I’ve just tripped on the linux foundations video contest and I thought I’d post my favourite of them I have seen.
I just found the magazine with which I got my first Linux CDs, so I thought I’d throw out a blog post about it.
I’ve started experimenting with Linux at the age of 14 in 2003 I think. I don’t remember exactly, had to check when SuSe Linux 8.1 came up, which I started to install on my first decent own machine. I’ve had been using computers since before my third birthday. My father allowed me to play some old DOS games on his computer back then. Later I started experimenting with a computer with Windows 3.11 and later Windows 95. I never really missed anything, because I mostly played games until I more and more read of Linux in various computer magazines.
I was a fan of share- and freeware and the concept of open source started to catch my interest. Since 2003 I’ve tried a lot of Linux distributions and various versions.
I had shorter installations of Knoppix, Mandrake or Suse and longer ones with Kanotix, Debian, Gentoo or Ubuntu. Right now I’m mainly using Sidux on my Laptop and mainstation because I’m basically a Debian fan who just loves apt but likes the scripts delivered by the Sidux team.
A saying I believe in, concerning distributions is: Ubuntu for users, Debian for servers, Gentoo for insanes. I don’t know if meadow is the creator of this saying, but if so: credits to him.
I’ve been looking for a fast and easy to use desktop environment forever. XFCE was a bit too heavy and Fluxbox too minimalistic. The guys from Fluxbuntu did a good job on a minimalistic and easy to use distribution, but you have limited possibilities of adding all these features to a running installation.
A few month ago I heard about LXDE. LXDE is exactly what I’ve been looking for, it even seems familiar for Windows users. It’s easy to install on every running installation, like any desktop environment.
Here we see the PcMan file manager, the Gpic image viewer and the standard text editor leafpad. The startmenu is very small and easy to overlook
Through a middle click we can view all applications opened on all desktops. The graphical theme chooser of openbox, lxde’s window manager and a classic shell (lxterminal).
So the most basic LXDE apps are:
With Gpicview I’ve found a new favourite image viewer, it’s really quick and functional.
Beginners might need a bit help with language and keyboard layout functions, I’ve not found build-in options for that yet. Maybe a small app for that would help. If you don’t know how to change your keyboard layout, have a look at the setxkbmap command.
I’ve just tried out Linux Mint today, because I’m writing a FAQ (frequently asked questions) like thread for the deviantART linux forums. I wanted to test it and see how beginner friendly it is. In my opinion it’s very user friendly. It comes with nice hardware support and on my laptop (Thinkpad R51) it even comes with XGL out of the box. I think this could kind of be my new favourite distribution, because it uses Gnome and is using apt (with Ubuntu repositories) as the packet manager. My impression is, that Linux Mint also focusses on making it easier for people to use proprietary drivers and codecs. I’ve found Envy on the LiveCD and options to install Nvidia or ATI drivers with few clicks. That, in my eyes is a good thing. Userfriendlyness is a very important point. I even played with the thought of installing it and will maybe do so tomorrow.
Edit: I have installed it, like announced and I’m very satisfied so far.
Screenshots:
This is the main menu of Linux Mint
Here XGL and some apps like Firefox 3, installation dialogue and packet search running
Links:
Parted Magic is a distribution focussed on, guess what? Partitioning! Exactly! Recently (some month ago) I had the problem that none of the distribution I actually liked to install on the machine were able to edit the partition table properly. I looked around and found Parted Magic! which really is great and should be a part of every IT-lovers mobile toolbox. This small and handy gui tool is really worth downloading and a smart solution to partitioning problems. Nice to have, really. Especially if you’re often confronted with partitioning in general.
Yes, finally during my time working on an article for a german webmaster community, I felt that I really had to go through the functions of vi. Vi is a legendary editor that is one of the standard editors in most Unix Systems. I actually understand the hate- and lovestories about this editor. People might say: “Come on, it’s just an editor!“, but if you ever had to configure a config file on a server, far far away and the only tool you have is vi, this can be a very disturbing situation. Vi works different from most text-editors existing I guess. The keys you press in vi have functions, they don’t make you write text, if you don’t put vi in the “insert mode” with the i key. And it handles a lot of additional commands and you actually work with vi through them a lot. Like saving a file is “:w” and exiting without saving “:q!”. So we see, it’s not very intuitive. On the other hand, vi can give you excellent workflows through the intelligent use and placement of hotkeys and if you remember all the commands right of course.
my favourite quote from wikipedia about vi: Sure vi is user-friendly; it’s just peculiar about who it makes friends with.
I don’t think I’ll use vi or vim (improved version) for productivity reasons, because I like the KISS principe (Keep It Simple, Stupid). I don’t want to get used to all the key bindings, at least not for now. Maybe vi will seem more attractive when I’m handling code daily or at my job. Currently I’m only using it on smaller scripts I’m working on right now, so, welcome my new friend vi 
so long… keep typing
Hvordan man kan bruge Ressourcerum med Linux.
Hvorfor Ressourcerummet ikke virker med Linux.
(in case some of the Danish students googles the topic)
As a student at a German school in Denmark, we have to obey the Danish schools system and rules, which is no major problem I think. Though a problem is, that the sources for an essential assignment are available for Windows users only. It’s not a direct problem for our school, because our laptops are delivered with Windows XP, but it’s discriminating against all other who prefer to work on alternative operating systems. To point it out again, this assignment has to be done, to finish our three years of education at our school. This CD was made by the Danish Ministry (Undervisningsministeriet) of Education and is delivered to every third year class in Denmark. The important sources, are saved on a CD, which is protected against being run by a non-windows OS with the following script in the index.html file.
<script language=”JavaScript”>
var sdfz = new Date()
if (self.location.hash!=’#C’ + (32*sdfz.getMonth()+sdfz.getDate())) self.location.replace(“error.html”)
</script>
The Startup.exe on the CD has to be started to access the Data through the framework. Of course you can pick out the data manually, but without descriptions and unsorted. In my eyes, it’s a crime to limit the access to Windows users.
How to avoid Windows, using the resources:
If you are effected by this and want to use it with Linux, just copy all the data from the CD and remove the script above from the index.html. (You just open the index.html with a simple text editor like Notepad, Kate, Gedit.)
Afterwards your can use the CD without restrictions.
The Team around the Linux Distribution Sidux, has released a new preview of the Eros release. This release, however, seems to support my mainboard fully, so my Linux-Box here at home is online again! It was a big pain in the ss to be unconnected for so long and be forced to use Windows on this precious hardware. The team who maintains Sidux is mainly the old Kanotix team. Sidux is a stable Operating System based on Debian Sid. They have a lot of scripts, that make it very valueable for beginners. If you want to try Linux, this could be your Live-cd or first installation. Give it a try 