Revisiting Linux Part 1: A Look at Ubuntu 8.04
by Ryan Smith on August 26, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Linux
Installation
In terms of difficulty, right up there with making a good GUI is making a good installer. History is riddled with bad OS installers, with pre-Vista Windows being the most well-known example. Text mode installers running on severely castrated operating systems reigned for far too long. Microsoft of course improved this with Windows Vista in 2006, but even as late as the end of 2007 they were still releasing new operating systems such as Windows Home Server that used a partial text mode installer.
The reason I bring this up is that good OS installers are still a relatively recent development in the PC space, which is all the more reason I am very impressed with Ubuntu’s installer. It’s the opposite of the above, and more.
Right now Ubuntu is the underdog in a Windows dominated world, and their installation & distribution strategies have thusly been based on this. It’s undoubtedly a smart choice, because if Ubuntu wiped out Windows like Windows does Ubuntu, it would be neigh impossible to get anyone to try it out since “try out” and “make it so you can’t boot Windows” are mutually incompatible. Ubuntu plays their position very well in a few different ways.
First and foremost, the Ubuntu installation CD is not just an installer, but a live CD. It’s a fully bootable and usable copy of Ubuntu that runs off of the CD and does not require any kind of installation. The limitations of this are obvious since you can’t install additional software and CD disc access times are more than an order of magnitude above that of a hard drive, but nevertheless it enables you to give Ubuntu a cursory glance to see how it works, without needing to install anything. Live CDs aren’t anything new for Linux as a whole, but it bears mentioning, it’s an excellent strategy for letting people try out the OS.
This also gives Ubuntu a backdoor in to Windows users’ computers because as a complete CD-bootable OS, it can be used to recover trashed Windows installations when the Windows recovery agent can’t get the job done. It can read NTFS drives out of the box, allowing users to back up anything they read to another drive, such as USB flash drive. It also has a pretty good graphical partition editor, GParted, for when worse comes to worse and it comes time to start formatting. Ubuntu Live CD is not a complete recovery kit in and of itself (e.g. it can’t clean malware infections, so it’s more of a tool of last resort) but it’s a tool that has a purpose and serves it well.
Better yet, once you decide that you want to try an installable version of Ubuntu, but don’t want to take the plunge of messing with partitions, Ubuntu has a solution for that too. Wubi, the Windows-based Ubuntu Installer, allows you to install Ubuntu as a flat-file on an existing NTFS partition. Ubuntu can then boot off of the flat file, having never touched a partition or the master boot record (instead inserting an Ubuntu entry in to Windows BCD). This brings all the advantages of moving up from a Live CD to an installable version of Ubuntu, but without the system changes and absolute commitment a full install entails. Wubi installations are also easily removable, which further drives home this point.
Now the catch with a Wubi installation is that it’s meant to be a halfway house between a Live CD and a full installation, and it’s not necessarily meant for full-time use. As a flat file inside of a NTFS partition, there are performance issues related to the lower performance of the NTFS-3G driver over raw hard drive access, along with both external fragmentation of the flat file and internal fragmentation inside of the flat file. An unclean shutdown also runs the slight risk of introducing corruption in to the flat file or the NTFS file system, something the Wubi documentation makes sure to point out. As such Wubi is a great way to try out Ubuntu, but a poor way to continue using it.
Finally, once you’ve decided to go the full distance, there’s the complete Ubuntu installation procedure. As we’ve previously mentioned Ubuntu is a live CD, so installing Ubuntu first entails booting up the live CD – this is in our experience a bit slower than booting up a pared down installation-only OS environment such as Vista’s Windows PE. It should be noted that although you can use GParted at this point to make space to install Ubuntu, this is something that’s better left in the hands of Windows and its own partition shrinking ability due to some gotchas in that Windows can move files around to make space when GParted can’t.
Once the installation procedure starts, it’s just 6 steps to install the OS: Language, Time Zone, Keyboard Layout, Installation Location, and the credentials for the initial account. Notably the installation procedure calls for 7 steps, but I’ve only ever encountered 6, step 6 is always skipped. This puts it somewhere behind Mac OS X (which is composed of picking a partition and installing, credentials are handled later) and well ahead of Windows since you don’t need a damn key.
The only thing about the Ubuntu installation procedure that ruffles my feathers is that it doesn’t do a very good job of simplifying the installation when you want to install on a new partition but it’s not the only empty partition. This is an artifact of how Linux handles its swapfile – while Windows and Mac OS X create a file on the same partition as the OS, Linux keeps its swapfile on a separate partition. There are some good reasons for doing this such as preventing fragmentation of the swapfile and always being able to place it after the OS (which puts it further out on the disk, for higher transfer rates) but the cost is ease of installation. Ubuntu’s easy installation modes are for when you want to install to a drive (and wipe away its contents in the process) or when you want to install in the largest empty chunk of unpartitioned space. Otherwise, you must play with GParted as part of the installation procedure.
