Kororaa : Fedora made easy

I always like Fedora. One thing I like about it is that each time a new Fedora release comes out, it almost always comes with the latest Libreoffice and Gnome release available. I like Gnome Shell a lot, despite all the criticisms and controversy it has been receiving over its tablet-like designs, and missing features in the early versions. Libreoffice is also my main tool for working. These are two things important for me.

What I don't like about Fedora, is that a fresh Fedora install is a chore to set up. If you have some previous experience installing Windows or Ubuntu, Fedora installation is easy. But everything from after a fresh install, to a working desktop that you will want to work with, takes a lot more steps. just do a quick Google search for "thing to do after installing Fedora <version no>", and you'll see what I mean. As an example, Adobe Flash is not so simple to install.

Enter the Korora Project (https://kororaproject.org/). Korora Project releases a remix of Fedora, with a couple of tweaks to get you started. Its release cycle is also tied with Fedora's release cycle. After a fresh install, Korora mostly just works. It ships with some extra packages such as media codecs, Firefox plugins, Adobe Flash, and also makes it easy to install other proprietary packages that you might need, such as GPU drivers, Google Chrome and Virtualbox. Some extensions for Gnome Shell are also pre-installed, to make the desktop more user-friendly and easy to use, and of course, we could always get more from extensions.gnome.org.

If someone were to ask me whether to install Fedora or Korora, I would say Korora just ships with extras that you might actually go out and get yourself eventually after some time using Fedora. If you are a noob like me, you can give Fedora a shot, but you should definitely try Korora.

In conclusion, these two distros are great distros. I have had great times working with both of them, getting work done, and some entertainment. Fedora just sticks to its own principle of shipping a mostly-FOSS system, while Korora just makes it easy for users to use Fedora.

KDE-based Distros

Curiosity

Early 2012, after some periods of time using Fedora, i was quite happy with the system that I have. I was a GNOME Shell fan right from its debut in Fedora. However, since the commotion that started when Unity DE was released by Canonical on Ubuntu, I had a lot of thinking when it comes to choice of DE.

Previously, the choice of a person's Linux DE always boils down to one of two options; Gnome (Classic) or KDE. For new Linux users (like me), if most of your friends are using Gnome, you'll end up using Gnome as well. The same also goes for KDE. In my case, none of my friends used linux, and i just happened to start with Gnome Classic (Ubuntu 10.10). With this line of thought, I was curious; How would it feel to try out KDE?

Opensuse - KDE

I did a quick search on the net, about recommended distros for trying out KDE. Most sites and reviews recommended Opensuse. Opensuse was supposed to be the simplest to use, and most friendly. It also has a special config tool called yast, which is developed by the opensuse team to make configuration easy.

The outcome of my trials with Opensuse, was not good. From my experience, it was difficult to configure. I must have done something wrong because it consumed lots of ram, and the whole desktop experience felt very sluggish. The desktop looks nice though. After several updates, the system just won't boot anymore, so i just gave up.

Fedora - KDE

I thought to myself that maybe i should just stick with a distro that I know worked on my system. So, I installed Fedora with KDE. Things just work as usual. Fedora's version of KDE felt very plain. KDE boasts a lot of customizability, probably too much for me. KDE has a lot of similarity to Win7 desktop layout, but with much more "Bling" factor, probably too much for me. Although it was a bit faster than my opensuse install, it was still slower than Gnome version.

Most of the tools of Fedora was already familiar to me. It was still a chore to set up properly, but it works.

At this point, I was already so used to the simplicity provided by Gnome3, such that I was having problems using KDE. The default apps in gnome also felt very familiar, while the KDE apps felt "strange and unfriendly" to me. I didn't quite like the default look of KDE, and although it offers a lot of customization options, it felt like configuring my favourite desktop would take a lot of work. I find myself installing a lot of gtk apps that I was used to, such Rhythmbox.

Chakralinux

I was not quite satisfied with KDE on Fedora. I felt that it would take too much effort to get from a fresh install, to a comfortable and familiar to use system. This is a big concern for me because Fedora releases a new version twice a year, and I still prefer a fresh install than an upgrade. The performance was just slightly worse than Fedora Gnome, and was not worth switching to KDE.

