The Old Tin Shed

Hi all; As you know I have written about Linux Mint a couple of times now, I have found it amazing and so windows like without all the windows issues. There have however been a couple of issues that have had me dual booting.  The not least of which is the fact that I need MS office for school.  Now the free word processor that comes with mint is great for basic stuff, but if you want the whole hog you really cant get away from MS office. I have several times over the last year tried without success to install MS office into mint both using wine and VirtualBox without much success.  Well that changed tonight. I needed Office for a major assignment I have due and I am sick of booting and rebooting to get stuff, I tried again with VirtualBox with no joy.  Then I found this link http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=79912&f=42 Now I know its not all done in a gui and needs some commands at terminal but it works.  If your unsure on using termina...

Well that is the most cryptic heading so far. (quite proud of it acutally).  As you all know from previous blog posts that I have been running Linux (ubuntu) for a couple months now.  To be honest its probably good enough for most people but not for me. It has some really annoying things.  The Unity desktop is slow and painful when multitasking and the removal of the close minimize maximize buttons from right to left is just stupid.  I mean most people have been using windows for years they all know where the x button is to close a screen.  Unity is horrible they say its intuitive but its not, you are constantly having to think about how you get to the next thing you need to do.  That and a propensity to deliver pages from email and web browsing that are blank is maddening as it needs a full reboot to fix.. remind anyone of windows. Sound out of the box works fine just don't ask it to do anything complic...

As you have probably gathered from my previous posts I have been doing a lot of investigating into the current Linux distributions and building 3 servers based around them. The server editions of Centos 6, have been stable and secure the way I expected them to.  To be honest now that we have the servers installed at the proprietary software running, I feel one hell of a lot less stressed about being hacked and viruses.  I have also been looking at a desktop distribution of Linux that I could replace my windows desktop with.  Therefore removing yet another entry point for hackers and or spy ware etc.  I mentioned BSD and it ran great as did quite a few others.  But I learnt some things you need to take into consideration before diving in. Do you have another machine for windows or can you dual boot for the programs that don't have a Linux version Are you prepared to try new programs What desktop do you want to run, as there are several out there. Try ...

Well after the last couple of posts about Linux and Windows, I now stand corrected.  I have found an alternative package that as a desktop ticks 99% of the buttons. Although technically not Linux but Unix, Desktop BSD rocks.  Had avoided using it because it was desktop orientated and because it wasn't supported by the software vendor.  Out of frustration today I decided to download it and see if it truly lived up to the hype of a windows alternative. Well I have had it installed for a couple hours now, and have found it amazingly simple to use and get used to.  It has some pretty cool desktop abilities that blow windows into the weeds.  Multi-desktop, and some cool visual aids make it a pleasant place to be. A lot of distro's don't quite get the video resolution thing right but they have with this. The install manager for software is great, easy to use and it lets you download packages with ease. Everything worked straight out of the box, no updating eve...

Wow, is all I can say.  The software is finally installed and working, some 11 emails to tech support and struggling to get my head around why things were not working.  If linux has one fault when it comes to these things its that it is very complicated.  Each step in the process showed up because something had not been thought about in the previous step, so we were lurching from one error to another. Most of this can be countered however with a more comprehensive how to for the install of the vendor software.  Things like make sure you have all the updates installed, make sure you set your static IP in advance of any install, make sure you disable SElinux and the correct way to do that.  I have learnt about iptables and how to work those and firewall exceptions that are actually separate.  All in all have accumulated a large amount of data on how linux workings are different to windows. As per the last post if you have no desire to ever go to...

Now I dont know if i should be complaining about linux or the proprietary software I am trying to install on it. Have been through every major distro, but is seems the later the version of the software the more unlikely it is to install with no issues.   For example I can install the software on version 5.6 of CentOS no worries but try to use version 6 and it crashes out with the mysql install.  The proprietary software installs its own version of all the needed MYSQL, and has major issues with the way that works on the newer distro's.  I can only assume that, that is the reason for my issues. Lots of people ask if Linux is a real alternative to windows.  The answer is both yes and no. Windows out of the box is ready to install apps and runs full multimedia devices no issues at all.  Its primary issues are based around the fact that it is realitvely insecure and you need lots of extra software to make it do what you want it to.  For exanple to ...