Background for the migration to Ububtu (Linux)
We are running a 'home' network with 4 desktop PCs and a laptop. The network is connected with a Linksys Wireless-G router, where the three desktops are hard wired and the laptop can be either wired or wireless via a D-Link USB adapter. The network is used for run of the mill applications like e-mail, internet, bill paying and letter writing as well as for website development and maintenance. Finally, we make intensive use of all of the PCs for storing, cataloging and editing digital photographs.
After tiring of being jerked around for so many years by the guys in Redmond I decided that it was time to move on. My background is in IT and truthfully, 20 odd years ago, when the boys from Redmond started to really stick it to the guys from Armonk I thought it would be the best thing for the industry. I made the migration at that time from mainframes to PCs and it really was an improvement for the back office IT people as well as the end users. During the transition I considered UNIX, and for some time had several UNIX boxes running in my installation, but I never thought it would work out at the desktop user level.
Now, with Linux, it seems that the time has arrived. There are still too many flavors, which has always been a negative factor, but I think that there is enough similarity, and there are enough desktop applications available now, to make it viable, at least in smaller companies and home users like us.
I will be posting a series of articles in the form of How To's for interested readers and also offering my thoughts and comments on any difficulties that I have encountered in my migratory process. In order to make it as easy as possible I will steer clear of command line usage when possible, making the process more Windows like for the vast majority of Windows users who don't even know that there is a command line facility in Windows.
The primary steps that I plan to go over are listed below. This probably will change as the process progresses, since I will continue to learn and find better or easier ways to accomplish some of the tasks. Another thing that I want to point out is the following: there is a wealth of information available about this topic on the Internet; but not all of it is accurate, complete and / or up to date. I have gone down some paths that have either dead ended or just plain did not work. I will do my best to steer you around these and also point you at some tips and processes that did work for me, and in some cases point out small alterations that I had to make to get them to work.
So, here is the main outline for the steps (and this series of articles). I will update it as the steps are published with live links and alter it as I learn more and progress further down the Linux learning curve.
Relation of major steps:
- Choose Linux flavor, download and burn a CD, then install;
- Security I - Anti-virus and Firewall, basic networking, wireless;
- Security II – Backing up your data and installation;
- Utilities I – Zip and FTP;
- Entertainment: Books – Music – Video;
- Personal Management: Passwords and Finance;
- Photography and Images – Organizing and Editing;
- Still need Windows? - Wine and/or Virtual Machines;
- LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySql, PHP) for Web Development;
- Content Management Systems (CMS) for web development - Joomla.
