GoLinux was started late last century. It seems to have proven itself to be a few years ahead of the market, due to the overwhelming presence of Microsoft Windows in the late 20th and early 21st century. Its a project whose day in the sun is yet to come ... with a vengeance ... real soon now. In the meantime, I am quietly beavering away, installing Linux and using it in my day to day work:
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Which distribution ("distro") of Linux to choose?
You can choose any one of dozens of different distributions of Linux to install. You can install it either
- onto a partition of your hard disk, (a separate partition, or sharing with Windows - I use Ubuntu
 ), or
- onto a bootable CD, or
- in the case of PuppyLinux, as a set of files within a partition of a currently installed version of Linux or Windows,
In the latter two cases you can try it without affecting your current installation in any way. I currently use Ubuntu, and also PuppyLinux, booting into whichever I feel like. These are great distros to start with, and ongoing. I also suggest that you might like PCLinuxOS, or the Ubuntu derivative distros Xubuntu, or Mint. See Distrowatch for full information on all the distros of Linux you can select from. |
News updates
* 13 May 2008: This section is better managed using blogging technology. See "My Other Webs" page at my Google Groups website for where I currently create blogs.
* 27 June 2007: In the past month or two I have got Puppy linux working on my main machine, which is currently a 2002 vintage 900mHz Toshiba laptop. There was a small problem with initial setup of the gui (X) settings, but I have figured out a workaround, and Puppy 2.16 is running nicely on this machine. The Puppy setup comprises just 3 or 4 files which reside in one of the Ubuntu partitions, and are unpacked into RAM at boot time. The machine can therefore boot either Ubuntu, or Puppy, by choosing a 'grub' (Grand Unified Boot Loader) menu option at boot time. It ran OK with 384mB RAM, even when running Ubuntu, which has the slower but more comprehensive Gnome desktop. Under Ubuntu it was taxed when running Openoffice and Firefox into Sql-ledger, which needed the PostgreSql database up and running too. However it now has 512mB RAM, and everything is quite fast, especially Puppy with its lightweight window manager JWM. Puppy would be a great solution for many home users, especially those with older machines, as well as all those folk who just need to do some web browsing, email, photo and graphics management and wordprocessing (most of which can be done via internet services now, via nothing more than a web browser. Is the PC past its peak? Is Larry Ellison's 1990's vision of the Network Computer finally arriving?)
* It appears that virtual machine software is now finally matured in the open-source realm. I expect to be setting up VMWare virtual machines to enable those few Windows programs that customers insist on keeping, eg MYOB or Quickbooks for their accounts, to run within Linux.
* 13 December 2006: "Giaps" is using Ubuntu Edgy at present, and maybe next year will switch to Mint. I also set it up using Puppy and Kubuntu. At the end of the day, Ubuntu was the easiest to set up with the most applications and hardware working for the least effort.
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* 25 October 2006: Developing "Giaps" - Guest Internet Access and PC System: a Linux-based system to provide to guests at holiday apartments for their use, including on-demand paid access to the internet via hotspot wireless and /or cabled connections. The PCs are easily refreshed for each new guest by selecting a 'Refresh this System' option at startup. I installed and tested various Linux distros to select the most suitable for this application. I shall probably use PCLinuxOS.
* 24 July 2006: It is conceded by the general manager of the Australian Computer Emergency Response Team (AusCERT), Graham Ingram that still, after years of failed attempts to counter viruses on the microsoft Windows platform, popular desktop antivirus applications "don't work". Personally, I am so past Windows these days that this sort of news is of ever decreasing interest to me. Its been year now that a lot of the effort upgrading Windows is to continually attempt to stave off vulnerabilities in the Windows, rather than add any significant functional improvement. Compare that with Linux upgrades where all your software is automatically upgraded, not just the operating system, and almost all the upgrades are to bring improvements to the software and not to patch up holes that might let viruses in.
* 26 Jun 2006: I have just finished installing and upgrading Linux on 5 PCs, including two of my own. Four are running the Ubuntu distribution (distro), release 6.06 (Dapper Drake), and one is running Puppy and/or Knoppix distros. Only two have Windows onboard at all, just in case they are needed for any reason. However Windows has not been booted on them for several weeks now. My own machines have not been subjected to the spectre of the buggy, virus ridden world of Windows for several years now.
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