Zac Garrett

I have been running Linux as my primary desktop operating system for a few years now. It started out running Red Hat as it was the only thing I knew of at that point. I ran it happily for a while, but when the free desktop changed to fedora I decided to try something new. After trying just about every distro out there I decided on slackware. This system was so stable I didn’t have to do much of anything to keep it up. It ran great for a long time and I learned a ton while using it.
Then there was a huge mistake, I accidentally removed /bin instead of
~/bin, if you are not familiar with Linux this is the folder that holds
a majority of your programs. Removing this folder pretty much means
reinstalling or in my case a reformat and another distro. I had a few month period where I used everything I could find to see what was the easiest to use. I ended up going with broadcom and I was unable to find a way to get them up and running on fedora. I found Ubuntu and heard it was easy to use, I had to give it a shot. Wireless was very easy to setup with ndiswrapper and everything else seemed to work without much work.

After not that long running xfce. The switch could not have been simpler, all that was needed was to go into synaptic — the package manager — and install xfce. On the next login xfce was listed as a session option and everything worked great right off the bat.

I am still using (x)ubuntu

because its so easy to use. It is the easiest computer to manager I
have seen in a long while. The with the package manager installing new
things is a breeze and it keeps everything up to date. With the wikis finding solutions to problems is simple. That is my main reason to stay with ubuntu, ease of use. It is hard to find something better when this works so well.

There are people who say ubuntu is bloated and is no good. This might be true when compared to gentoo and slackware,
but this is just so easy to use compared to them. If you want to
constantly be thinking about your OS you can use those systems.

Ubuntu

works great for me, but that is the wonderful thing about Linux, you
have choices. You are not forced to run one specific thing. My
suggestion is to try multiple distros of Linux and see which one(s) you like and which you do not.

Most people tend to stick with proprietary software, this list gives the different options out there. The list has three categories, Windows, Linux, and software that works on Both systems.

Instant Messengers
Windows: MSN, AIM, YAHOO
Both: GAIM, amsn
Linux: Kopete

Office Suite
Windows: MS Office
Both: Open Office, Abiword
Linux: KOffice

Browser
Windows: Internet Explorer
Both: Firefox or Opera
Linux: konqueror

email
Windows: Outlook and Outlook Express
Both: Thunderbird, gmail
Linux: Balsa, Kmail

FTP
Windows: cuteFTP, smartFTP
Both: net2ftp.com, web2ftp.com
Linux: gFTP

Photo Editing
Windows: Photoshop
Both: GIMP

Video Editing
Windows: Windows Movie Maker
Linux: Kino

Audio player
Windows: WinAmp or Windows Media Player
Both: XMMS
Linux: Banshee, Rhythmbox

Video Player
Windows: Windows Media Player
Both: VLC or mplayer
Linux: Totem, gxine

Text Editor
Windows: Notepad, Notepad2
Both: emacs, vim
Linux: gedit, mousepad

WYSIWYG HTML Editor
Windows: Dreamweaver or Frontpage
Both: Nvu
Linux: Scream HTML/XML Editor

Remote Client Control
Windows: Remote Desktop Protocal (RDP)
Both: VNC

IRC
Windows: mIRC
Both: xchat
Linux: bitchx

Money Management
Windows: QuickBooks
Linux: GnuCash

File Sharing
Windows: utorrent, kazaa, edonkey
Both: Azureus, limewire
Linux: Mldonkey

CD Burning
Windows: Sonic, Roxio
Both: Nero
Linux: k3b

This list is far from complete, its her to let people know that there is a choice out there of what software to use.

Most people think that Linux looks ugly, this is far from the case with beryl. This neat little program adds a Vista-esque appearance. The install was fairly painless in ubuntu edgy by following the instructions in the Beryl wiki.

Here are some screen shots of my laptop running Beryl and Xfce

These
screen shots do not show how neat beryl truly is. To get to see its
full effect you have to see it in action, I found a video on youtube to show just that.

There was a point not that many years ago that the United States lead the pack when it came to technology. Nowadays we are the followers rather than in the lead. Just take a look at South Korea, they now have cable that operates at 100mb/s and they have had FTTH (fiber to the home) running at those speeds for months if not years. This is just one country that is sitting at these speeds, there are many others that are just like it.

Another example where the US is far behind, cell phones. We are at
least a year and a half behind Europe and Japan. The networks are not
being upgraded nearly fast enough. The ability to play video over the
phone has been around for long while, but just recently in the States.

How can the US just sit back and stay on the 5 meg internet
connections and even slower cell networks of yesteryear? It is almost
2007 and our connection speeds are almost identical to what they were
in 2000. One theory is that the government is not pushing to upgrade
the speeds. Another is that the telecom companies are not fulfilling
their promises made in the past.

Let me first talk about the FCC
and the US government in general. The people who make the laws for
telecommunications do not know what they are talking about. Yes, they
probably have a staff who do, but when you have a Senator who calls the
internet a “Series of tubes”
it is hard to believe that this person has any control over our
internet. Not to mention the fact that the average age of Congress is 60.
How many 60 year olds do you know that are technically advanced, or are
even able to do more on a computer than some basic tasks? These people
are following the lead of the RIAA’s thinking that if the internet was faster there would be more pirating. This is another story though.

