Update Firefox 3.5 Install To Linux

I was right about one thing and that is someone would publish what we need to get Firefox running in some Linux distro. Lifehacker comes to the rescue and pointed me to a blog, Kabatology, I would have probably never found. I will have to explore this site more fully as it looks to be rich in content. I am using Firefox 3.5 right now from the download I made the other day. I tried then to run Firefox using the ~/firefox/firefox command, but it failed each time in Mepis. In AntiX after navigating to the /home/firefox directory, I just double-clicked on the shell script file firefox and I now had Firefox running. Kabatology mentions the same command but also gave alternatives to starting Firefox in Ubuntu. One of which was double-clicking the firefox script file. Their tip was for Ubuntu and since Ubuntu is Debian based, as is Mepis and AntiX, I knew it would work for me too. I didn't have to run the wget command since I had previously downloaded Firefox. So many thanks to the Lifehacker team for finding the tip and thanks to Kabatology for sharing their knowledge.

Linux is a Lifestyle

With every passing week I grow more and more accustomed to Linux. I am on Fedora 11 as I write, (surprise) and I have been playing online Poker using Wine with PokerStars software in AntiX most of the night. Now that should surprise you, playing online poker with Windows software, running Fluxbox on top of AntiX. With this said it should be very apparent I am moving towards using Linux more often and Windows less. I am adopting the Linux Lifestyle. Free software and lots of choices for all my hardware. You can't get that with Windows or OSX. This laptop is six years old and Linux has breathed new life into it. I still run XP on this machine but run Ubuntu and Fedora more than ever. I can find just about all of my needs in the repositories for at least one of these and apps I would never have run if I had to pay big bucks for them. Linux has spawned a renewed interest in learning again. Such as downlading a new OS and getting it to work on a laptop that is running a P3 processor. It simply feels good. The same feeling those of us had when configuring dip switches on a 2400 baud modem and then being able to connect to your local BBS. (If you don't know what BBS is head to Wikipedia and search Bulletin Board Systems) In my most humble opinion I believe that the majority of Linux users are folks that don't mind going under the hood. They don't always have the answer to everything but are willing to try, willing to learn and best of all willing to share. For me in a nutshell, that is the Linux Lifestyle and I'm glad to be a part of it.

Linux Not Ready For The Masses

This is the argument Microsoft always wants to win. I think they are still winning the war of the desktop for now will for sometime to come. I really like Linux and I have to state upfront this is not a bashing Linux argument but hopefully will enlighten and encourage more people to experiment with Linux. First off Windows will always be the majority desktop on new computers until Linux distros fully support out of box functionality. Some would argue that it is the manufacturer's responsibility to supply the drivers but I argue that the differences from distribution to distribution is what keeps the manufacturers from creating the needed drivers. While this is improving in recent kernel releases, Ubuntu, Fedora, Puppy, Slax and Debian, to name but a few, all have slightly different methods for installing drivers and slightly different directory structures. While the basics are the same in each, differences do exist. We can't expect a video card manufacturers for example to create drivers for all these different distributions when the methods for installing and configuration is slightly different in each one. The Linux community could come together on this and start creating some standards. Secondly Microsoft has for better or worse, kept plenty of configuration standards from version to version only making some minor changes along the way. As computer use grew this familiarity has helped the novice users. It is this group of users that make up the majority of users. Would Linux be right for them? A qualified maybe is my thought on that. Installed I think anyone can use most Linux distributions. It is when installing new software or hardware that will cause a novice to reconsider and return to the safety of Windows. I am a geek and I am learning more everyday about Linux but when I wanted to install the Flash plugin in Fedora I went to Adobe's download page and was presented with four choices a yum, a tar.gz, a deb and a rpm file to install Flash. Which one do I need? I had to stop and research what Fedora would want to install. Not too hard for me a geek but most users might give up. That brings me to package mangers which help quite a bit but still need tweaking for repositories and are not consistent amongst distributions I regularly use Puppy, Ubuntu, AntiX and Fedora. Puppy's package installer has the most differences from the others. AntiX has two different installers and of course all can install from the command line. Confusing? I will end this saying that I like Linux and enjoy the challenges it provides. But I recognize that this challenge is not for everyone. I hope to see Linux to continue to grow and perhaps move towards creating environments anyone, including my Mom, could enjoy what Linux offers.

Using Gparted

If dual booting is something you plan on doing then Gparted will become a very useful tool. Almost all distros will have this tool installed. If not it is easily aquired via most distros' repositories. Gparted stands for Gnome Partition Editor. The current release is version 0.4.5 and is also available at Sourceforge.net. Gparted can read various file systems including fat16/32, ntfs, ext2/3 and several more. If you need to create partitions, re-size them or simply format a drive, this tool can do the job. Do you need to copy or move an entire drive? Gparted can handle this too. I have only scratched the surface in my experience using Gparted. I have re-sized partitions on a laptop running Windows XP and Ubuntu 8.10 on a 120GB hard drive. I was able to change the size of both partitions without data loss or downtime. Here is a view from a 20GB hard drive I am running right now. I have Puppy Linux on the first partition, Mepis 8 on the hda3 (they are out of order since I had given too much room for Puppy and used Gparted to create hda3), on hda2 is the home partition being shared by all OS's. I created an extended partition and placed logical drives within it. AntiX resides on hda7 and there are two unused spaces left over. Using Gparted to manage this hard drive makes it possible and keeps it very simple. Let's hear what tools you use to manage drives?

Ranting about Linux

Well I have been ranting on and on about Linux for a while. Right now I am posting from an old Toshiba laptop running a P3 475MHz CPU and 192MB of ram. I bought this laptop in 2000 and paying almost $2000 then. It was configured with Windows 98 which I replaced with Win2k. It worked but it was always a bit slower than I liked. I tweaked everything and it was still slow. But now I like using it despite the availability of dual core and quad core machines. I have three different Linux OS's available on a 20GB hard drive, Mepis 8, AntiX and Puppy Linux 4.20 which I am running now. If I had to gripe about something it would be that Linux takes a little more work getting the wireless up and running. Puppy Linux works great with my Linksys wireless card but the Mepis and AntiX won't connect with it but do great with a $10 Airlink card. If you are getting bored with Windows and want to challenge yourself hop over to Distrowatch and check out the latest to hit the net in Linux OS's. You might even find one or two you prefer over the standard Redmond fare.