This means the most efficient way to install Ubuntu if you aren’t installing on an entire disk or immediately have a single free chunk of space (and it’s the largest ) is to play with partitions ahead of time so that the area you wish to install to is the largest free area. It’s a roundabout way to install Ubuntu and can be particularly inconvenient if you’re setting up a fresh computer and intend to do more than just dual boot.
Once all of the steps are completed, Ubuntu begins installing and is over in a few minutes. Upon completion Ubuntu installs its bootloader of choice, GRUB, and quickly searches for other OS installations (primarily Windows) and adds those entries to the GRUB bootloader menu. When this is done, the customary reboot occurs and when the system comes back up you’re faced with the GRUB boot menu – you’re ready to use Ubuntu. Ubuntu doesn’t treat its first booting as anything special, and there are no welcome or registration screens to deal with(I’m looking at you, Apple). It boots up, and you can begin using it immediately. It’s refreshing, to say the least.
The actual amount of time required to install Ubuntu is only on the order of a few minutes, thanks in large part due to its dainty size. Ubuntu comes on a completely filled CD, weighing in at 700MB, while Windows Vista is on a DVD-5 at over 3GB, and Mac OS X is on a whopping DVD-9 at nearly 8GB. It’s the fast to download (not that you can download Windows/Mac OS X) and fast to install.
We’ll get to the applications in-depth in a bit, but I’d like to quickly touch on the default installation of Ubuntu. Inside that 700MB is not only the core components of the OS and a web browser, but the complete Open Office suite and Evolution email client too. You can literally install Ubuntu and do most common tasks without ever needing to install anything else beyond security and application updates. Consider the amount of time it takes to install Microsoft Office on a Windows machine or a Mac, and it’s that much more time saved. Canonical is getting the most out of the 700MB a CD can hold.
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amrs - Saturday, September 26, 2009 - link
Your ignorance and stupidity is showing here. No engineering software for Linux? Hello? Matlab is available, Simulink is available, Labview the same. Xilinx and Altera have supported Linux for a long time and so do the smaller FPGA houses like Lattice and Actel. Mentor Graphics too. Orcad is the only one you mentioned that isn't available on Linux, but Cadence does support Linux with their Allegro product and so does Mentor Graphics with PADS and Board Station and Expedition.MadIgor - Thursday, September 24, 2009 - link
I have to disagree. You are NOT talking abut average Joe/Jane. I think that even the article author is kind of biased towards enthusiast user. Ubuntu actualy completes all needs of average Joe/Jane user, you can browse www, you can do email/scheduling, you can play games (easy non enthusiast games), you can DL pictures from your camera and edit them, you can even playback mp3/CD and video, do basic office work, all out of the box. The gnom learning curve for PC beginners is much shorter then with windows. Most of the average Joes/Janes dont install aps or peripherals by themselfs, belive me I had to install it for them many many times on Win systems (the best is "installing" digital camera: plug one wire end in camera, other in PC). Yes I agree that installing Ubuntu so that ALL is runing right may be pain in the ass, but average Joe/Jane naever install their system (not Win, nor MacOS), but when they get the PC with preinstalled Ubuntu you are done. With windows you have to worry that they will "bother" you every few months with non working system. Yes it might be nice source of income for PC technician, but not always welcome as reliability advertising (for customer to come).I did some instalation of Ubuntu to my customers mostly as a "safe" web/mail PC, they all where used to windows platform already, after one week of using Ubuntu even the hardest critisizer where comfy to use Ubuntu (some even asked me to install it on their home PCs), The most "problem" was: that no one can read our "excel" files. So I showed them that it has to be saved with .xls extension and voila, no more problems. I was NEVER asked for any CAD system, nor MATHLAB, not even Graphics apps, all what they used in offie was already there! Then there are home users, only complaint was that thay had windows at work, but after few houres all was fine, only kids had problems that they cannot play enthusiast games on it. My wife is running Ubuntu for three years now, with no problem. When my 62 year old mother asked me for a computer I brought her a notebook with Ubuntu, had no time to explain it comming next mornig. My mom never used a computer before (ok shooting ships on my ATARI doesnt count), next mornig I came there, she was already browsing. I asked her how did she do that and she said its easy, tap the aplications then internet and one of the apps was "internet". She even installed the snake game, Isaid how did you do that, she said in aplications section is install new aplication, then she clicked on games and then she piscked what she tought would be the game for her and then install, whas that wrong? she asked, I said NO, its right.
BTW no one knows that they can use CLI or that there is some terminal window in Ubuntu. They are average Joes/Janes.
Not everyone is an enthusisat with PC full of stuff that, and be honest, you dont use on dayli base.
