(Notice in the popup pic–just CLICK on the thumbnail–that I’ve hidden the TWO default–top and bottom–nav bars)
After multiple baffling issues (traced at last to a failing power supply, of all things), I finally installed Ubuntu Linux 6.06.1 on an old computer last night/today (yeh, starting in the evening when I should have been going to bed was likely part of the problem tracking down the eventual culprit. *heh*).
OK. “Old” computer? Well, yeh. 333mhz Slot 1; 256MB; 1 40gig HDD and another 10gig. A “nothing special” AGP vidcard, a generic sound card and an old 10mbit network card.
An old computer.
Ubuntu 6.06.1 automagically recognized and installed all of it, except for the generic sound card (I’ll fix that later). First thing I did was download and install Opera 9.0 for Linux. Slick. Browsed the network here at “twc hall” and found everything I had passwords for (urm, pretty much everything, eh? :-)). Nice interface, a little slicker GUI look right outa the box than most XP installs I’ve worked on. As snappy on the old, seriously underpowered 333mhz/256MB comp as Win2K is (yeh, it’s in a dual boot–but that’s another issue).
Altogether, I’m quite pleased with the way the OS works. I’d been cruising along for a while and noticed a lil popup notice about updates. CLICKED “OK” and the OS found the Ubuntu packages needed and handled everything slicker than goose grease.
Ubuntu 6.06.1 “Dapper Drake” comes with a bounty of good software installed by default, including my fav office software, Open Office 2, which I’m already well familiar with in its Windows version. Generated some files with OO’s text editor, saved as M$Word format and… opened ’em in Word 2000 on this computer.
Not too shabby.
Although this is by far the easiest Linux install I’ve done, there still might be some gotchas for the Aunt Tillys out there. In fact, while I think that a computer already set up with Dapper Drake might be juuuuust fine for a novice (and naive) computer user, I’d suggest that someone more familiar with computers actually set the thing up for Aunt Tilly. Not that it’s all that hard, but formatting partitions and setting up mount points (even in the really cool, REALLY EASY GParted graphic partition manager) would likely be a tad intimidating for a novice user.
Oh, for those who’ve done lotsa disk management, GParted is a dream to use. The only comparable product on the Windows platform would be Partition Magic, which is itself Pretty Darned Cool.
But GParted is FREE, folks.
Grab yourself an old clunker somewhere (but be kind to yourself and do put more memory in the thing and maybe a better vidcard :-)) and slap Ubuntu Dapper Drake on it. Depending on your computing needs, you may find you don’t even need a Windows computer any more…
Caveat: I might have had a smoother time installing Ubuntu Dapper Drake on the old machine had I used the text-based installer that’s also available for download, but then I’d not have been able to see how really slick the GUI installer is. After I finished with inputting my user info and repartitioning the hard drives (including shrinking the Win2K NTFS partition), the rest of the installation was almost completely hands off. Really slick.
Tags: dapper, dapper drake, Ubuntu, Linux.