MESSAGE
| DATE | 2016-06-30 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout-NYLXS] The latest in moving your PC to Linux et al
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http://www.pcmag.com/article/345620/giving-linux-and-libreoffice-a-try-for-your-home-office
Giving Linux and LibreOffice a Try for Your Home Office
By Eric Grevstad
June 30, 2016
10 Comments
Free for all and fun for some, a Linux distribution and open-source
suite can cut your software expenses to zero (and the suite runs on
Windows, too). Our home office columnist takes a look.
At Home With Ubuntu Linux and LibreOffice
Running your home office on a tight budget? There's a way to get all of
your software—operating system (OS), productivity suite, scores of
applications—completely free. It'll cost you, but not in the way you
might think.
This life-changing alternative is Linux, which gives you more
flexibility, more have-it-your-way customization, and more control than
Windows or OS X users could ever dream of. I caution that it'll cost you
because it's decidedly not for everyone. While it's far friendlier today
than it was a year or even six months ago, Linux still requires you to
invest, nay, enjoy some time spent setting up and tinkering with your PC.
Inspired, like OS X, by Unix, Linux is open-source software, which means
that not only is it given away free to users but its code is given away
free to programmers who can make and share their own modifications.
Imagine a world in which Microsoft (which, at long last, finally offers
SQL Server on Linux) allowed developers to offer differently tweaked
versions of Windows: one for servers, one for children, and one for games.
Linux distributions (dubbed "distros") range from tiny embedded-code
platforms to lavish laptop and desktop OSes with graphical user
interfaces (GUIs) replacing commands typed at a terminal. Linux's nerdy
foundations, however, are never far away. While you can buy ready-to-run
distros on CDs or DVDs, to get the OS for free you must be willing to
download a distro as an .ISO image, for which you use a utility to burn
to a bootable optical disc or, with fewer PCs nowadays offering optical
drives, a USB flash drive. (I found Rufus especially handy for the latter.)
Linux Peppermint 7
Boot or Brick
Most desktop distros offer to guide you through the not-for-newbies
process of creating a Linux partition in your unused hard drive space,
and a dual-boot menu to choose Linux or Windows at system startup.
Before you take that fateful step, many distros will boot and run
(albeit at a reduced speed) from a "live" CD or flash drive but there's
a geeky gotcha there, too: Even once you master the trick of tapping F12
or some other key to interrupt startup and boot from other media, your
distro of choice may be incompatible with recent PC technologies called
UEFI and Secure Boot. Your PC should let you turn these off in favor of
what's called legacy BIOS, but carelessly applying such settings can
leave you with unnerving error messages and a computer that won't start.
I recovered from such blundering and was able to briefly test distros
ranging from Fatdog64 and Solus to Peppermint and Ubuntu. But you should
be ready to spend some debugging time even though, I hasten to add,
Linux circa 2016 is positively welcoming compared to the last time I
played with the OS.
Ubuntu 16.04
Most of the versions I tried listed available Wi-Fi networks, prompted
for a password, and got me online as smoothly as Windows or OS X on
their best days. Linux has gotten much better at finding and installing
printers (though multifunction printer/scanner/copiers can still be
tricky). There's still a civil war involving different ways to package
and install new apps, but most distros' app store-style software
managers shield you from the dorky details.
....
etc
--
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town
that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
http://www.mrbrklyn.com
DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/resources - Unpublished Archive
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http://www.brooklyn-living.com
Being so tracked is for FARM ANIMALS and and extermination camps,
but incompatible with living as a free human being. -RI Safir 2013
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