The
other theory, which might be the same in the end, is that the telecom
companies are not fulfilling their promises to upgrade their networks.
At the moment most telecom companies around the country are stagnant,
at least when it comes to home services. These companies are not
upgrading because they do not have the competition to force them ahead.
It also helps them that they have most people in Washington D.C. in
their back pockets.

Without the US Government forcing the
telecom companies to upgrade their network they will not do so. This
will not happen until we get some people in D.C. who are technology
advanced. I do not see how the same people control telecom laws are the
same as the ones who control abortion. There is the FCC, but they
really only control the laws that are passed by the Senate and House.

To
get the US back on track there needs to be an uprising of citizens.
People need to realize that we are falling behind fast. If we are not
careful we will still be on the same slow connections while the rest of
the world runs at gigabit speeds.

One of the major drawbacks to Linux is the lack of major games, especially first person shooters (FPS). It is hard to get a new batch of admins when all of the teenagers are running Windows so that they can play the latest games. This is the case with quite a few people that I talk to and its a huge problem. Linux is never going to make it as a mainstream OS until the game
manufacturers start producing their games for it. What Microsoft has
very well was to create a SDK (software development kit), DirectX, that
developers like to use. Since this is only available to Microsoft
products they have locked the developers into only using them. It is
difficult, it not impossible, to port those games to Linux when they
are programmed with DirectX. To see this in action just go to any
computer store that sells games and look for the DirectX logo, its
almost always going to be there.

Something most people do not
know or even want to realize is the fact that playstation’s are based
on Linux. That being said, there still is not more game development for
Linux desktop compatible games. Not being a developer myself I would
think that it would not take all that much work to get PS games to run
on Linux.

There are some not some well known games for Linux which you can find listed on wikipedia.

Managing a Windows based network I have to constantly fight all the badware that comes along with Windows. Below you will find the software with links to download it. All of the tools I list are free to use, you may have to register it, but that it’s still free.

Anti-Spyware
Most people should run at least two of these once a month to help keep their computer clean

Spybot Search and Destroy
This is one of the best tools I use for anti-spyware and is fairly easy to use.

Adaware
A very well known anti-spyware tool that works good

AVG Anti-Spyware
A good anti-spyware program that is not so well known. It has a tool to scan the computer in real-time. I’ve found it to work quite well.

A-squared free
A tool that I use to find things that spybot and adaware do not find.
Anti-Virus
Everyone needs a good anti-virus tool, these are some of the best ones I’ve found and they are all free.

avast! 4 Home Edition
This is the scanner that I have installed on countless computers. It might not find all of the things some other tools do, but its ease of use
makes up for it.

AVG
One of the first free anti-virus programs I found. It does a good job finding virii, but it can be a hassle to manage.

AntiVir
I used this on a few computers for a while and didn’t like it enough to continue using it.

Other stuff
These programs are quite complex and should really only be ran by people who know what they are doing

Hijack this
Thistool will help you find anything and everything hidden on your computer. The problem with this tool is that it can give quite a few false positives. I don’t recommend this to anyone who does not knowwhat they are doing.

RootkitRevealer
Rootkits are becoming more and more frequent these days. This tool does a very
good job at finding hidden files on your computer. I have found thistool to also have a ton of false positives.

More ways to keep your computer clean
Toreally combat spyware its always recommended not to run internet explorer (IE) whenever you can. My recommendation is to run Firefox instead. There are quite a few other “alternative” browsers out there, but I feel that firefox is the best choice.

If you run a desktop based email program it is HIGHLY recommended not to
run any version of Outlook/Outlook Express unless behind a corporate firewall. Outlook has many bugs in it and can easily be exploited. My personal choice for email is Mozilla Thunderbird. I’ve been running it for a few years now and it has yet to let me down.

The final straw
If you are sick and tired of having to deal with all of this protection you can always switch to another Operating System. With Linux and OSX you do not need to worry about spyware or virii as they are secure.

One of my hobbies is wardriving, the main reason for this is to see how many people have enabled security on their networks. On my normal drives through Vegas I average 40-50% with WEP or WPA enabled. The group of people without any protection just do not realize how at risk they are. With a packet sniffer and a little bit of time a malicious person can gain access to anything sent over the insecure connection.

You see an normal wireless connection sends all data unencrypted and
a can easily be seen by anyone with the knowledge. The reason a
wireless connection needs to be encrypted is the fact that the data is
sent out for anyone and everyone in the area to look at it. That is
what war driving is, searching for wireless access points.

To
fix this you need to enable some security on your access point. There
are two main standards for wifi security, WEP and WPA. Both standards
will secure you from the casual attacker, but WEP has been broken since
about day one. It is very easy to break a WEP password if someone
really wants to. For this reason it is suggested that you use WPA
instead. It is a much more secure encryption method that takes much
more work to crack. It can still be broken if the password is not
strong enough, I would recommend using a very long password that is not
based on a dictionary word nor multiple dictionary words. To get a
really good password you can use Steve Gibson’s password generator.

