Ubuntu Part II

Making computing fun and affordable

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/Sociology/ubuntu2.com
8/21/08

I'm writing this piece in a lovely little program called “Open Office”. There are variations that run in Windows, on Macs, and in Linux, and this is the one that came packaged – free of charge – with Ubuntu. It's the Microsoft Word Suite, with its own word processor, data base, spreadsheet, and a fairly nice little publishing program. Not only does it do everything the Word Suite does, but it does it for over $500 less. The commands are the same as those found in Word or Word Perfect, and include a ton of features. The only time I was perplexed was when I looked for the dash command, and was told it was the symbol that I think of as “the fleur de Mac”-- the symbol Mac uses that roughly corresponds to the control key for the rest of us. A little more investigating taught me that control-hyphen would give me a quite satisfactory dash. A bit more, and I found the program will quite happily make the dashes for me as I go along. In a while, I'll save it as a doc file, and either Word or Word Perfect will be happy to open it for me. Barring a power glitch, I don't need to save often: this program has never frozen up on me.

Open Office is one of the programs that comes packaged with Ubuntu. Firefox 3.0 and Thunderbird 2.0 are also at hand. Firefox is a web browser that is safer and easier to use than Microsoft's Internet Explorer, and also comes with a raft of nifty add-ons and plug-ins. I can blacklist any and all suspect websites. If I'm really feeling paranoid, I can whitelist them, too. Sorry. I can't compare Thunderbird with Outlook Express without bursting into uncontrollable laughter.

Ubuntu also comes with video and sound players that knock the socks off of anything Windows has to offer. The machine I'm working on is a relic—a single core 1.1 gigahertz machine that originally shipped with Windows ME. It could play music adequately, provided I wasn't making too many other demands on the CPU, but video play left a lot to be desired. Now that Windows is gone and it runs Ubuntu, the relic runs every bit as fast as my dual-core 5.3 gHtz at my office does with Vista. And it actually plays full-screen video better, handling AVI files and MP4s with no dropouts or jitters, and only rarely does it have any screen fractalization. I even borrowed a copy of a hi-res reproduction of a movie, a 4.3 gigabyte AVI with a running time of 86 minutes. Vista choked on it. That was with a graphic card four times the speed and size of my home relic, and ten times the processing power. Ubuntu at home struggled—the image would freeze while the sound continued, particularly when there was a lot of movement onscreen. The Ubuntu on my work system, the 64-bit version of 8.04, was unfazed, and played it without concern, even as I played Sudoku and ran the updater.

That brings me to the very nicest feature of Ubuntu: the repository. Under applications there is an option: add/remove programs. It offers a very long list of programs, each with a paragraph that describes what it is and what it does. If you like the looks of one, you simply check the box next to it, and continue on down the list. When you've selected enough to fill your heart with joy (my first time I selected 40 programs, some of which I STILL haven't explored) you just simply hit the “apply” button, and wait. Ubuntu downloads and installs the programs, a process that rarely takes more than a few minutes. You don't even have to reboot; the programs are there for you to use at will.

The repository breaks down into variations; there are the programs that are done under the auspices of Ubuntu; there are those in the broader arena of the Delphian community, which covers most of the Linux varieties; there are the unsupported programs designed for Ubuntu but which fall outside the guidelines Ubuntu has of not using any proprietary drivers, and there is the universal repository, which is the wild-wild-west of Ubuntu. That's where you find programs they would really rather you didn't have, such as those that decode and copy commercial DVDs onto 4.3 gigabyte blanks, or 128-bit encryption programs, torrents downloaders various, and other things that no reputable user would dream of having. Having the impeccable morals that I do, I didn't waste a moment debating the ethics of possessing such programs. I trust that you won't, either.

