Blog

The Virtues of Linux

I've spent a lot of my time this week (obviously while I wasn't working) displaying the wonders of Linux, or more particularly, the wonder that is Compiz Fusion on Linux, as that's the only bit non-geeks are really interested in! One look at wobbly windows, 3D desktops, and general all round special effects and they're all asking how they can have the same on their computer. Unfortunately, this really isn't a possibility for anyone at work, as Linux is just not supported on the network, and I'm only allowed to get away with it because it's my own laptop, as my computer has been appropriated as a replacement for someone else! I think I have made one convert, as he's not too impressed with the effect his not-so-cheap Vista has had on a new computer at home, and the free price tag attached to Linux is a real deal-sealer.

Mostly, I've had very little in the way of problems with Suse on the laptop. I got Compiz running with little trouble although I am having difficulty getting it to auto-start correctly, installing software as I need it is a breeze, and a lot less hassle than with Windows. While I do applaud the new one-click install system Suse has introduced, I prefer going to the repositories list to add my software, and Yast does a very good job of sorting out anything that needs updating with it. I think I have found one slight bug in Yast however. The auto-update feature that starts up with the the OS gets in the way of installing things normally in Yast. This is understandable, as they are both trying to essentially make a lot of the same calls at once. Problem is, when I quit the updater, Yast still refuses to install things properly for a few minutes, and at one point it managed to crash the laptop outright, which is quite rare for Linux, as any of you who use it will know. This crash, because of the point at which it occurred, had the knock on effect of doing something untoward to my /tmp directory, leaving it full of hundreds ot small temporary files and some error messages. Unfortunately, this had major repurcussions on starting up the laptop, which kept failing to run at level 5 (that's the GUI to you non-techies!) meaning i had to keep logging into the command line and then running startx to get to a GUI again. Of course, trying to figure this all out took a lot of time, but once I did, I felt quite proud that I'd managed to debug a problem as obscure as this without once trying to smash my hands or forehead against the keyboard in frustration!

I did have a bit of a surprise with a live Knoppix disk this week as well. I'd given a colleague the disk to boot into his computer, as the poor thing was dead, and Windows was completely unable to start. So, not only was Knoppix able to boot the computer faster than the original Windows XP installation, but it also loaded the right graphics drivers for the computer, enabling Compiz all by itself! I was pretty amazed, and so was my colleague. He was watching Linux boot the computer, from a DVD (which no Microsoft Windows disk is able to do, and note I specifically mean an original disk,) was able to read the NTFS disk without problems, but it did it faster and looked a lot better. In retrospect, I should have played it cool and make pretend I knew all along this would happen, but I've never really gone in for live disks, so I didn't know the real power they had.