I spent the long Easter weekend moving my home computer (an ageing, mechanically suspect, but perfectly adequate laptop) from Windows XP to Ubuntu. Why? Mostly boredom, but also because I’ve fancied trying Linux for quite a while now. A few years ago, when I had a wider range of computing gear available, I tried installing Linux (no idea which distribution it was) and I couldn’t make it do anything, it just wasn’t sufficiently developed at that point for mere mortals like myself.

The catalyst for this move was my discovery of a neat little utility called Wubi which allows you to install a self-contained Ubuntu installation on to an existing Windows partition. To all intents and purposes it’s a proper installation, which the added advantage that if it all goes awry then you can just delete Wubi from Add/Remove Programs in XP and start again I used a Wubi version that installed Ubuntu 7.04, but the current version installs a beta version of Ubuntu 8.04. Wubi gave me a chance to try a Linux installation without any risk to my existing Windows setup, which was invaluable.

I’ll save you the boring details, but needless to say I liked what I saw and decided to make The Big Move(tm) to Linux as my normal operating system. Being the wuss I am, I wanted to keep a limited Windows installation available in case anything went bad. Enter another two handy utilities, LVPM and the associated Partition Manager. These allowed me to first resize my Windows partition to make space for dedicated Linux partitions and then copy my existing Wubi installation to that dedicated partition. Not having to start again when I’d put some considerable time into my Wubi installation was a godsend.

One week on and I haven’t booted into Windows yet. That’s not through stubbornness either, I genuinely haven’t had reason to. I have my GNOME desktop set up to be quite close in appearance to my old XP desktop so I don’t feel alienated. Also, I’ve found suitable equivalents to (almost) all the programs I used to use: Thunderbird for Outlook; aMSN for Windows Live Messenger; Banshee for iTunes; KMyMoney for Microsoft Money; and LightZone for Paint.Net (for photo editing specifically - this is £106 for Windows but the Linux beta is free!). There is only *one* sticking point and that’s Microsoft Office. It’s rare I have to use it at home (I usually use Remote Desktop to access my work computer - and yes that works fine from Ubuntu too) but I can’t get on with OpenOffice. Realistically I need total MS Office compatibility and my few attempts to load Word, Excel and Powerpoint files into OpenOffice only produced moderate results.

So do I think Ubuntu is ready to take on Windows? No, but it’s not far off. The thing is that when everything is working properly it’s pretty easy to use, but when things go a bit wrong it takes some lurking under the bonnet to fix. For example, my wireless LAN adapter (a Linksys WUSB54GP) refused to work using WPA encryption with the native driver - in the end I had to use the Windows driver with the ndiswrapper module, which required some editing of configuration files to blacklist the native driver and set up the ndiswrapper. The other problem I’ve encountered was today when I updated the installation to version 7.10… and suddenly my laptop couldn’t boot (eek…) It turned out that the GRUB boot loader had retained the entries from the 7.04 version and had kept it as the default option, causing the ever-amusing “kernel panic” message. It was easily fixed by commenting out the appropriate entries in the boot loader configuration file, but again it’s not the kind of thing you’d want a normal end user to have to carry out.

The next version of Ubuntu, 8.04, is due out next month (the clue is in the name…) and no doubt it will bring extra refinement, but as I mentioned previously, I think it will be a while yet before Linux is a viable alternative to Windows for the average PC owner.

| | | | | Trackback | Permalink (pingbacks enabled) | 2 Comments »

The creators of the BBC Micro are reuniting at the Science Museum in London to discuss the legacy of the computer known fondly as "the Beeb" (BBC News)

The BBC Micro brings back fond memories of primary school for me, as we had a couple of those hi-tech beasts in our classrooms.  The BBC Micro was a *proper* computer… floppy disks that were actually floppy (the 5.25" ones), a tiny little eight colour monitor that emitted a constant high pitched noise that drove me round the twist and also gave you the most epic static shocks…  My hand can still remember by reflex the Shift-Break key combination you used to load your program from the floppy too.

I seem to remember we had a Lego interface for it too, which was great fun - that might have been for the later Archimedes though, my memory is a bit hazy on that.

Fortunately for me, BBC BASIC was quite similar to the Sinclair BASIC I used at home, as remembering the intricacies of the two languages was a bit of a pain for all Year 4 programmers… *cough* This article at least shows I wasn't the only one!

My secondary school used Archimedes computers, probably the A3000, which was a successor of the BBC Micro.  I seem to remember they were very capable computers in the days before PCs got their act together with Windows 95 and the suchlike (the first time I used a 'modern' PC was at college…)  The interface was easy to use, even for the average early 1990s pupil, and you could get the dot matrix printer screeching away in no time!  Provided the printer switch was in the right position, you'd fed the paper into the toothed guides properly, not pressed Form Feed instead of Line Feed, etc etc…

It's quite hard to believe that in less than ten years personal computing went from this level to the ubiquitous (relatively) intuitive PCs we all use today.

| | | | | Trackback | Permalink (pingbacks enabled) | 2 Comments »

I've been watching The Big Bang Theory on Channel 4 lately.  On the face of it, it's just like any other formulaic American sitcom, complete with extremely annoying canned laughter (although one of the Wikipedia references points to tickets for the live audience… maybe they just didn't laugh?)  The difference with this series is that I can't take my eyes off it, despite it's huge cringe factor… it reminds me of my own life too much!!

It revolves around a couple of physics academics and their (every so slightly geeky) everyday life, including their dealings with the obligatory 'girl next door'.  The one saving grace is that I'm not *quite* as geeky as these guys… am I?!

| | | | | Trackback | Permalink (pingbacks enabled) | No Comments »