Looking at a few Operating Systems
Published on 19th February 2011 Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutesThe last few weeks have seen me poking around with a few different operating systems to see how they perform. While I am too sure what exactly has kicked off all of this curiosity, all the OS's that I have examined have been of the UNIX/Linux variety. With the inclusion of Unity in the forthcoming Ubuntu "Natty Narwhal" 11.04, I am mindful of the need to be keeping an eye on alternative options should there ever be a need to jump ship. However, a recent encounter with an alpha version has reassured me a little.
Forgetting the Ubuntu password (a silly thing to do, I know) for my Toshiba laptop meant a reinstallation that allowed these explorations to happen. Only for that, I may not have looked in amazement at the impressive minimalism of CrunchBang Linux before settling on Lubuntu to see how it did. Since these were Live CD runs, I was trying things out before committing to any installation. Since Lubuntu is based on Ubuntu as its name suggests, I wasted little name in finding my way around the LXDE desktop. By default, everything supplied with the distro is lightweight, with Chromium coming in place of Firefox. There's no sign of OpenOffice.org either, with offerings like Abiword coming in its stead. For the sake of familiarity, I started to add the weight of things without reducing the speed of things, it seems. Well, the speedy start-up wasn't afflicted anyway. Being an Ubuntu clone meant that it didn't long to add on Firefox using the apt-get command. LibreOffice was downloaded for installation using the dpkg command, and it seems much more fleet-footed than its OpenOffice.org counterpart. As if these nefarious actions weren't enough, I started to poke in the settings to up the number of virtual desktops too. All in all, it never stopped me going against what be termed the intent of the thing. Despite what Linux User & Developer has had to say, I think the presentation of the LXDE desktop isn't unpleasant, either. In fact, I reckon that I quite like it, so the next thing to do is to restore the entry for Windows 7 on the GRUB menu. Well, there's always something that needs doing...
While I may have learned about it after the event, the release of Debian "Squeeze" 6.0 was of interest to me too. The new release comes on two kernels: GNU/Linux and FreeBSD. Regarding the latter, I did try having a look, only for it to lock up my main home PC when I tried booting it up in a VirtualBox virtual machine. Given that it's a technical preview anyway, I think it's better to leave it mature for a while, no matter how fascinating the prospect may be. Or is it VirtualBox 4.x that hasn't around long enough? Debian's latest Linux incarnations showed no such inclinations, though I found that the CD ISO image that I'd downloaded didn't give such a complete system when I fired it up after doing the installation. Being someone who knows his way around Linux anyway, it was no problem to add the missing pieces using apt-get, though that'd stop it being an option for new users unless the DVD installation yields more complete results. Other than that, it worked well, and I quickly became comfortable with the OS, which has a much fresher feel than version 5.x ("Lenny"). In summary, I look forward to continuing my investigations of the new Debian release.
To round up my explorations of different UNIX/Linux operating systems, I have updated my test installations of Ubuntu 11.04. While initial looks at the next Ubuntu release weren't so encouraging, things are coming along by all accounts. For one thing, Unity can be switched off in favour of the more familiar GNOME desktop that we've had for the last few years. Messages warning about the lack of 3D graphics support have been replaced by graceful degradation to GNOME, which is definitely an improvement. In case it hasn't been so obvious, I am one of those who needs convincing by the likes of Unity and GNOME Shell, so I'll sit on the fence for a while. After all, there are always alternatives like LXDE if I want to decamp to something else entirely. One of the nice things about Linux is the amount of choice we all have; while it might be difficult to choose sometimes, it's always good to find alternatives when someone makes a decision that doesn't suit you.