At this point, I was still interested in trying out KDE distros, just to see if I might like it more than Gnome 3. Then, I discovered Chakra Linux. Chakra is a half-rolling distro. You install it once, and just update continuously without the need for a reinstall. I figured this to be worth a try.

Chakra is also a KDE-only distro. Its software repos, only provide qt based apps, no gtk-based packages. Some really famous GTK packages, such as Firefox, are shipped as bundles. This principle allows the developers to keep the distro clean, and simple to maintain and develop. Chakra was also derived from Archlinux.

Being based on Archlinux, Chakra linux is fast. Very fast. The exclusive use of qt based apps also puts things into perspective for me, as to how a pure KDE/qt desktop feels like. With the addition of some gtk apps, the system is mostly good.

Final Thoughts

In the end, I decided that KDE is just not for me. Some people might actually love its similarity to the windows desktop layout, but for me, it is not very appealing. I'm not saying KDE is bad, no, far from it. I just did not have a very good experience with it, and when I did, it does not appeal to me so much. Maybe it's just because I got so used to gnome 2 & 3, that I just immediately rejected KDE. In my opinion, KDE is a good and solid DE, and some of the distros based on it are quite solid and fast.

I was going to try other distros such as Kubuntu, just to see if a more "user-friendly" distro might change my mind. However, I felt that my opinion about the DE itself won't change much. So, the 3 distros above are the only KDE-based distros that I have tried, and I probably won't try KDE any more, not in the near future at least. KDE distros are good. KDE is good, just not for me.

2nd Distro : Fedora

After some experience with Ubuntu 11.04 and Unity, I was disappointed. The Unity interface did not feel very useful or friendly. So, the first I did was install Gnome 3 to try it out. I don't remember how I did it exactly, but if I'm not wrong, it was available in Ubuntu's repository.

I have a confession to make; I actually like Gnome 3. During this time, there is no Gnome-specific flavor of Ubuntu. I knew that I could install Gnome 3 on my laptop myself, but was quite unhappy with this. I was also worried that Gnome 3 in Ubuntu might not get any attention at all in the future.

So, I did the next best thing. I switched to Fedora 15. Fedora is okay, but takes a little more effort to get used to. To get and actually useful installation, I needed to do a quick web search for "things to do after installing fedora", which returned numerous results including step-by-step guides. Most of them will recommend disabling SElinux, which involves editing a config file (not NOOB-friendly, but not too difficult), and adding RPMFusion repository. The guides also explain how to enable some codecs to get media functionality. It is not as easy as a simple search for ubuntu-restricted-extras in Ubuntu.

During this time, Bumblebee project was still relatively new, and it was not so easy to set up as right now. Now, if you head over to https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Bumblebee, you are pretty much set. That time, I had to build bumblebee from source, configure acpi-call using dkms manually, and also set bumblebee to start at boot using systemd. The instructions on the project's git page was quite detailed, but was difficult for a NOOB like me to follow. So, how did I manage all that? one word : Desperation. Before installing Bumblebee, my laptop was burning through its battery like a champ. I was desperate for some longer battery life. (As I recall, it was already packaged and quick to install on Ubuntu, but I don't quite remember)

While starting a new install with Fedora 15 is not exactly easy and noob-friendly, it has its rewards. For one, Gnome 3.0 certainly looked better than Unity (well.. to me at least). Fedora also seemed to boot faster and run much more snappy too!!! Also, one more thing that used to work in Ubuntu, and still works in Fedora, is Hibernate. Yes, during the time of me testing fedora 15, both Suspend and Hibernate worked, but only Suspend worked on Ubuntu. Why? I don't know, I'm a NOOB. If you know the answer, comment below. Hibernate is quite important to me, because I like to be able to just close my laptop lid, shove it into the backpack, and just forget about it. And, the advantage of hibernate is that it does not drain your laptop battery.

Another thing I like about Fedora, is that they always offer the latest Gnome Shell DE, and relatively new Libreoffice packages; two of the most important things for me. Even today, I still like Fedora, and it is definitely one of my favourite distros. To me, it is a very solid distro. Lots of new packages that just work (most of the time), and very fast and snappy.

Unity mess

Unity mess.

As I have mentioned in my previous posts, I started out with Ubuntu 10.10 as my first distro. This was sometime around December 2010, so 10.10 had been out for quite some time. The desktop environment (DE)in use was of course Gnome 2.x.

