Dumping Windows, moving on with Linux, update

By apexwm, 23 August, 2010 18:32

A couple weeks ago, I posted an article where I've finally reached my limit of supporting Windows and decided to install Linux on a couple of relatives' PCs.

I chose Fedora 13 and I am extremely happy that I did. Not only has it breathed new life into these PCs which were at crawling speeds with XP, but everything is working much cleaner and now I can rest assured that they will be virus and spyware free for quite some time. I'm not going to forget that Linux does have viruses and spyware, but it's so uncommon that there's no sense in worrying around the clock about it.

In my cases, the various software that was required was already being used in Windows, with the exception of MS Office, which I have them using OpenOffice 3.2 as a replacement. There have been some minor formatting issues at first, with documents that were imported from MS Office. These will be corrected along the way as the documents are used. But other programs such as Mozilla Firefox, Thunderbird, etc. are equivalent across multiple platforms, making the transition easier.

There were however a couple of issues that did put a bump in the road. One issue was a problem with fuse, which would cause access to the user's home directory to freeze the app trying to access the filesystem. Simply running "yum upgrade fuse" immediately fixed the issue, thanks to posts out there on Red Hat's bug reporting site. The second issue was with the DSL modem, which I found is a very cheap Motorola model (2210-02-1002) used by AT&T. The modem tries to assign a private IP address (192.168.1.64) to the PC, then switches to a public IP. Yet it leaves the DNS server setting to 192.168.1.254 for the PC. Linux apparently doesn't like this, as it will refuse to use it. I put in one of AT&T's public DNS servers and it was happy with that. Apparently Windows XP couldn't care less about this problem. But every morning when the PC is powered on, the eth0 connection needs to be disconnected and re-connected a couple of times in NetworkManager, for everything to come up properly. It turns out that there are some RFC violations of this modem, so the solution is to connect a router to the DSL modem, and keep the router running. Connecting a router is also a good idea for security reasons, too.

So in conclusion, here we have a couple of users that have never seen Linux before, were 100% accustomed to Windows XP, and the transition has been very seamless. They know that everything they need to get to is in one of the top menus in Gnome, (Applications, Places, System, etc.). To me the Gnome environment is logically structured, so I can see how users can adapt fairly easily.

Overall, Fedora 13 is a solid release, and continues to impress me the more I use it. I made extensive use of Gnome's new split view feature in the File Browser application, which is very handy. I also noted the very fast boot speed of Fedora 13, it boots faster than previous Fedora installations did. Great, great stuff here. My hats off to the entire community that is involved in Fedora / Red Hat.

Talkback

Interesting information, and a good read, thanks. I'm very interested to read about your good experiences with Fedora 13, because Ubuntu has managed to tick me off sufficiently that I am prepared to push it down in my personal pecking order, and I was wondering what to move up. I have noticed that Fedora 13 installs easier, boots faster and runs smoothly, so I was seriously considering it. With the Fedora 14 Alpha release due out tomorrow, if it continues looking this good, and Ubuntu 10.10 continues wandering off in their own (increasingly weird) direction, I'm likely to make the switch with the next set of releases.

jw
J.A. Watson 23 August, 2010 19:40
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Hi Jamie, thanks for the feedback. I'm currently running between Fedora 12 and 13 (on separate machines), and they are both rock solid. The only issue that popped up for me with 13 was the problem with fuse which I described in my original post.

I tend to forget that Fedora is cutting edge, the very latest and greatest. Because it is such, it will have minor bugs. But I have to be honest in that the bugs are fixed very quickly (usually within a few weeks after each release), and once those are identified and fixed, the OS is very stable.
apexwm 23 August, 2010 20:54
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You should really try Linux Mint...it is very very good.
jon5798 23 August, 2010 21:47
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linux mint 9 gnome...kde sux
jon5798 23 August, 2010 21:48
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While I truly liked and agree about using Linux. Why not simply use Linux Mint and go to work. I became a Linux Mint user April 07, 2009 and have converted all my ordinary business and personal activities to my Linux PC, with "Quickbooks" being my sole use of a Windows computer. Mint is newer than Fedora and more popular. If you prefer a more geeky distro install Ubuntu.

