Categories
Distributions Installing Linux Using Linux Your Choice

Robolinux is amazing

I recently was given another laptop for “repurposing” – which in my circles – means “bye bye crufty windows vista/7 and hello Linux”.

It’s a somewhat older HP G60 laptop, and I pulled the original HD, and added RAM to the tune of 4Gig and wow, this thing is super fast. Boot up to usable desktop in well under 10 seconds, and the application responsiveness is the fastest I’ve seen in any Linux thus far. Now, onto to the main topic of the post, Robolinux.

I chose the XFCE Version for speed, and it does deliver. It took a while to get used to the XFCE way of doing things again (it’s been ~ 7 years since I’ve used it. I used to rock Xubuntu on an old Dell D600 laptop).

Typically, when I want a ligthweight distro with a great software base, my “go-to” is generally Crunchbang (has the Openbox environment). But this time around, I was going for a more “windowsy” user interface experience for the person I was setting the laptop up for. It would just be “too much” of a shift for them to learn both Openbox and using Linux, so I took a look at Robolinux.

Robolinux is derived from Debian, and has a lot of great software pacakges I didn’t find anywhere else. Not that I have looked high and low mind you – as I typically set up a machine and (if it’s for me) I go all out customizing it for what I want to do with it (which from recent posts, I needed a machine ready to do all kinds of things and was in love with SolydK until I had to cross back into Windows8 world… sigh. but to be fair, Kubuntu 14.04 has been doing really well.

Check out Robolinux, especically if you prefer the VM instead of Dual booting into Windows when (sigh again) necessary to do so.

Good luck.

Categories
Applications Using Linux

Upgrade Firefox: Ubuntu-style Linux

Upgrade your Firefox web browser.

Found this great tutorial site for upgrading Firefox web browser in Ubuntu (and Ubuntu-style) Linux distributions.  I’ve linked to the category page, because (to date) the latest version mentioned is Firefox 3.5.5 and currently (as of 2nd February 2010) Mozilla has released version 3.6 for download.  Click the following link to Mozilla Firefox downloads page.

Why is “Ubuntu and Ubuntu-style” relevant here?  Because the tutorial that I found applies to the Linux distro that I’ve been using for a while.  It’s called “Crunchbang Linux” and it’s also known by it’s symbolic alias of #!more info on Crunchbang Linux at this link.  The tutorial was written with Ubuntu in mind but will also work on Ubuntu derivatives such as Linux Mint and others.

The tutorial has 3 easy steps—possibly even 2 steps—depending on whether or not you’ve already upgraded Firefox or not.  If you have upgraded, you’ll need to follow all 3 steps.  If not, then you’ll only need 2 steps.  Note, I do not count the step of moving the downloaded Firefox *.tar.bz2 file to your /home/userName directory as a step because it’s something you will have to do (or not do) depending on your Firefox download folder preferences.  Early versions of Firefox have a default setting of downloading all files to the /home/userName/Desktop folder, however, depending on the flavor of Linux you are running, it may choose the /home/userName/downloads folder.

Thanks again to Jaxov for the awesome tutorial.  Just follow this link (or the link at the top of this post) and then look for the highest Firefox version available.  You should also visit the Mozilla download link above to see if a later version is available.  The steps in the tutorial are similar (if not identical) for recent versions of Firefox, so even if you are downloading version 3.6 you can still follow the directions in the tutorial for 3.5.5 and it will work.

Categories
Obtaining Linux

Download a distro

Linux Operating systems or “distros” are available for download from a variety of sources.  When downloading a distro, I usually go to distrowatch.com. At other times I go to the project’s website; for example: Linux Mint, Crunchbang, and Ubuntu.

Why go to distrowatch?  It’s an easy name to type into a web browser.  It lets you search by distribution name and takes you to the “project page” for that distro—where you can get details about the distro—such as country of origin, which releases/editions are available, what software/applications are included, the default desktop manager, and more.

When your download is complete, you should verify your download before you burn the .iso file to a CD or DVD.  Verification is the process where you compare the md5 hash of your downloaded .iso with the expected md5 hash published at the website where you downloaded the .iso from.

There are a few ways to verify a .iso file.  In linux, issue the command md5sum [path-to-iso-file] and press ENTER.  For Mac OS-X, follow these instructions.  Lastly, in MS Windows, follow these instructions.

After verifying the download, burn the .iso to a CD/DVD.  Just make sure that you’re burning a “bootable iso image” (which is different than creating a data CD that includes the .iso file).  Most of the good burning software will have the option to “burn an image to disk”.

Categories
Obtaining Linux

Linux: you can try it

You can try Linux before changing anything on your Hard Drive. This is one of the reasons why Linux is so awesome.  This allowed me to try out Linux and I still use it today.  I still try out Linux with LIVE CDs.

Many people purchase computers from online or “in store” retailers.  At Best Buy you can get a Windows-based or Mac OS-X based PC.  Can you get a Linux-based PC?  Well, I didn’t see any in my local Best Buy.   I’m not trying to generalize about all Best Buy & I hope they don’t mind me using their name.  But I’m inclined to believe that Linux-based PCs make less profit than Mac or Windows-based machines.