(About 1,040 words)

Adventures in Linux-land
By Siles Bazerman, APCUG Representative, Orange County IBM PC Users’ Group, California

As many of you know I became bored with Windows XP a while ago. Bored with both writing about it and actually using it. Windows went from “Gee, look what I found!” in Windows 3 to using an appliance in Windows XP with the release of SP2. Very usable but not much fun to play with.

I decided to give Linux another try. The first time was with Red Hat 3 back in 1998-1999. At that time it was not ready for Prime Time and there was still a lot to discover in Windows 98 and 98SE. Also, there were only one or two other distros (distributions) available and little in the way of a GUI, so you used mostly command line. 

Now there are many, many distros out there, some commercial and some free. Red Hat went commercial, but is available as Fedora for free download. One of the more popular free distros is Debian (Debra and Ian Murdock, authors). It too is available in several varieties. The two most useful for beginners to Linux are Knoppix and SimplyMepis. I use the latter. Both of these are downloadable, fit on one CD with a number of useable programs, and can run from the CD without installing on your hard drive. You can also install them if you so desire.

After downloading Mepis, using it and finally installing it, I decided I needed more information than was available on line. I found a book Point and Click Linux by Robin Miller that was written to exactly parallel the CD. For less than $22 from Barnes and Nobel on line I received the book, a CD (exactly the same as the download) and an instructional DVD. The distro uses the KDE (K Desktop Environment) and includes several editors, Open Office Suite (similar to Microsoft Office, but free), a CD/DVD writing program, GIMP graphics program (GNU Image Manipulation Program) and Mozilla web browser. There are numerous other programs included but I have listed the main ones. Also you can download and install many other programs free to enhance or replace the ones on the CD.

If all you want to do is send and receive email, browse the web, do some word processing or similar things, then you can use Mepis as installed. Web browsing is relatively virus free and almost totally popup free. Both Mozilla and its successor, Firebox, are also available for Windows, but windows update will not work in any other browser but IE. Linux is relatively free of viruses for two reasons. First, it represents only a very small percent of desktop installations and virus writers want the biggest “bang for the buck” so they don't bother. Second, you work in Linux as a user, but all changes to the system must be done as either an administrator or “super user” which are not accessible from outside and are password protected. Also the browser does not allow popups. This would be labeled EASY.

If you wish to do customization or add established Debian packages then it can be easy or difficult depending on the need for the command line interface. Many of the commands are arcane and rather like in a foreign language, although they are really in English. I believe much is written in C, Perl, and Python. I am sure some other programming languages are involved also. Many of the free backup programs are written for Tape Backup Units, although they might be configurable for other media such as HD or CD/DVD. These things would rate DIFFICULT.

I have one MUST HAVE, no substitutes allowed, program. It will run only in Windows, not in Linux or on a MAC, or any other operating system. I have tried to port it to Linux using four different Windows Emulators. The commercial three all have free trials available that are time limited but otherwise full. The free qemu (Q EMUlator) requires an installation of Windows 98 from a full install, and does not seem to ever access the CD drive or, for that matter, any drive outside the virtual machine. This prohibits the addition of other programs. Of the commercial ones, Crossover Office allows installation of Microsoft Office and a number of other programs whose hooks are built in. It will also allow the installation of some others but it is hit or miss. Paint Shop Pro 7 will install and work, but will not print, as an example. Newer versions of PSP will not even install. Photoshop 6 or 7 will work but not later versions. Crossover Office does NOT require a copy of Windows to work. All the others do.

VMWare never did load on my system as I could not find one compatible with the kernal version I am using, and I do not have sufficient knowledge to recompile one myself; besides who wants to bother? That leaves the two versions of Win4Lin, regular and Professional. The regular version works with all the DOS-based Windows up and including Windows ME. The Pro version works with Windows 2000 and XP. I did find that loading WINDOWS XP in the pro version was about like loading Windows 3.1 on my old 286. S----l----o----w. It loaded Windows 2000 about the speed it loaded on my P3; I am running an Athlon T'bread 2600+ with 1G of memory. Under Windows XP, when I tried to load my program I received the message “Catastrophic Failure.” What the Hey? Under 2000 it installed but when run would fail with “ActiveX could not create a database module.” I spoke to one of the programmers of my program and he never heard of the first and could not suggest how to fix the second. As a matter of fact, he asked me to call him if I had any success in porting it over. He knows of no one else even trying. (Figures) I could devote several pages to just this area, but not now. This whole area is very FRUSTRATING.

Keep tuned and I may present more Adventures in Linux-land in the near future. That is if I don't find playing more appealing than writing.

There is no restriction against any non-profit group using this article as long as it is kept in context with proper credit given the author.  The Editorial Committee of the Association of Personal Computer User Groups (APCUG), an international organization of which this group is a member, brings this article to you.