If you do wander into dicey parts of the Internet, your odds of leaving with your computer intact and your credit information still in your wallet where it belongs are greatly enhanced. Most forms of spyware aren't set up to break through Linux, which has a better security setup to begin with. (Much of Windows' “security” is devoted to limiting what their own users can do, often at the expense of actually protecting them from bad guys). Similarly, viruses that affect Linux of any stripe are rare. Not only is it harder to subvert the system, but Linux simply hasn't made the enemies in the computing community that Microsoft has. I have antivirus programs on my systems, one for each computer. Compare with Windows, where I have THREE, plus Threatfire.

The array of software available—all for free—in Ubuntu is amazing. The image manipulation program, GIMP, is easily the equal of Photo Impact and has a few tricks Photoshop never heard of. A layout program, Scribus, lacks the powerful drawing tools of Corel Draw, but has the same layout features that make Corel Draw such a wonderful program. (And the two might be related: Corel was marketing Linux-based versions of Word Perfect and other programs, and was rumored to be working on a Linux version of Corel Draw. Then Microsoft bought 30% of Corel's stock, and the project was abruptly scrapped. But Scribus help files feature text filler in the examples in Latin. Gee. Where have I seen that before?).

Ubuntu doesn't have anything to match the Macromedia website design suite, or the Nero disk suites, but with thousands of volunteers and a stable source of income, it's only a matter of time. If you just need to burn a CD or DVD, or construct a reasonably simple website, Ubuntu has you covered.

Font-handling has come a long way in Ubuntu, and the set I'm using in Open Office, which, while possessing unfamiliar names (this is “Nimbus Roman No 9”) are TTF quality.

Ubuntu ships with relatively few drivers, but the repository takes care of that, especially if you have it set to the universal repository. It's a good idea to be logged on when you first play videos or music, because the drivers might not be at hand. If they aren't, the program will tell you you need drivers, and should it get them? You say “yes,” and without fuss, questions or reboots, it gets them, and in less than a minute, you're being entertained. Most of my peripherals are Canon, and my printer, when I first loaded Ubuntu, had been on the market for less than three months. I wondered if it would run. The specific driver wasn't there, but Ubuntu looked for and found a reasonable substitute right away. Unlike Windows, I didn't have to spend hours chasing blind alleys through user blogs via Google.

If you like eye-candy on your screen, Ubuntu has literally hundreds of themes in the repository, including some that rival Mac, and one that basically IS Mac OSX (no surprise: Mac OS and Ubuntu share a common ancestor). All the goodies that Vista has that can make your dual-core run like a 386 are there, including flip screen, dual screen, translucent panels, and even a nifty little cube that you can spin and select up to six different programs running at once.

I have a multi-screen setup that allows me to flick instantly from one program to another. The only problem is that I get distracted, and forget that I already have a certain program open in a different screen. The other day I was horrified and amused to discover that my work system was running three different Firefoxes, two Thunderbirds, a Scribus, the Pan newsreader (which was downloading images), Open Office, Abi Word, Sudoku, the Amorak music player (which was playing some Afro Celt) and Bittorrent, which was downloading some 1920s bluegrass. All at once. The system wasn't bogging at all. One of the Firefoxes had six tabs open, from where I was researching.

In the first part of this essay, I mentioned the grief I had playing with Linux in the past. When I comes to Ubuntu, I'm one step above abject newbie, barely able to find the CD player. But Ubuntu has never given me any trouble. The only time I had a problem was when I was updating an install from CD, unaware of the fact that the IDE channel the player was on was dying, and thus randomly scrambling the files as they were copied onto the hard drive. And even that was relatively easy to fix, once I got the IDE problem ironed out.

Ubuntu is not only far better than Windows, but you can do as much as you could on Windows, and far more than most of us could afford to do on Windows. And it's easy: easy to install, easy to learn, easy to navigate, easy to maintain, and easy to build upon.

If you have a broadband connection and a reasonably recent computer (2001 or later), I recommend going to ubuntu.com and downloading the disk (600 mb, takes about 45 minutes on DSL) and installing it.

You won't believe you went so long without it.