Adopting Ubuntu - Linux switch can be painless, free

March 23, 2007
By David Conabree

The author is a regular reviewer of new high-tech gear and longtime computer user.

In all the "switcher" TV ads that the folks in Apple's marketing department have come up with, the choice is always the same. Go with the clunky and complicated Microsoft Windows machine, or pick up the hip and sleek designer Apple computer running the Mac OS (hip and sleek short form for "operating system"). They're good ads — heck, I've even gone to Apple's website just to watch them.

But there is another choice out there that a lot of people simply aren't aware of because there's no slick marketing campaign behind it.

For many people, e-mail, web surfing, picture editing, listening to music, making spreadsheets and basic word processing are just about all they do with their computers. Today's Macs and Windows PCs are impressive machines indeed, but their power — and price — can be overkill for the average computer user. If you're looking for a new computer and you're not sure whether to go Windows or Mac, I'd suggest also paying some attention to the "L" word.

No, not that "L" word. I'm talking about Linux.
A brief history of Linux

For those of you not familiar with the world of Linux, let me give you the Coles Notes version. Some time ago, a rather creative software engineer in Finland decided he wanted to build a new computer operating system in his spare time. In what ended up earning him a near god-like status in the "geek" hierarchy, Linus Torvalds and a growing group of volunteers eventually did the highly improbable, putting together a new kind of operating system that could go head to head with the software that companies like Microsoft and Apple have spent millions developing.

Torvalds then went and gave his software, called Linux, away to anyone who wanted to use it or tinker with it, so long as they agreed to openly share any changes or improvements they made. Since that time, dozens of flavours of the Linux operating systems have come out, and the majority of them are utterly free. They're also stable, secure, easy to use, and generally not plagued by spyware and viruses the way commercial operating systems are.

Now, back to our story.
Ubuntu

Linux, and more specifically the free "Ubuntu" version, has come a long way in the past few years and is well worth considering for basic computing.

Best of all, it won't cost you a penny to try it out.

Like many Linux distributions, the entire Ubuntu operating system is available as a free "Live CD" you can download from the internet. Just burn the file [called an "ISO"] to a CD, and that's it ... you're ready to try Ubuntu on any home or business PC. Alternatively, you can pay a small shipping fee and have an Ubuntu disc delivered to you by mail.

Either way, reboot your Windows machine with the disc in the CD drive, and rather than starting up Windows, the computer will run Ubuntu directly from the CD. This means that your entire Windows installation, including all of your personal files, are left entirely untouched — nothing is "installed" over the existing content on your machine. Once you're finished trying Ubuntu, just take the CD out, reboot and your PC will start Windows exactly as it did before.

So what is it like?

Amazingly, Ubuntu feels much like Windows. I have converted several friends to Ubuntu over the years and every one of them has had the same opinion — everything is where you think it should be if you're familiar with a Windows computer.
Software

The Linux operating system comes with great open-source software, and the icons for them are right there on your desktop where you'd expect to find them. Want to write a memo? Ubuntu comes with Open Office, a full (and free) office software suite that works with Microsoft documents, such as spreadsheets, text files and presentations. For browsing the internet, you get Firefox, the same browser I use now for both my Windows and Mac machines. Play music in the Rhythmbox Media Player or play your videos in Totem — again, both included for free.

With the exception of gaming, which is limited, almost all of the average person's basic computing needs are well looked after with this package. I've used the last three versions of Ubuntu on my main portable web-surfing computer for years just to avoid viruses and spyware (as the vast majority of these nasty programs are written for Windows), and I have yet to be disappointed.

With the exception of gaming, which is very limited, almost all of the average person's basic computing needs are well looked after with this package.

If you like it, you can load Linux permanently onto a cheap "bare bones" PC from your local computer store, saving yourself a chunk of cash that you'd otherwise have to spend on an operating system, software and high-powered hardware. The Ubuntu software is free, although there is an option where you can buy several years' worth of support and troubleshooting if you feel you'll need some extra help.

I've also "resurrected" several old machines using Ubuntu and various other versions of Linux that are far more compact and less memory intensive than Windows or the Mac OS, so they don't need as much computing power to run them. It's amazing to see how quickly you can breathe new life into an old beige-box geezer and save it from the landfill, rather than junk it because it doesn't have the power to keep up with the latest commercial operating system.

The "Damn Small Linux" version actually comes in at a paltry 50MB for the entire operating system, complete with basic software to cover most daily computing needs — it's great for getting more use out of old desktops or notebooks.

Ubuntu, however, is far slicker and more powerful than these trimmed-down versions of Linux. If you're new to the Linux world and want to compare the experience to Windows or the Mac OS, I highly recommend Ubuntu as the best place to start. It will cost you nothing to try out, and you might just be surprised at how good "free" really is.

Source

The French Parliament switches to Ubuntu

The French Parliament looks to be the next big Ubuntu switcher according to reports. Recently the Parliament produced an official government report that recommended the use of free software over proprietary software. The switch to free software is expected to provide a substantial savings to the tax-payers according to the government study.

Following this recommendation two companies, Linagora and Unilog, have been selected to provide the members of the Parliament as well as their assistants new computers containing free software. This will amount to 1,154 new computers running Ubuntu prior to the start of the next session which occurs in June 2007.

More detailed information can be read in French at ZDNet.fr and latribune.fr. There is also an article available in English from November 2006 pertaining to this same exact report at ZDNet.com.

