| wIndependence Day Essay: A Road to Windependence |
by John McKeown (July 25, 2002)
. . . 17 years as a Microsoft user, could I break the habit?
I was ready for an alternative. I had tried to use time-based automation tools but found Windows/DOS scripting weak, and the inaccessible binary format of files saved by so many Windows applications were an obstacle when I produced computer-aided-learning materials. I heard about Linux in 2000, when 'Open Source' appeared on a computing syllabus that I tutor for the Open University.
On my own
When I had to get a new laptop in 2001 it seemed a good opportunity to switch to Linux over the summer vacation. I'm an applications user, happy to know nothing about hardware, so this was an ordeal! My first mistake was inadequate research. The vendors I spoke to didn't offer pre-installed (but I have since discovered that there are Linux laptop vendors in the UK). So I thought I'd do a DIY installation and got a Toshiba. I use ethernet in the office and a modem at home, where I mostly am. Under Windows I had everything set up for me by IT staff. For Linux I was on my own. My external modem wouldn't beep - I recently discovered the reason was that the serial port was disabled in the BIOS. In the office I tried to get Linux to pick up my mail from the MS Exchange Server and failed - I realise now that I didn't understand POP or SMTP and would not have been able to set up email myself in Windows either. I read Unix books and played with Bash but I didn't do any real work, I went back to Windows. But the underlying reason I failed in 2001 was not being plugged in to the user community, locally or online.
Working together
This year I discovered my local Linux User Group (LUG), in fact I ended up organising an Install Day! Someone showed me how easy it was to connect to the ethernet using a built-in 'wizard', so I braced myself, tried it next time I was in the office, and it worked! I also found that Linux had advanced and this year's installation worked straight out of the box with my USB mouse and gave me a full-screen laptop display. In recent days I've passed more milestones, the most important being a working modem. Some downloaded drivers got my printer working, and I read that they'd only been released last month, so the lesson is if something doesn't work, don't get frustrated, just try again a few weeks later.
Doing my job
Now I'm doing real work in Linux, such as writing this! My research, browsing, writing and programming is now done in Linux, but for the foreseeable future I will use Windows applications such as FirstClass. Dual-boot is inconvenient so last week I got Win4Lin and the legacy software runs beautifully. Microsoft as a window inside Linux puts it in its place, and it's better than 'real' Windows as it launches and closes quicker. Still, I'd prefer native Linux equivalents so I shall continue to explore what applications become available in the future.
My company rents space on a web-server, which happens to be Linux. On my Windows PC I had Apache, MySQL, PHP and Perl installed so that I could test functionality locally before uploading. It was OK, but it's behaviour didn't closely match what happened on the server. Now with Linux running locally I can test my website with more confidence. Being able to tell my PC to download web logfiles at the end of each month is a bonus.
As for email, MS Outlook was a pain, so slow to launch. I enjoy running a fast email client in the Linux GUI now, and the flexibility of being able to process email at the command line when I need.
The future
An awareness of the practical benefits, as well as belief in the idea that software should be open and peer-reviewed in the same way that scientific research is, helped me keep going when the road was hard. I'm starting to reap benefits now, but I'm still a novice. A computer club in Herefordshire have asked me to give them a talk about Linux in the autumn, but happily a wizard from our LUG is accompanying me to answer difficult questions!
Steps along the road- Find a local group. And search thoroughly for answers online.
- If you're buying a new PC, get pre-installed Linux. That should mean the peripherals work, and you'll save paying for the licence fee which is included in the price of a pre-installed Windows PC.
- Choose an easy-to-install 'distro' such as Mandrake, RedHat or SuSE. Maybe in a few years you can migrate to a lean, mean DIY distro such as Debian or Gentoo, but not yet.
- You may want to stay with a particular ISP, but make your first dialup attempt with a Linux specialist ISP. If that works, you'll gain confidence to try connection to your regular ISP.
- If you mainly use MS Office you'll find it easier than me to convert. You can use Office in Linux (via CrossOver) or you could use a Linux application such as OpenOffice, which reads and writes MS Office format so you can collaborate with the unconverted.
- If you use specialist Windows applications, the first step is to investigate whether a Linux version exists. If not, you'll need to pay a little for something like Win4Lin.
- If you play action games some will work with WineX, but you'll likely need a Windows partition on your hard disk, and dual-boot which Linux sets up for you.
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Please note: The opinions expressed in this essay are those of the writer, not of the management or staff of DesktopLinux.com.
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