Windows to Linux

First time I tried running Linux at home was around 2002, with Red hat 7.1. I really can't remember what finally convinced us to revert to Windows, but I remember it was a little too alien to my wife, who loved the games that shipped with the distribution, but missed Windows/IE/Office. There was no Firefox back then and Open Office wasn't really hot either, so I don't really blame her for wanting Windows back at the time.

I've been using Linux at office for quite some time now; created a partition for it on day 1 itself and installed 'Gutsy' a few days later, but switched to using it full time only this year. My primary goal at the time was to learn some Linux Administration, but now I only boot Windows when I have to fix and test IE or Windows specific defects in code and switch back to Linux as soon as I'm done because everything just takes so much longer to do! I can't explain why a maven build takes a fraction of the time in Linux as it does in Windows, but that is the easiest to compare because maven actually prints the time taken at the end of a build!

About two months back, the XP on my home system started acting up and instead of reinstalling I decided to switch to Hardy. The switch over was quite smooth, with the partition tool in 'Hardy Heron' doing a great job of moving stuff around to make space for root and swap partitions. I created a separate home partition later and moved my home there, using instructions I found on a blog post. I'm sure I could've lived with everything on root, but separating out the home directory is apparently the way to go as you can quite easily upgrade or replace the OS in it's own partition without actually affecting your data in the home directory.

Since then it's been a journey of discovery so I thought I'd put down my experiences in case someone else is considering the same move.

1) If you're using Firefox and Open Office in Windows right now, you're already halfway there. My wife is affected by the switch because she's been using MS-Office until now and Open Office feels different to her. My daughter is hardly aware that things have changed because Firefox is the same and that's all she uses.

2) Use Ubuntu or some other distribution that's not too 'geeky'. You're used to doing everything via wizards, so starting off with an operating system that needs to be compiled first would not be a good idea! Canonical has the right idea, pop the CD in the drive, reboot and install if you like what starts up.

3) GParted is pretty good at moving and resizing partitions, but be aware that any change you do may make your existing Windows installation unusable! I wanted to have my XP available as a boot option, and I've done previous installations which left Windows intact, but I think I messed things up when I deleted a secondary Windows partition while in Linux. Anyway, my XP hasn't worked since then.

4) Some of your peripherals may not work on day one, but some work surprisingly well with the drivers that ship with Hardy. My camera (a Canon A550) can just be plugged into a USB port and Hardy recognizes it, launches FSpot and prompts me to select and download pictures. My webcam (a GE MiniCamPro) on the other hand pretends to be OK; even the red 'active' light on top turns on at PC startup itself, but that's it, no pictures yet! I've found a Google group of users with cams from the same vendor; let's see if this 'support group' will help me to get the drivers sorted out. I found the GNU/Linux Compatible Hardware List which I will use when buying peripherals in future.

That's about it for advice, really. Hardy works fine out-of-the-box, comes with almost all the software you'll need for home or office use and anything else is just an 'apt-get install' away. The only thing I actually downloaded and installed separately was Skype, and that was accomplished with just a few clicks.

Now a few observations.
a) Why does the ls command have a non-default -h argument to list file sizes in 'human readable format'? If the default setting's for Cylons, it's wasted; they interact with computers by either putting their arms into litte tubs of liquid or sticking wires straight into their forearms!

b) Why is it so difficult to share a directory using samba? It can't be just me because I see a lot of very smart Linux users pulling out USB drives when they want to copy stuff from one PC to another.

Actually, to resolve #4 and b, I need to stop whining and start writing code; I've got two itches so I should start scratching!