and all the other sorts of things that for years kept Linux the sole domain of propeller heads.