How
to setup security on your access point will be determined by the type
of device it is. The easiest way to set this up is to look in the
manual. If you do not have the manual you can always find it online.

Most tech savvy people know how defragging their hard drive to keep Windows running smoothly, but most do not think about how to keep the disk from failing. That is where Steve Gibson’s SpinRite comes into play. This great program is a boot CD that checks each and every bit on the hard drive to see if it is a bad sector or not. If it finds a problem it will mark it so that your Operating System will not use it.

The really neat part about the program is the fact that if the hard drive has already failed this program can still help. There is the option for recovery! The process is very similar, but it will recover the bad sectors on your hard drive as well.

The program is well worth the $89 they charge for it.

People often ask me why I run Linux, my answer is simple and straight to the point: It just works. Most people respond with, “Windows works”. With all of the virii and spyware out there how can one say that Windows actually works. You can spend more time fighting all of the bad-ware than doing anything else.

It is my belief that the average home user should run Linux. Most
users just user their computer for very basic internet applications
such as browsing the web and email. A switch over to Linux would make
their entire experience easier. With the user not having to worry about
virii and spyware they can enjoy the entire experience of the internet.

The main reason I see for more people not running Linux is the
fact that none of the well known computer manufacturers give the option
of Linux preinstalled. The task of reformatting and installing Linux is
a daunting task to most novice users. With Ubuntu

the task of installing Linux is quite simple, but most users do not
even think about what operating system they run. Much less about
switching to an “alternative” OS.

There is also the problem of
licensing of various things including the ability to play DVD movies
natively. It is not that much of a problem to get DVDs working, but it
does not work out of the box. Most people do not want to have to think
about playing DVDs and just want them to work. I can see where people
are coming from like Richard Stallman that want an operating system
that is 100% free of proprietary software. The issue is that people who
are used to Windows just want things to work, they could care less
about the licenses.

Linux is a great OS, but if we really want
it to gain a large market share something needs to get easier for the
average computer user. As long as Linux runs under GPL I don’t see this
happening. Hardware manufacturers seem to not want to release their
code so that it can natively be included in a distro. If Linux were to
drop the GPL and allow these proprietary “blobs” of code it would allow
for a better end user experience.

I recently found the Sun Try and Buy program which sounds too good to be true. You get a computer free for 60 days with no credit card or anything. All you really need is a business tax ID and a bit of time.

Most people, including my previous self, think that Sun only makes
servers that run the SPARC processor. It turns out they offer AMD x64
processors and workstations using these processors.

After
finding the program I gave Sun a call to figure out what the catch was.
After half an hour on the phone with the salesman I found out that Sun
believes in their products so much that they are willing to give you
this hardware for a trial period. At the end of the call, which was
only supposed to be a fact finding mission, I placed my order for the
Ultra 20 M2. They have three versions of this computer you can get small, medium, and large. I got the large. Hey, if you are getting a free computer for 60 days might as well go all out.

About
two weeks later two FedEx packages come with my name on it. In one
package the keyboard, mouse, and a few other things. The other box is
the good one, the computer and all the paperwork the comes along with
it. I immediately forgot what I was doing prior the the package arrived
and started to get the new computer setup.

The
first thing I did after taking the computer out of the box was opened
it up. The first thing you can tell is that it is made to upgrade.
Every single part is easily accessible to replace or upgrade. It looks
like a really good custom computer inside a retail box. It’s simply
amazing.

The
first bootup was almost scary, no video output. The problem was I was
using the analog VGA output rather than the DVI on the NVIDIA card. The
computer has a VGA port that gets disabled if it has a PCI card
installed. After a bit of research to find this out I took the video
card out and it booted up like a charm. I later grabbed a VGA to DVI
converter to use the graphics card to get better resolutions. 1024×768
just doesn’t cut it anymore.

Solaris comes preinstalled on all
Buy and Try systems. This was my first experience with this OS and it
reminds me of a bad cross between Windows and Linux. The GUI reminds me
of Windows while the command line of Linux. It also took me 4 hours to
get all of the latest patches for the system, hey that’s like Windows.

It came preinstalled with quite a bit of software, but it was all quite old. I tried to compile my own version of GAIM

without any luck. I looked for guides to get stuff up to date, no luck.
All of the software sites I found were just as out of date. After a
half day of playing with Solaris I decided that if I really wanted to
test the system I would have to install Linux.

A quick install
of xubuntu I was up and running in my native environment. I tested the
system with quite a few different tools and the sucker scored in the
top rankings all the time. I grabbed a copy of SETI and ran it for a
while, great speeds.

After testing it for quite a while and compiling a few things I moved over to Vista.
One neat feature about Vista is the fact that it rates the computers by
their hardware. I have no idea how they come up with these numbers, but
it gave an overall 5.1 score.

Overall this is one of the
nicest systems I have used in quite some time. Everything in the
computer is made for speed and to grow with the user. This is my new
recommendation for anyone who wants a non-entry-level computer.