Ubuntu 11.04 came out around April 2011, with the new Unity DE from Ubuntu. At the same time, The Gnome team also released the new Gnome Shell interface (Gnome 3.x). Both DE's were completely different than what most users were used to in Gnome 2.x. This caused up a lot of stirs in the Ubuntu Community. Some Gnome users liked Unity, some preferred the new designs of Gnome 3, and most users didn't like them both one bit.

For each of the DE offered in Ubuntu, there is a specific *buntu release for it. For example, Xubuntu for XFCE, Kubuntu for KDE. However, when 11.04 came out, there was no Gnome-specific release. Canonical pretty much push Gnome 2.x out, ignored Gnome 3, and replaced it with Unity.

This caused major shifts in user distributions among distros and DE's. Those who liked Unity, stayed with Ubuntu. Those who liked Gnome 3 went to other distros, such as Fedora. The majority of course went to another distro called Mint. Mint offered what I feel a lot of users missed in the new DE's; consistent desktop experience. To achieve this, they came up with their own DE called Cinnamon. Plus, Mint has all the media codecs you might need out-of-the-box.

It was not until when Ubuntu 12.10 came out, that someone packaged Ubuntu specifically with Gnome 3 as the default DE. Now, it is an official Ubuntu flavor. So, if you liked Gnome 3, you can try that out.

During all this commotion, a lot of users still liked the simplicity that was in Gnome 2.x (aka Gnome Classic) and didn't like the new look of Gnome 3. At some point, someone decided to fork the Gnome 2.x, and thus the Mate DE was born. Mate is offered in several Linux distros including Mint and Fedora.

KDE users were probably mostly untouched by all this, but some users who didn't like these changes probably went to try KDE as well. Hooray for potential increase in user share!!!

The way I write this post makes it look like all this was Ubuntu's fault for releasing Unity. That's not necessarily true. However, they did release Unity, and that angered a majority of its users, who then went to other distros. That's the beauty of Linux, I guess. If you don't like it, try an alternative. But, it is also possible that Unity might attract new potential Linux users to try Ubuntu as their first distro.

Previously, when bringing new members to try Linux desktop, we can suggest them 1 of 2 DE to try. Either Gnome or KDE, a simple choice. I believe, those two DE's are easy starting points for new users. They can then explore on their own all the other types of DE's that appeals to them. However now, when trying to introduce new users, we are faced with too many choices. "Here, try Unity, or Cinnamon, or Gnome, or maybe Mate. Oh wait, this distro still ships with Gnome 2, try that. Hey, why not KDE?". Now there's too many choice. But, maybe I'm wrong, there has always been too many choices when it comes to Linux.

The Optimus mess

Yeah, that's right. The Optimus mess. NO! This, is neither a critical writing of the character Optimus Prime, nor is this is a new episode, or fan-fiction of Transformers. In fact, this is not even remotely related to the Transformers franchise in any way (except for the naming scheme). This post, is about the new (not-so-new now) hybrid graphics technology by Nvidia.

Sometime in early 2010, I bought a laptop from Asus; Asus U41SV. This laptop comes with a 'standard voltage' i5 processor (2 cores/4 threads, 2.3GHz, 35 Watts), 4GiB of ram (which I upgraded to 8GiB), 650GiB HDD (which I replaced with a 1TiB HDD), and an 8-cell battery (which, I think is quite big). It also comes with a hybrid dual graphics solution called Nvidia Optimus. This solution consists of an Intel HD graphics chip, paired with an Nvidia GT540M 1GiB ram (which is kind of okay for games, but mostly average). This laptop also came preinstalled with Win7, and was advertised to have a battery life of 8-10 hours.

With Optimus, what actually happens during usage is that, during regular non-graphics intensive  tasks, such as web browsing, watching movies, and doing office apps, the power-hungry Nvidia chip is switched off, and only the intel graphic chip is used. This allows much power-saving during regular tasks. However, when launching graphics intensive apps such as 3d games, the Nvidia chip is turned on to render the complex graphics. This allows the laptop to use the high performance Nvidia chip to run graphics-demanding apps smoothly, but only when necessary. The trade-off is of course that running 3d games consumes more power.