Jack H.
ocjack 24 August, 2010 07:23
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Jack H. : Thank you for the feedback. I should probably give Linux Mint a try sometime, as I've always heard good things about it. The reason I choose Fedora itself is that I've used Red Hat for many many years, and it's proven to be rock solid every time. Red Hat has many years of experience in the Linux distribution business, and I think it shows. They support Fedora and continue to do so in a very professional, efficient, and effective manner. And in return, Fedora gives them the groundwork for their Red Hat Enterprise releases. So by using Fedora and helping Red Hat refine it, it also helps them as well. Plus, I've found that Fedora is very widely supported and used, which helps the community identify and fix bugs very quickly and efficiently.
apexwm 24 August, 2010 13:25
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"Horses for courses"

Ubuntu is great if you like a GUI desktop similar to Windows. Fedora is great for a server (nice & easy to disable the x-server) and doing geeky tweaks.
AndyPagin 24 August, 2010 13:42
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TO: apexwm

Feel to ask me for help.

Jack Halem
ocjack 24 August, 2010 16:28
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What I'd like to know is if you can dump Windows and switch to Linux if you don't have a techy friend to help you. These articles usually say it is easy, and then mention what sounds like a difficult technical issue to overcome.
Thanks
Tom
Tommy13 24 August, 2010 16:49
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AndyPagin : I would also like to mention that if you are very familiar with Fedora, CentOS is an excellent one for servers. CentOS is based from Red Hat as well and is almost identical to Fedora. I prefer it for servers as the backwards support is longer and therefore updates are available for a longer period than Fedora, which is 1 year (2 versions). CentOS is not cutting edge like Fedora is, which can be a good thing as bugs are less prone to pop up.

Tommy13 : You bring up a very good point. Linux is no doubt a learning experience, especially if you are familiar with Windows. There are books available that teach the basics of Linux, however I think the best situation is to obtain a spare PC, or partition an existing PC, and dual boot (Linux and Windows), and slowly learn Linux. You will find that under the covers Linux is actually much simpler in design than Windows is. It takes patience, a desire to learn a different OS, and time. If you have that, then there's no reason to not try it out. You can also run a Live CD or Live USB stick with Linux on it, without making any changes to your computer. Google is your friend... and the community forums are a great resource if you encounter problems.
apexwm 24 August, 2010 18:58
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Tommy13
When I first installed Fedora I knew absolutely nothing about Linux and didn't have any tech support. The install was flawless and I was astonished how similar the O/S look & feel was to Windows.
Granted, once you get deeper into it there are significant differences, but Googling rescued me every time. It wasn't that the issues I had were complicated to deal with, I just needed to be told what to do.

Find a spare machine, install Linux, and spend a decent amount of time getting used to it.
AndyPagin 25 August, 2010 12:51
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My experience with numerous friends and family corresponds to what AndyPagin says. The "hurdle" is not using Linux, it is just getting people to make the effort to try it the first time. So many people want to wring their hands and fret about how "difficult" Linux is, and how will they get help and support, but if you can get them to just try it, the vast majority of the time they just take off with their everyday work. This is why I have kept a number of notebooks and netbooks around with various Linux distributions loaded on them, so when someone brings me a sick/dead Windows system, the first thing I do is offer to lend them one of mine - with Linux on it. Literally 15 minutes of hand-holding, so that they can see it boot, discover for themselves that using Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice and whatever photo management program is dead easy, and not terribly different from what they are used to, and they're on their way.

Try it. Just try it, please. That's all it takes.

jw
J.A. Watson 25 August, 2010 16:33
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One of the more bothersome points of all of this, is that Microsoft knows that people are fearful of change. They know that people are going to naturally want to stick with their Windows OS, and MS Office because they are already familiar with it. They've been touting this lately with ads about sticking with what is already familiar.

You have to step back and see which path you want to take. Do you want to continue down the Windows path? If so, make sure your wallet is nearby, as you will need to shell out cash to pay for a new PC, or at a minimum to re-buy every new version of Windows, along with additional proprietary applications that are compatible with each version of Windows. Then what do you do if you need support? I don't know anybody that has ever called Microsoft and paid their ridiculous prices other than businesses that have been in emergency situations. Chances are, support will be found on the Internet, just like any Linux issue would. If you go down the path of Linux, you can pretty much guarantee yourself that you will never have to pay for software again (if you can get by with using native Linux software). Even if you need to retain some Windows programs that you already purchased, you can continue using them in Wine (if they work, which most regular non .NET applications do) which can easily be switched to Windows 95, NT, 98, 7, whichever, on the fly (the beauty of application virtualization). Everybody has a different threshold of when they finally decide to look for something different and make the switch.
apexwm 25 August, 2010 18:47
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