Source: http://fridge.ubuntu.com/node/814

Ya ubuntu!

My .vimrc file

" Author: Edward Andrew Robinson
" Email: earobinson@gmail.com

" Mouse
:set mouse=a

" Backup
:set backup
:set writebackup

" Search
:set hlsearch

" Line numbers
:set number

" Syntax
:syntax on

" Indentation
:set autoindent
:set expandtab
:set tabstop=4

mmmm foot food

ok so ignore how ugly and rude this guy is, and the part of the video where he eats something he peals off his own foot (1:39:00), the ideas are good all the same so lets look at them

French parliament dumping Windows for Linux

France's gendarmes and Ministry of Culture and Communication have done it, and now members of the country's parliarment are about to switch to open source.

Starting in June 2007, PCs in French deputes' offices will be equipped with a Linux operating system and open-source productivity software.

The project, backed by parliament members Richard Cazenave and Bernard Carayon of the Union for a Popular Movement party, will see 1,154 French parliamentary workstations running on Linux, with OpenOffice.org productivity software, the Firefox Web browser and an open-source e-mail client.

A spokesperson for the parliament's administration said a decision as to the choice of Linux distribution and e-mail client hasn't yet been made. Currently, some of the parliament's servers have been running Linux, with Apache Web servers and the Mambo content management system.

The project was the subject of a study by technology services company Atos Origin, whose conclusions convinced the French National Assembly to make the switch.

"The study showed that open-source software will from now on offer functionality adapted to the needs of MPs (members of parliament) and will allow us to make substantial savings despite the associated migration and training costs," the parliament said.

Open-source supporters have welcomed the decision. Benoît Sibaud, president of April, the association for the research into and promotion of open-source computing, said the decision to migrate to open source will enable the French parliament to have greater control over its information technology without depending on any one vendor and to make better use of public money.

This will be the first case of a French public institution switching its PCs to a Linux operating system. Previous open-source initiatives concerned servers, as was the case with the Minstry of Agriculture, and with OpenOffice and Firefox, which were adopted by France's gendarmerie.

Source: http://news.com.com/French+parliament+dumping+Windows+for+Linux/2100-7344_3-6138372.html

nsa uses linux

As part of its Information Assurance mission, the National Security Agency has long been involved with the computer security research community in investigating a wide range of computer security topics including operating system security. Recognizing the critical role of operating system security mechanisms in supporting security at higher levels, researchers from NSA's Information Assurance Research Group have been investigating an architecture that can provide the necessary security functionality in a manner that can meet the security needs of a wide range of computing environments.

End systems must be able to enforce the separation of information based on confidentiality and integrity requirements to provide system security. Operating system security mechanisms are the foundation for ensuring such separation. Unfortunately, existing mainstream operating systems lack the critical security feature required for enforcing separation: mandatory access control. As a consequence, application security mechanisms are vulnerable to tampering and bypass, and malicious or flawed applications can easily cause failures in system security.

The results of several previous research projects in this area have been incorporated in a security-enhanced Linux system. This version of Linux has a strong, flexible mandatory access control architecture incorporated into the major subsystems of the kernel. The system provides a mechanism to enforce the separation of information based on confidentiality and integrity requirements. This allows threats of tampering and bypassing of application security mechanisms to be addressed and enables the confinement of damage that can be caused by malicious or flawed applications.

Linux was chosen as the platform for this work because its growing success and open development environment provided an opportunity to demonstrate that this functionality can be successful in a mainstream operating system and, at the same time, contribute to the security of a widely used system. Additionally, the integration of these security research results into Linux may encourage additional operating system security research that may lead to additional improvement in system security.

This work is not intended as a complete security solution for Linux. Security-enhanced Linux is not an attempt to correct any flaws that may currently exist in Linux. Instead, it is simply an example of how mandatory access controls that can confine the actions of any process, including a superuser process, can be added into Linux. The focus of this work has not been on system assurance or other security features such as security auditing, although these elements are also important for a secure system.

The security mechanisms implemented in the system provide flexible support for a wide range of security policies. They make it possible to configure the system to meet a wide range of security requirements. The release includes a general-purpose security policy configuration designed to meet a number of security objectives as an example of how this may be done. The flexibility of the system allows the policy to be modified and extended to customize the security policy as required for any given installation.

There is still much work needed to develop a complete security solution. Nonetheless, we feel we have presented a good starting point to bring valuable security features to Linux. We are looking forward to building upon this work with the Linux community.

Security-enhanced Linux is being released under the same terms and conditions as the original sources. The release includes documentation and source code for both the system and some system utilities that were modified to make use of the new features. Participation with comments, constructive criticism, and/or improvements is welcome.

Source: http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/index.cfm

Real to plug Windows media support into Linux

The media delivery software company and Novell made the announcement at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo here. Novell said it will include the tool in its Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 in the fourth quarter.

Currently, Linux users can play Windows Media Video (WMV) and Windows Media Audio (WMA) content if they install closed-source modules, said Jeff Duchmann, general manager of client and digital rights management technologies at RealNetworks. That will change as the result of a licensing deal RealNetworks has signed with Microsoft and its settlement of an antitrust suit against the software giant. It will release open-source code to play the files as part of the Helix Community project it launched to bring RealNetworks technology to Linux.

Original Source: http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-6105970.html