My experience with the laptop on Win7 is that at lowest screen brightness, the laptop may idle for about 8 hours. At regular use of internet browsing, it may last up to 5-6 hours. This is not as much as the advertised battery life, but to me, it is still pretty great. When running some 3D games, the laptop may only last up to 1-2 hours. This does not matter much since "I don't always run games on my laptop but when I do, I plugged it to a power source" (I should make a meme of this, but meh).

However, when I installed Ubuntu 10.10, things don't work so well. At any time at all, the Nvidia chip is always turned on, but never used. The laptop only runs using the Intel chip for graphic processing, even though the Nvidia chip is using power. This results in a large power consumption in the laptop, unnecessary overheating, but none of the performance benefits of the Nvidia card. If I tried installing the non-free Nvidia driver, suddenly I get no graphics on my laptop.

Why is this happening you say? Nvidia did not provide support for Optimus on Linux, it's as simple as that. This caused much rage in the Linux community. There was, however an attempt to provide a solution to this problem by the community, by a software called Bumblebee and an ACPI call kernel module (I don't really understand all this, so don't take my word on this). What happens is that, at boot time, Bumblebee is started as a service/daemon, and will immediately send a signal through the acpi call module, to turn off the Nvidia card. If we need to run a software using the Nvidia card, for example, a game called xonotic, we use the command 'optirun'.

optirun xonotic

What this does is that it will tell Bumblebee to turn on the Nvidia card (acpi-call), load the Nvidia drivers, and use that to render graphics. So, you could still have the features of Optimus, on Linux. The problem was that around 2010/2011, this was still a bit patchy. Installation of Bumblebee was a hassle, not so noob-friendly, requiring you build the software from source. You also needed to manually configure the proper acpi-call. Whenever you need to use the Nvidia card, you need to use 'optirun' to tell Bumblebee to use Nvidia card, which feels inconvenient compared to how this is automatic in Win7.

However, things are better now. Distros now include Bumblebee in their repos, and detailed guides in their wikis. the acpi-call has been replaced with bbswitch, which does not need much to configure. At times however, I still get some difficulties when installing a Linux distro on my Optimus laptop, but most of the time, things work out in the end.

My experience with the laptop on Ubuntu is that at lowest screen brightness, the laptop may idle for about 2 hours without Bumblebee/bbswitch. With Bumblebee/bbswitch properly configured, idle time improves to 10 hours, which is just plain awesome! At regular use of internet browsing, it may last up to 6-7 hours.

In the end, I hardly do any 3d gaming at all that warrants me buying a laptop with the Nvidia card. I kind of regretted buying this laptop, but I did not even know about this Optimus thing until after I tried installing Linux. Since I mostly do regular office work, mostly using Linux, I could have bought a cheaper i3/i5, 'standard/ultra-low voltage' laptop with Intel graphics, and never had to worry about configuring Optimus. I find that the Nvidia chip is not necessary for my use. If I opted for an ultra-low voltage Intel cpu, I could find a lightweight laptop, with slightly smaller battery, maybe one of those 'ultrabooks'. But, this laptop has served me well these past years, ran quite well, and is quite responsive.

I am also very glad that people built the Bumblebee/bbswitch, which helped my laptop to run for hours on battery, and keeping it cool. KUDOS to the Bumblebee Project team, and the Ironhide developer!!!

But Nvidia Optimus, man, what a mess!!!

Painful Transition : Win7 to Ubuntu 10.10

Transitioning from Windows to Ubuntu Linux 10.10 (GNOME 2.x desktop), is painful. Sure, there are techniques that you can try to ease yourself into a GNU/Linux system, but in the end, it is painful.

User Interface : Win7 desktop to GNOME 2.x

For the most part, if you are willing to work a little bit harder to adapt to the different UI that is Gnome, than this is not too much trouble.

One most notable difference is the taskbar. In Win7, you have a taskbar at the bottom, which shows a list your favorite apps, currently open apps/windows, clock and notifications, and of course, the Start button which is used to launch apps. In Ubuntu 10.10, running Gnome 2.x, you have two panels. Most stuffs are at the top panel, but the list of opened apps/windows are at the bottom. It might get a bit confusing at first, but with time, this kind of arrangement makes sense.

Another important feature is that by default, Gnome desktop comes with multiple workspaces/virtual desktops. This allows you to better organize yourselves when multitasking with your PC. In Windows, suppose you are doing a bunch of things on the PC at the same time, you'll end up cluttering the desktop. With multiple workspaces, you can seperate windows/apps according to what kind of tasks you are doing withe them.

