Useless Ramblings: Linux Ubuntu

Here is another one of my many hobbies, repairing computers, especially older ones, just basic stuff though, I am by no means an expert. I discovered the Linux Operating System about 5 or 6 years ago and at that time I had only heard of Microsoft Windows or Apple's Mac OSX, of course Windows being the most popular. Within the world of Linux, there are many different distributions or Distros as they are sometimes called, for example, there is the most popular one that is called Ubuntu; some of the other ones are Fedora (Red Hat), Mint, OpenSUSE, Debian, Arch Linux, Tiny Linux, and one even called Puppy Linux. Some of these Operating System's such as Tiny Linux or Puppy Linux are less than 512MB in size, so if you have an older PC that doesn't quite have the power to run the new Operating System's that require a lot of power, something like this is your best bet, and the most important thing that I like about these OS's is that it is all free to download. Also, most people aren't aware of this but Android is a mobile operating system (OS) based on the Linux kernel and currently developed by Google. So, everyone with a Samsung or LG google smart phone in essence, is using a form of the Linux OS.

It has been nice to take an old desktop computer, wipe the Windows off of it and install a Linux based OS like Ubuntu. You can get many more years out of the computer by doing this, and save money in the long run. I recently acquired 2 old desktop computers at a garage sale and paid only $5 for each one. I powered them up to see what is going on with them and they were just slow, really slow, running the old Windows Vista on them. One good thing about the Linux Distributions is that when you download the OS file you can burn it to an ISO image on a DVD disc and you have created a bootable disc similar to the disc that you get when you purchase a new computer, you have to power up the computer and enter the BIOS and change the boot sequence to enable the machine to boot from the DVD tray so that when you put the disc in, it will try to boot from the DVD 1st and then the local hard drive. The bootable disc is helpful if you want to just try the Linux system but while you have it running testing on the old computer, I am able to search the computer and retrieve the photos. There have been many PC's that people have asked me to work on. The number 1 thing that I am asked is if I can at least save the photo's from the affected computer, and normally I am able to help out on this.

I did a full install of Linux Ubuntu on a laptop that was giving to me by my Father-In-Law last week, I believe that laptop was maybe 3 years old and it had Windows Vista on it, the machine was very well taken care of with no hardware issues, it just had an old OS. Since, I did that install and all of the updates which took about 30 minutes, it is working like a brand new machine. I also acquired another laptop that is maybe 2 or 3 years old and it was an ASUS laptop. Again, it was very well taken care of, it had Windows 7 installed on it, the only issue was that the owner needed a computer with more power for a certain program and the old ASUS just would not work correctly for him, so I left the Windows 7 installed, partitioned the hard drive, and did a dual-boot with Ubuntu and it works great so far. Now I have 2 more working computers. Using this system is different and I usually say that you need a little computer knowledge but it's not hard. Most issues that I have encountered, I was able to solved simply by performing a Google search. To re-purpose an old desktop machine and then pretty much set up it up for internet, music, and watching DVD's would be the way to go if an older person needed a basic computer. For those people who think that using these Linux computers is just for internet only, this is not the case at all. They are comparable to the Windows based computers as far as applications goes and I have performed some testing to see if I can really do everything that I normally do on my Mac. So far, it's been pretty spot on. For comparison, there is Microsoft Office which almost everyone has used and Linux has Libre Office, which will open Word, Excel, and PowerPoint; it will also save as. I have used it and seems to work fine. Windows uses Media Player and Linux uses VLC Media Player. There are many other programs out there that will do almost the same thing, you just have to find right one. Of course, if your a true Microsoft Gamer, then this is not for you at all.

Now, having 2 perfectly good "newer" laptops has been much different, than using regular desktop and since I have had Oral Surgery the other day and on pain medication, this is all I have done is sit in the chair and play on the computers. Below are some screen shots of the OS.

This is the shot of my laptop. It uses a Unity Tool Bar on the left hand side. System information is located in the top right.