The truth is that Ubuntu will not be a succesfull system for enthusiast or high level profesionals until big software houses (Adobe, hallo!) and game producers will not start to port software for Linux. But that is not fault of Ubuntu or linux and again we are not talking here about majority of users (I mean Joes/Janes).
fazer150 - Friday, September 4, 2009 - link
All folks who think Linux is hard. Have you tried PCLinuxOS? this is easier to install, use than Windows XP, 2003 and Vista period.there is no Windows hatred here, but you have to try that before you complain.
I have access to all Windows OS at work including the latest Win 7 RC but i find PCLinuxOS easy to setup and use. Needs no special admin skills every config is GUI driven.
Linux has come a long way from where it was 5 years ago!
Cynicist - Sunday, September 6, 2009 - link
There are two things I'd like to comment on that bothered me about this article. Firstly, most regular users do not use LTS, the software is just too old and the latest releases of Ubuntu are quite stable. LTS is mostly guaranteed stability for corporate environments.Second, this package manager hatred is based on this flawed idea that no packages exist outside of the official repositories. A simple google search for deb packages leads to GetDeb.net, a website dedicated to providing up to date packages of all kinds of software specifically for Ubuntu. Google search too hard you say? But its even less difficult to find packages because many project sites (such as wine, featured in this article) include multiple packages for various distributions and even PACKAGE TYPES.
Overall not a bad article. The author definitely knows technology and I'm grateful for that, but he did not seem to do much research on the actual community itself or the Linux Way of doing things. These are minor issues which will resolve themselves with time and I'm looking forward to seeing more linux articles on this site in the future.
cliffa3 - Thursday, September 3, 2009 - link
I was concerned as well with the constant releases...until I upgraded the first time. I had set aside the better part of an evening because I was *sure* there were going to be plenty of headaches. I've done three such version upgrades now and am happy (not to mention shocked) to report that it's literally a one click upgrade. Simply amazing. I'm sure something will get mucked up in the future with one of the version upgrades for me...but for now all has gone amazingly smooth.That being the case, I have to disagree with you on the "they release too often" point. I understand it's a pain to sift through all the search results on the forums, but I also have found some older threads (sometime 3 versions back) that the same fixes work for my issue. I agree they need to tag posts with version info...that would make it far easier. Also, there's far more useful information in the (versionally-diluted) forums than I've found for any other piece of software or OS I've used. I almost don't cringe when I have a problem or issue now because I'm quite confident I can find the information without too much digging.
I'd encourage you to upgrade versions from your current install (don't wipe) and comment on how the process goes. Maybe I've just had an extremely easy (and lucky) go of things with no problems...it'll be interesting to read your experiences. Honestly with how easy my upgrades have been, I look forward to new releases (but still give them a few weeks before upgrading...just to see the comments from other users).
Mem - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link
Very good read as usual,personally I like to see Kubuntu reviewed at some point(I hear Kubuntu 9.10 is due in Oct) ,as you know its the KDE version,also Gnome and KDE compared would be interesting.I think the main problem for new Linux users is which one to go with,sure they are all free but it can be confusing and time consuming to try them all,some are more noob friendly then others like Ubuntu/Mint.
lishi - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link
Since you spend so many time dealing with the windows its worth pointing that compiz is actually much more powerful then what you wrote.Install the package ccsm-simple for more option.(like different application selector, different windows animations etc).
Or install ccsm for the complete configuration tools. Given most of them are eye-candy there some who can improve the desktop experience.
sethk - Tuesday, September 1, 2009 - link
In this sentence:"It’s undoubtedly a smart choice, because if Ubuntu wiped out Windows like Windows does Ubuntu, it would be neigh impossible to get anyone to try it out since “try out” and “make it so you can’t boot Windows” are mutually incompatible"
The more common phrase is 'nigh on impossible' (as in close to impossible) or you could say it's nigh-impossible. Definitely not neigh. Sorry to point out grammar issues, but this is a pet peeve, right along with pique being spelt peak or peek (as in pique my interest).
v8envy - Tuesday, September 1, 2009 - link
I've been a 100% Linux desktop (Ubuntu 9.04) user at home ever since I bought my last i7 920. Gaming, multimedia, web -- everything a typical desktop user does under Windows. The inconvenience of migrating an existing Windows install & re-activation outweighed the convenience using Linux which simply booted and worked on the new hardware.Yes, there are times where you must fire up Google and search for solutions, some of which are commands to be pasted into a terminal window. Yes, sometimes you need to upgrade software packages (Wine is horribly out of date for instance).
On the other hand, with Windows you get apprximately 1,337 updaters which run on startup, virus checkers, malware checkers, browser parasite checkers, firewalls, DRM and misc layers of barnacles which accumulate the longer you use the system. Thankfully the gathering of cruft is not a bane on the typical Linux system yet.
Try 9.04 and see if it is more to your liking. LTS means nothing when most open source problems are "supported" by simply upgrading to the latest software.
trexpesto - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link
"linux" is "niche" spelled inside out and backwards..in rot13.