Example : I usually put things related to system maintenance on the 4th/last workspace, such as updates, system monitor (similar to task manager), and maybe CPU temperature monitor. On the 3rd workspace, I put apps that take a long time to run, such as burning DVDs, ripping movies, downloading files from internet. If I have a torrent app downloading something, I also put it here. 1st workspace is where I do most of my work, and 2nd workspace is used when I have to do something else which interrupts my current work.

All is awesome so far...

System and Security

Hardware and Drivers

From my experience with WinXP, Every time I installed a system, I have to spend a lot of time searching for hardware drivers, to get my devices working. If not, the desktop won't display correctly, and I won't get any sound. I also need to work a bit hard some times in order to get LAN and Wifi working. In Win7, as long as you set up Windows Updates properly (and have internet connection), it can also help pull those drivers for you from Microsoft, so you usually don't have to worry too much. If this fails however, you can still just go to the manufacturer's website to get drivers for your devices, and install them with a few mouse clicks. However, from my experience, there are some LAN and Wifi devices that won't just work out of the box in Win7, so if this is the case, updating other drivers will be a problem.

In Ubuntu Linux, I have no idea exactly how drivers are handled, but from my understanding, the Install CD provides out-of-the-box support for a large collection of hardware that you might encounter. My experience with Ubuntu (and most other Gnu/Linux distros) has been that most things just work after the first install, with a few exceptions. There is a type of Broadcom Wifi adapter that I found did not install automatically, but this could be fixed by searching for "broadcom firmware" in software center, and installing the packages manually (took some lengthy searches on Google though..). My printer (canon mp250) drivers also had to be installed manually this way. However, this was still back in 2010. By year 2012, I found that everything just work immediately after first install.

Viruses 

One thing I hate the most about Windows system is viruses, and the necessity of antivirus programs. At the university where I study, pretty much every computer that you can find runs Windows, and each and every one of them manages to contract some kind of virus and malware. The most apparent is the kind that spreads through inserting thumb-drives. Because the students and lecturers exchanged lecture notes using thumb drives a lot, this resulted in pretty much every PCs and laptops belonging to every student and lecturer getting infected. Most antivirus won't detect these, and even if they could, they have little success removing them. Plus, they only slowdown your laptop anyway.

With a Gnu/Linux system, such as Ubuntu however, the virus don't work, and you don't need any antivirus (as far as I know). So if someone connects an infected thumb-drive to my laptop, nothing happens. No infections, nothing.

User Password

Another thing to note, is the user password. In Windows, because I rarely handle any sensitive material, and I am the only user of my PC/Laptop, I make it a (bad) habit of not having a login/user password. At boot, the system automatically logs into my user account, and I can use everything. This is okay if security is not a concern. I can also install any apps I want, provided that I am an 'Administrator'.

In Ubuntu, you can also limit yourself to a single 'administrator' type (sudoer) user for my own use. However, the system kind of 'force' you to have a user password. If you decide that you don't want to have to type your password during login, suddenly your wifi won't connect because your 'keyring is locked', and you have to type your password anyway. Additionally, in most other Gnu/Linux systems, there is a special user called 'root'. The root can pretty much do anything to the system, modify any config files, etc. Only the root user can install apps, and you need to type the root password before doing so. However, an 'Administrator'(sudoer in linux) type user can also do things with 'root' level access, using the user's own password, and this is the common way of installing apps in Ubuntu.

This part is not much problem, as long as you don't mind typing your password when asked. However, you will also find yourself typing your user password a lot when you need to install apps, configure the system frequently.

Apps and compatibility

Updates and install methods

One thing to note is that the way that most Gnu/Linux systems install software and updates are a bit different compared to Win7. In Windows, your system is subscribed to Microsoft's server for system updates. Every fixed time period, your win7 system will check with Microsoft for any new system updates, and install them for you. If you need a particular app, such as a new music player, a new graphics editor, you download the installer from its website, and you install it. If new updates for the software are available, what you do is you either download and install the newer version, or the software must come with its own built-in updater which does this automatically.

In Ubuntu, all system updates, system component installs, apps installs and updates are handled by the Ubuntu Software Center. By default, software center is subscribed to Ubuntu software repositories for system and apps updates. When you need new software, you first search the software center, and install it from there. When new version comes up, software center handles all system and app updates for you. IF the app you want is not available in software center, you can either download the .deb package for it and install in manually, or if a custom repository is available, add that to your software center so that you also receive updates automatically. Neat huh?

