I brought my old laptop out of commission (Toshiba A10, with a newly purchased wireless card and battery) and started off by re-imaging the thing to factory settings. This means I have Windows XP: Home Edition, and not much else. I figured that if nothing else I could have a laptop with windows on it for when I go around places. This was not the goal though, as I really want to get into some python coding. I don’t feel like struggling to get python and Apache running on my main desktop, and even less with fighting with them to run in Windows.
Enter Ubuntu, stage left.
I like free stuff. Ubuntu is free, so by defenition I like that. I like even more that it has a CD image that you can burn to work as a boot disc. The CD allows you to actually give the system a whirl before you install it by running totally from the CD. Granted you can’t do everything, but it intrigued me enough to actually install the OS (which is a link on the desktop. Convenient, no?) It gives you the option of having a boot system picker which was good since I still want Windows on a partition of the computer. All in all it’s an easy and straight forward installation.
I let it reboot, and once I picked my OS (Ubuntu in this case) I was presented with the following: Loading… Could not find region 4 of device 0:00:0 (or something to that effect) and then another Loading…
And then the screen went black. I thought that Ubuntu had shit itself on the install, and i decided to reinstall it.
Same thing happened. I was a little worried and upset, but I decided to exercise some patience and see what happens. Two minutes later, the login screen suddenly appears. I have no idea why, but there we go. First thing I wanted to get going was my wireless, since I want my laptop to once again be mobile (the A10 does have a built in wireless, but it’s only WEP and I don’t do that in my house.)
Ubuntu has a nifty feature that allows you to install any supported program right from the menu. No searching for the programs on the internet and having to do anything manual. What I dislike about what is otherwise a fantastic little program is that you need a connection to the Internet in order to have up-to-date lists, as well as download said programs.
Apparently in order to install ndiswrapper – a wireless card support program – you need to actually be connected to the internet in order to make it go in the first place. I couldn’t help but laugh at the irony. In the end I whipped out my trusty Ethernet cable and hooked into the router, which was awkward given the fact that it’s on a shelf in the basement. Ubuntu was online in seconds, and so was the update manager. How the hell does one program have 188 updates off the bat? So I installed all of the updates, as well as ndiswrapper. Then after that I had to fight with the wireless connection for a good 5 minutes (2 of those were realizing that I missed a character in my wireless key!) and now I’m up and running.
One of the major things I’ve noticed with Ubuntu in comparison to Windows is the battery life. I just got a brand new battery (the A10 battery is notoriously short-lived) and I’ve run it down on both operating systems. Windows can run for 3 hours if I turn everything down to the lowest possible setting, and maximize the power saving tools given to me. Ubuntu also does about 3 hours of battery life, yet it does it without sacrificing any of my processing power. Granted it probably doesn’t have nearly as much running in the background, but I’m still impressed. On the flip side, my battery charges way slower in Ubuntu than in Windows. (6 hours to charge? What the hell?)
I am currently installing Apache server (one line in the terminal) and Django (a couple more lines and God knows what else), though it all seems fairly straight forward. Getting the needed programs up and running seems to take very little effort, usually two or three commands.
One thing that bugs me, though I’m not sure I can actually blame this one on Ubuntu, but there are certain commands and functions that I used to speed up my computer use. Things like using backspace to navigate to a previous page doesn’t work in Firefox running on Ubuntu. (Note: Shortly after writing this, I found out that Ubuntu has an installed modification for Firefox that you can remove) There are other things like quick keys to minimize everything and jump to the terminal elude me. I’m sure this is at least half of a training issue.
I’ll talk more about the OS as I get more and more into it, right now I have to figure out how to get DJango running in my environment.
PS, Why is it so orange?
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