Linux - handle with care

I have recently been dabbling with Linux. It's something I've been wanting to try for quite some years but never quite got around to doing. However having bought an external hard drive which allowed me to back up my windows installation in the events of general cock-up appearing I could make some space on my main drive (as my BIOS doesn't support booting from a USB device) and try my luck.

On using a partitioning program to create space on my freshly defragged drive it bombed a third of the way through with the result of corrupting my main partition. Fortunately I'd backed up my drive so I formatted the drive, reinstalled windows, ran the Ubuntu installer to create the linux partitions and then restore my windows install onto the windows partition. This all went without the hitch.

Ubuntu seemed good. It took a while to get the internet connectivity right - this seemingly to be something that worked if booting Ubuntu after shutting down Windows but not working if Windows had blue screened (which it had taken to doing somewhat.) The software that came with the Edgy distribution seemed decent, although not perfect for my needs. Firefox was welcome but the bittorrent client seemed basic in the extreme. I gave up on Ubuntu for a while after finding it incredibly complex to install new software, however on returning to Ubuntu I found the software management option staring me in the face and installation a wide range of programs suddenly became simplicity itself.

For software not included in the management system installation can be difficult, as Linux does use command line which is something I've rarely touched since Windows 95 came along and which I had no sorrow in leaving behind. In the end I got too eager to try out the 3D desktop system 'Beryl' and suddenly I found myself with a non-booting install as I'd neglected to follow the instructions to remove the auto-start for Beryl and the graphical interface 'X' wasn't booting.

I took the opportunity to try out another distro I'd burnt to disc - this time OpenSUSE, which although not as widely patronised as Ubuntu is recommended for beginners of Linux. This time I decided to go with the KDE system rather than Gnome I had on Ubuntu. As with moving to any new systems, things worked differently and were located in different places. For one thing Real Player streams worked straight off, however I had to find instructions online to install support for DivX and similar, as this isn't supported by SUSE. This in itself brought up some error messages when installing new components, although I managed to work out what was missing and get it working, plus I had to track down some codecs to get video playback working properly. A little technical, but manageable.

My sticking point came when, having followed instructions to add new sources of software for the software management system (a system which on the face of it is more complicated than that of Ubuntu but seemingly with more options when you become familiar with it) and upon the next restart I was faced with lots of updates to install, which I duly selected. On booting up next the usual 3 options of OpenSUSE, Windows and the OpenSUSE safe mode had changed to one kernel option of OpenSUSE and Windows. I followed some instructions on restoring the old boot menu but found the required files locked. I then used the boot management options in YAST to try to restore the safe mode option. On rebooting it became clear that the options hadn't saved properly and OpenSUSE would no longer boot. I retreated to Windows for a while, then ran my OpenSUSE installation CD. The restore option required a login which I knew nothing about, but a repair option under installation did the trick and restored the OpenSUSE boot options, but only to have removed the option for booting to Windows! I returned with trepidation to the boot manager and guessed my way through, adding a new boot option and simply telling it to post to hda1, which I knew to be my main Windows partition. It worked, thank goodness, and now I've got a dual-booting system doing pretty much what I want it to.

There are a few outstanding issues. The internet connectivity issue remains in OpenSUSE and on occasion I have to login then out of Windows before I can get connectivity on Linux. I haven't yet got the printer to work in OpenSUSE and despite installing ATI drivers there seems to be no 3D support for my Radeon 9000 graphics card - something which I may only be able to solve when I next upgrade my PC - so for now it's still Windows for anything but basic gaming.

I've got a nice dual panel system in operation in OpenSUSE, where the active programs are listed on the top, and other links and features are located on a hidden bottom bar. The speed of operation is considerably sharper than my increasingly sluggish Windows XP install and I've noticed that the laptop feels the need to run the fan far less in Linux too - probably due to not requiring such a collection of demanding programs to be run upon start-up. I can run most if not everything, and I can access files from my Windows drives no problems, although I not able to delete any so it seems.

In conclusion I suspect I'm going to be Linux in the main from now on, as aside from a few issues it does what I demand of it and in much better time than Windows can manage. The software is free, the performance is good and it's customisable to suit your individual way of working. I'm liking it a lot. Mainly though it will provide good practice for when I buy my next PC which I'll format with a larger linux partition and make it a more equal dual-boot.