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Hey All,

Here’s a seasoned windows developers tale of switching to Ubuntu Linux for the first time.

I have to admit I love Windows XP. I’ve not ever bothered with Vista, simply because, XP did everything I needed, and if it’s not broken, I don’t want to try fix it. I would like to point out that I have used Linux from the command line in the past, when using putty etc, but I’ve never really used it as a Desktop. So here’s how it went down.

I backed up everything to a network share at work, stuff like my documents, my music and some training videos I’d been watching. I made a list of my most frequently used programs and my Firefox extensions and set about downloading the .iso image of Ubuntu Ibex.

Once downloaded, I burnt the image to a CD had lunch then came back to carry out the install.

I inserted the Ubuntu CD and shut down my machine for the last time with Windows XP, sad times!

The pc rebooted from the Ubuntu CD and gave me a couple of options I first checked the CD for errors, then when there were no errors found, I chose the option to install Ubuntu!

Here’s the 7 steps for easy and quick installation of an operating system:

1. Select your Language, English, no brainier.
2. Select location, do use the map! I scrolled the list before twigging you could click on the map, oh well.
3. Keyboard Layout
4. Installation type, I chose what was recommended, Guided “Use entire disk”
5. Enter machine’s name and user account and password.
6. A summary of the options chosen above.
7. Go!

So really there’s only 5 options you need to choose from, it does the rest. So I fired an elastic band at my monitor and swivelled on my chair for 10 minutes or so while the little orange status bar went across my screen. I did think about getting a book from the library to polish up on a few Linux tips and tricks but watching the status bar was just too riveting, and I couldn’t be arsed to walk to 100 yards.

So I think the install roughly took around abut 10 minutes, because the screen saver kicked in and after I revived it, the installation was just finishing up. So not bad timing wise there! The last XP install I did took about 45 minutes!

I was prompted to restart so I promptly did, it automatically logged me on to the Desktop, first sign of trouble, I was using dual monitors, and during the install one was blank while the other carried out the install. When I’d rebooted and logged in the primary monitor was fine yet the secondary monitor looked like someone had thrown a cup of sick on the screen. Not good, I wasn’t sure what graphics card I had in this machine either. I paniced, then pulled myself together as a warning popped up on the desktop telling me I was set up with the wrong video driver and I should install one of the following list:

1. NVidia 177
2. NVidia 173

Being a fan of bigger is better, I chose the NVidia 177 (it said recommended next to it too) It set that up and installed the drivers for my graphics card automatically. I also got a notification that my system was out of date and some updates needed to be installed, so without question I installed those too. Then I rebooted again.

Upon reboot number 2, the graphics were still a little funky so after slowing down the mouse speed (it’s way too fast off the install) I asked around the guys in the office and found I can list everything attached to the PCI ports on the motherboard by running lspci from the terminal window. This told me I had an Nvidia card (no way?)… so being all the wiser I Googled the words Ubuntu Nvidia Dual Monitor and came up with this guide how to get dual monitors working with ubuntu. Rock on! I followed that guide and within minutes I was rocking my dual monitor set up.

LAMP Stack Set up

Next I was going to install apache2, php5 and mysql. So I could do some local development. This is where the awesome Ubuntu documentation came in. Check these docs for the guide to using tasksel command to install LAMP. It’s very good and using tasksel is much easier then individually installing each component.

Next was to download Zend Studio and install so I can do some work. This was fine, using Firefox as per usual. I ran into problems when starting Zend Studio once I got it installed, the app started fine but would just show a grey box with no title bar or window objects inside, bit of a pain in the arse wouldn’t you agree!! So following this guide sorted me out.

After that I backed up everything from my network share, the way to do this is to chose from the desktop menu “places” -> “Connect to Server” -> Windows Share – then enter your sever details. Then its just a case of copy and paste the files over!

Oh last thing I did was set up pidgin messenger, a multi protocol instant messenger client, and Skype (business use!) This was easy using the package installer and downloading from the Skype website. Next thing I did with these was to add them to the start up of Ubuntu because I was forgetting to start them up and wondering why I’d suddenly become unpopular. This guide helped me add start up programs.

My “Jerry Springer’s Final Thoughts”

So all in all – it was pretty simple, I’m loving Linux, so far, I think Ubuntu is seriosuly challenging Windows, the main thing they’ve got to do tho, get rid of the default crappy theme!!! It’s so ugly and makes the OS look ancient! I really think thats one area the Ubuntu guys need to focus if they want to get a share of the desktop market, make it pretty!! Functionality wise it completely out performs Windows on most things, and its really simple to use, I think things could still be easier and more intuitive to do on Ubuntu if they tidied up the interface somewhat. They could always make their server version more Sys admin orientated and their desktop verison more N00by focused to try get it more widely accepted. Well thats my 2 cents, time to do some work!