Compatibility

Unfortunately, there are a lot of software/apps that are only available for Windows, and not on Gnu/Linux. Most notably are MS Office collection, Adobe suites and a bunch of modern PC games, made only for windows. It is possible to run them in Ubuntu using Wine and Playonlinux, BUT, it takes too much trouble and most of the cases, they don't run very well.

Common Apps for Common Tasks

Web browsers.

When I first started using Windows, I have always used Internet Explorer. Then, friends of mine introduced Firefox, and soon after, I also tried Google Chrome. I have always switched between the two, and have never found the need for other browsers. Fortunately, both are available in Ubuntu, just might take some effort in learning how to install them.

Music and Videos

In Ubuntu, the default players are fine when playing media, but the required codecs are not installed by default. To solve this, look for "ubuntu restricted extras" in software center and install that. VLC video player is also available in software center, and I use that most of the time.

Ubuntu (like many other Gnu/Linux distros) also offers video and audio editing software, but because I never do any editing myself, I can't comment on this. There are also tools for CD/DVD burning and ripping tools, and tools for converting media files to different codecs.

Office

Here is where the problem comes. Pretty much everyone I know use some version of MS Office exclusively. I too, used MS Office previously. The only obvious choice for an Office Suite in Gnu/Linux system is Libreoffice (Openoffice during the year 2010). This is simply because it is the only one with 'some' compatibility with MS Office files, and it also has the most features.

By default, Libreoffice/Openoffice saves in the open document formats (.odt for text and .ods for spreadsheets) where they work best, but they can also work with and save in MS Office formats (.doc, .docx, .xls, and .xlsx). MS Office, as of version 2010 however is not meant to work with open document formats, so if I converted my files to that, I won't be able to share them with others.

In reality, Libreoffice/Openoffice works 'okay' with .doc and .xls, but 'barely works' with the newer .docx and .xlsx. When I transitioned to Ubuntu, I made it a point to convert every document I was working on to OpenDocumentFormat, and use Open Office exclusively. If I have to send some files to others, I mostly just send pdf. But yeah, I suffered a bit because I could not share files with friends quite like before.

IF you don't mind working exclusively with LO/OO exclusively in Linux to prepare your documents, then you can do as I did. Convert everything to opendocument. In my opinion, this is the best way to work after all. Since LO also works on Windows and Mac OS, If you need to send your docs to a friend, try asking him to install LO in his computer. Maybe you'll get lucky, because I think, if you can make a person start using free software, you are one step closer towards making him switch to a free OS.

But there is also an advantage for using Libreoffice/Openoffice. The software is FREE (as in free of charge), and FREE (as in freedom). And, when a new version of LO/OO is available for my Ubuntu, It can be downloaded and installed directly to my laptop, automatically. When new MS Office is released, you need to fork some cash to get it at the store.

LO/OO does need some time getting used to, especially since I transitioned from MSO 2007 and 2010. However, if you have experience using MSO 2003, you should be okay because the interface looks similar.


This pretty much summarizes most of my experiences switching from Win7 to Ubuntu 10.10. It was not too easy, but it was worth it. To this day, I have found that using a Gnu/Linux system is much more 'fun', and more rewarding, so I highly recommend it.

Dual-booting with Win7

The first time I installed Linux, in my life ever, was Ubuntu 10.10. Without any dual-booting configurations, installation was simple.

During my first install, all I did was boot the laptop from the Ubuntu disc, and when it asks for partition layout to use, I just selected "wipe entire disk, and install on whole disk". The installer would then wipe everything, and create the necessary partitions.


Then, things get interesting. The Gnome 2 desktop was easy enough to get familiar with, and hardware just worked.

Dual-booting with Win7.

I could not, for the life of me at the time, figure out how to dual-boot. I tried everything, nothing works. Then, I found some guides online on how to do it the simplest way.

We start with a clean Win7 install first. following the installer wizard, we should end up with 2 partitions, one 100 MB NTFS "System" partition and one Win7 install partition with >100GB, depending on how much we assigned to Win7. Some people like me prefer to make an additional NTFS partition for "storage" of work files, pictures and others, so that if the Win7 install get corrupted, we can just format that and leave our files untouched. Whatever we do, we should leave out about 40GB for installing linux. In my case, I had a 160GB hard-drive (lame by today's standard), so ended up with the following.

