Hello all.
For years I’ve been a part of the open source phenomenon, but not really as an active participant. I’ve always been the type of person who likes to try the newest OSes.
Since the mid-nineties I’ve used Linux on and off. I believe my first distribution was Slackware. It came with so much useless software it was pretty overwhelming. In a time where my install disc for Windows took only about 50 megabytes – getting a distro on 6 CDs was huge.
Co-incidentally, I really didn’t have access to the Internet until about the same time. Until then I had mostly fought with drivers and jumpers and the other annoying aspects of the early days of DOS+Windows systems.
Fast-forward to today. I’ve recently taken it upon myself to go 100% Linux on my laptop. By this I mean that my main and only bootable OS on the hard disk is Mandriva Linux 2007 Spring Edition. I’ve installed it on an Acer Aspire 3620 with 1GB RAM and a 100GB HDD.
I chose this distribution mostly because I can’t be bothered to compile my own system from scratch using Gentoo. I’ve played with Gentoo and while it’s fun and you can make a useful system with it, I have extensive experience with Mandriva and it seems to get the job done. I’m not one of those people who desires such ultimate control over their OS as to have each part compiled by yours truly. I can take it if there’s an extra module here and there taking up resources. FFS, I’ve been using MS Windows for this long…
WiFi Trouble
While my WiFi is now working perfectly I can’t exactly say it wasn’t a huge battle to get it going and going consistently.
When I first installed, I was of course asked for my Windows driver files because the common WiFi chipset in Centrino systems, the Broadcomm BCM43xx is not supported natively. So I I hunted down my driver files and installed them but for some reason the version I installed allowed me access at home – but didn’t work at all at my local cafe where I go to sit with my coffee and get work done on this laptop.
Well I managed to remove all traces of the original driver using instructions found on a forum somewhere. Google is your friend kids. This is true especially for anyone venturing into the murky waters of Linux.
Now I’m quite happy because I have working WiFi access in Linux and it seems to handle shoddy access points such as the one at the cafe fairly well.
I infected my install with Windows, just in case.
While staying true to my initial goal of having Linux as the only bootable OS, I wanted to make my transition as painless as possible. I still use some programs and play some games that can’t be easily replicated in Linux. For this reason I downloaded the free version of VMware and I have a fully functioning Windows XP desktop installed as a virtual machine.
I’m impressed with VMware’s performance under Linux. It’s much faster, it seems, than running VMware under Windows. Even my desktop which is a much faster machine seems much less responsive in a virtual machine under Windows XP.
Overall I’m very happy with my laptop now that I’ve loaded a flavour of Linux on it that I can tolerate. I find myself using my laptop more often than my desktop now. Exploring all of the new programs, enjoying the much better font rendering akin to font rendering in Mac OS X and generally taking it all in is a fresh and enjoyable experience for me.
I’ll keep this blog up to date if I hit any snags I think people should know about.
My Verdict
Installing Linux from scratch isn’t for everybody. If you want to play with Linux, buy a Dell pre-installed with Ubuntu and enjoy that. You’ll get full technical support from both Dell and the Ubuntu community. Using Linux and getting used to a different system does imply some work. It’s also not as boring as using the same old stupid desktop, or a desktop that’s barely new and just pretty – like Vista.
Before you flame me for that Vista comment please keep in mind I do know about the better process scheduling, the upgraded security measures, etc. and I’ve installed Vista since the betas on several different machines and have used the full production version. It’s still a disappointing piece of crap IMHO. Your mileage may vary…
