Bumbling my way from Knoppix, Ubuntu to Linux MInt

I've installed Ubuntu on my pc a few months ago out of curiosity. If you've read enough fanboy entries regarding the distro, you can't help yourself but be interested enough to install it in your pc. I don't want to go to the whole my-software-preferences-is-better-than-yours brouhaha. What I just wanted to know was what can it do for me?

So I read around a bit. Learned the basics of Open Source, GNU, GPL, Linux and basically was impressed with the generosity of the people in these communities to actually share their time and knowledge to others. Because of this, I had one of my friends that had a broadband connection download me cd images of both Knoppix, and Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn. I burned these live CDs and immediately booted Knoppix on my netless home pc.

A little segue, my pc rig is a compromise between what I wanted for my budget, and what was locally available. My pc specs is as follows...

AMD Athlon64 3000
MSI K9VGM-V with a VIA K8M890 chipset
NVIDIA 7200GS 128MB Graphics Card by Palit
Kingston 256MB PC2-4200
80 GB Seagate
17" AOC CRT Monitor.
SAMSUNG CD/CDR/DVD
and most importantly, CONNECTED TO THE INTERNET VIA A DIAL-UP CONNECTION

As you can see, there are some somewhat bad decisions regarding the parts. Don't get me started. I never blogged about my pc because I wasn't happy with my rig. I got too excited with regards to buying that I didn't think things as through as possible. Oh well live and learn.

Given an idea about my hardware setup, particularly my memory, Knoppix surprisingly booted up fast. I explored around Knoppix, and I got an impression that Linux isn't that scary. So after a few nights of exploring Knoppix, I committed myself to install Ubuntu.

Reading around, I learned about dual booting between Windows and Ubuntu and since the first requirement being I install windows first before other Operating Systems was already covered, I started installing Ubuntu. The install was pretty much straightforward just like what most people say online. I got a bit of a cold sweat during the repartitioning part of the install as I kept worrying about my Windows partitions being erased. As per what I read online, I resized my NTFS partition made a FAT32 partition, EXT3 partion and a swap partition. Roughly it was 45GB NTFS, 20GB FAT32, and the rest for my Ubuntu partition. I had no idea what a swap partition was for so to play it safe I just made a 1GB partition for it(I think).

After the installation was completed and the necessary reboot was done, I finally booted into Ubuntu. Frankly, I don't care much for the brown, default theme but then I could change that if I want to. After exploring around a bit, I realize that the default install already works for casual office productivity. It also detected my NTFS and FAT32 partitions just like it promised.

As I placed my ebooks, mp3s, videos and pictures in my FAT32 partitions, I set out to open them in Ubuntu. The pictures were fine, so were the PDF ebooks but not the CHM ones. But my mp3s as well as most of my videos wouldn't be played. That was when I learned about something called proprietary formats and restricted packages. I had to manually install the things I find lacking from the default installation. So I thought to myself, I'll just go out and download these stuff from my friend's broadband connection(yes, I really was that ignorant). After a few hours of searching in vain, and learning about packages, dependencies, tarballs and the like, I realize one thing that kept me from enjoying Ubuntu, MY PC HAS TO BE CONNECTED TO A DECENT INTERNET CONNECTION IN ORDER FOR ME TO INSTALL PACKAGES FROM THE REPOSITORIES. Yes, manually installing is possible, but for a noob like me, I'm not yet capable(Heck I barely understand the linux file system).

So I just fiddled a bit with Ubuntu, but couldn't really use it. When the Ubuntu CDs I requested arrived a few month's later, I installed Kubuntu over my Ubuntu partition. But the only thing that changed was that I had a prettier desktop and that was about it. Without a decent internet connection, I couldn't maximize and streamline my Ubuntu.

So I asked myself why I wanted to install a Linux OS in my pc?
I came up with this list. Which is basically that aside from being able to learn about linux and familiarize myself with it, I wanted to be able to...

1. Work without being distracted by windows popups, doodads, games, complications and basically calling up task manager everytime my pc slows down inexplicably.
2. Plug in my USB drive without worry about viruses running amok in my pc.
3. Don't have to wait for a relatively long time before my OS fully loads.
4. Experience the "sense of power from actually being able to control everything" that linux evangelist kept bragging about.
5. Read my ebooks while listening to my music as well as watch dvds and video files.

Granted I could already do 1,2 and 3. Have a vague idea about 4. But number 5 was the number one reason I kept choosing Windows XP every time GRUB loaded (Aside from playing Starcraft, and old school games of course but I digress). So I looked around distrowatch for a suitable replacement. Which led me to discover Linux Mint.

Linux Mint was designed to give a more out-of-the-box experience from a cd. I didn't really buy into it right away, but when I read that proprietary codecs come with the cd, I downloaded the Cassandra iso right away, burned the cd and immediately installed it over my prior Kubuntu partition.



The whole installation took about 45 minutes from initial boot to reboot and I was finally greeted by the elegantly themed desktop. After booting into Cassandra, I immediately checked if my mp3s could play. Not only did the mp3s play but my all my video formats including flv files were played too.



Which led me to typing up this post while listening to some Jimi Hendrix in the text editor which I customized to a black background, with green, typewriter font. Pretty much the most productivity I got from an out of the box Linux distro so far(after all, I've only been toying around with it for a few months so it's not really a big deal.).



I don't really care about finding out about the best OS anymore. I haven't even seen or touched a Mac, ever. As I mentioned earlier, I'm only interested on what it could do for me. I still keep my Windows partition because I need to use Microsoft Excel for my work as well as other stuff and my siblings, who are casual users and avid gamers don't know why I installed Linux in the first place.

As long as I don't have a decent internet connection to maximize an Ubuntu install, I'm sticking with my Linux Mint Cassandra default install although it is just a stopgap. There are some things that still leave me wanting, like installing my NVIDIA drivers, installing some apps that I want and stuff. I don't know why nobody offers something like installations files like the .exe files in windows. A lot of places in the world still don't have decent net connections you know. But then again, what do I know. They must have a perfectly good reason for it anyway.

Linux Mint works for people who just want basic office productivity and view media without the need of an internet connection. Which means Linux Mint works for me. As I learn more about Linux, I might return to Ubuntu or maybe find a whole different distro to fool around with. But for now, I'm sticking with Linux Mint Cassandra.

Cheers.

I know I did a lot of things wrong. But then again, at least I learned, even though it's little. Once I get more RAM and an external hard drive to back things up, I'll do a fresh install of both windows and linux with a better partitioning of drives.