Defenestrating Windows

By Rick Lehrbaum
2001-05-09

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Is Linux ready for the desktop? Early in 2000, LinuxDevices.com founder Rick Lehrbaum vowed to leave Windows behind -- not just in the embedded market, but with respect to his own desktop computer. But he didn't quite realize what he was getting himself into. In this essay, we join Lehrbaum on his quest to configure a Linux-based system for use during working hours that would perform all his required...

tasks, that would let him share "popular" formats of files and data with business associates, and that wouldn't give him headaches. Does he arrive at his goal?

The vacation

I guess there's always a risk when you go on vacation that things will somehow be different when you return. This one was no exception. Upon arriving home from a week of recreation in the Pacific Northwest, I glanced at my trusty old desktop system and decided this would be the day. Today, May 1, 2001, I would finally pull the plug on Windows and switch my daytime activities to Linux.

Not that I hadn't been wanting to do just that for the longest time. Since quitting my previous job and starting the LinuxDevices.com embedded Linux portal website, I maintained high hopes for leaving Windows in the dust some day. That now seems an eternity ago -- at least in Internet time.

Good intentions

It all started back in December of '99. Since I was going to be running a Linux-related website, it only made sense to try to do my work on a Linux-powered desktop computer.

I ran out and bought a copy of SuSE 6.3 -- choosing it due to its maker's reputation for an obsession with quality, and because it includes a dizzying array of Linux applications on its numerous CDs. The Mercedes Benz of Linux.

Bringing it home and running the nicely automated install, I soon was disappointed to discover that it didn't like my hardware very much -- the graphics were terrible, and the install seemed to take forever (many hours!).

It turned out that my recently purchased Intel motherboard was simply too new to be supported by the current Linux kernel. As a result, the video didn't display right (resulting in a flickery and unstable display) and the memory on the motherboard wasn't sensed properly (resulting in extremely slow operation).

A week or so later later, with help from my college-student son (a Linux fanatic -- what college student isn't, these days?), I eventually got Red Hat 6.2 installed and running somewhat decently. The solution turned out to be a kernel patch to add support for my motherboard, and a minor configuration tweak (specifying the memory size in lilo.conf).

My spirits soared. "Now to install all the application software I need, and switch my daily activities to Linux," I thought. "This is going to be fun!"

Well, what I hoped would take a day or two evolved into what I now call . . .

"My quest for a daytime Linux system"

Now that I had a working Linux system (well, sort of), I created a checklist of the key requirements that needed to be met before I could use Linux as my OS during working hours. My needs were fairly normal . . .

Freedom from crashes -- an easy requirement: Linux simply needed to crash less often than Windows, which was in the habit of producing the famous "blue screen of death" every few days.
Email client -- ability to import my Windows Netscape email files and address book, since my complete transition to Linux would likely take several weeks.
Web browser -- a state-of-the-art browser, at least comparable to Windows Netscape 4.75, including plugins for multimedia files, PDFs, etc.
"Office" applications -- ability to read and edit "popular" file formats for text (doc, rtf), spreadsheets (xls), and presentations (ppt), allowing convenient exchange of files and information with my Windows-bound associates.
Graphics -- ability to manipulate images, convert between popular image formats, and capture screen shots.
Calendar and to-do -- ability to access my calendar and to-do lists from both Linux and Windows, in support of my gradual transition to Linux.
Instant messaging -- AOL and Yahoo IM compatibility.

--- Continued ---

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