1. 100MB, NTFS system partition
2. 60GB, NTFS Win7 install
3. 40GB, NTFS "Storage"
4. 40GB free space

Once install of Win7 is complete, we should then do some updates, or install some drivers to get it working. Next, is to install Ubuntu. A typical desktop linux, should fit nicely into the 40GB free space we set aside. out of that 40GB, we need 500MB for /boot "mount-point", 2GB for "swap", 18GB for / and the rest for /home.

Before that, we should learn a little bit about Disk Partition, with MBR table.

When we install Win7, by default, our hard drive should be formatted with MBR partition table, that can only support up to 4 partition, either Primary, or Extended partitions. Extended partitions works like a container, in which you can have as many Logical partitions as you want. However, by the setup above, Win7 installer has already created 3 primary partitions. We need to create an Extended partition to occupy all the free space, and then create the required logical partitions within that for linux.

1. Primary : 100MB, NTFS system partition
2. Primary : 60GB, NTFS Win7 install
3. Primary : 40GB, NTFS "Storage"
4. Extended : 40GB
1. Logical : 500MB, ext4, mount-point /boot
2. Logical : 2GB, swap
3. Logical : 18GB, ext4, mount-point /
4. Logical : 19.5GB, ext4, mount-point /home

All the partitioning above should be done within the Ubuntu installer itself. By selecting "custom layout" option, we are given the power to configure the partitioning scheme according to the above.

Next, the installer should ask where to install the bootloader (GRUB). Here, the default setting usually writes a record in the hard drive's MBR which will point to the GRUB bootloader, which is good. The bootloader is a key component that helps starts gnu/linux systems, and lets us choose between Ubuntu and Win7. When the laptop boots, the bootloader is loaded first. It then gives us the choice of which OS we want to boot.

IF, for some reason, in the future we decided to re-install Win7, Win7 installer will overwrite the MBR record, to point towards its own bootloader, ignoring GRUB. This will prevent us from booting Ubuntu. To fix this, we can try EasyBCD which is like a custom bootloader for windows, which can also boot Linux. Another way (my preference), is to use a boot disk tool called boot-repair. You boot it, and there should be a default option to fix the MBR/GRUB. We can also boot ubuntu from live-cd, connect to internet, install boot-repair package to get the same effect.


This took me a whole lot of learning. First, I had to look for some guides on Ubuntu dual-boot setup. Next, to make sense of it all, had to look up more on hard drive partitioning subject.

In the end, it was worth it.

My first Linux Distro

I consider myself a noob at Linux and computers in general. I am not trained in the IT discipline, what I know about computers have always come from the things that I had to pick along the way, when I needed to work (or play) with computers.

The first time I remember ever having to use a computer was when I was 10 years old, or probably younger. I did not even recognize what kind of operating system I was using at the time. Ever since then, I've been using several OSes along the way on several PCs, and now I can even build my own PCs.

The first Microsoft OS I remember using was Windows 98. Then it was Win98SE, Win ME, WinXP. For me who was born into a MS dominated OS world, there was no reason to consider the alternatives. I didn't even know if there were alternatives. Happily switched to Win Vista, quite happy with it for a while, then switched to Win7.

It was around this time, that I started trying out Linux distros. Unsurprisingly, my first distro was Ubuntu 10.10. However, my reasons for trying Ubuntu linux were a bit, peculiar. I did not exactly googled for "linux", "first linux to try for noob" or other related search terms as most would expect. I had an inspiration to try out linux when I was browsing videos on collegehumor youtube channel. At the end of one of their videos, the protagonist said something about Ubuntu.

"Ubuntu? I am going to learn Ubuntu?"

which is of course a parody of a line by Neo in The Matrix, when he was about to learn Ju-jitsu. That is how I started googling for Ubuntu and trying it out.

This happened sometime end of 2010. And so, I installed Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat, 32-bit edition on my old Toshiba laptop, cause I thought cool name, what the heck, let's give it a shot. Ubuntu 10.10 ran pretty good on my laptop, with the all-famous Gnome 2 Desktop Environment at the time.

Everything was gold... (or Orange).