mentalNoise

Been doing some stuff at home lately. Got myself a new toy to tinker with — GIMP. Most people say that it is the ultimate alternative to Adobe Photoshop. I like it because it’s open source and it’s technically free. It’s powerful enough to be used alongside Photoshop but still has a lot of room for improvement. But for now, it works for me.

 

Click on the thumbnails above to see full size.

Since I have a very old and outdated PC at home, it would be overkill to try and install the default Ubuntu setup in it. There are a lot of documentation online regarding installation in low memory systems. This particular one was what I followed to get my Ubuntu running. In doing just a server install, you will be greeted by the good old command line interface (CLI) each and every time you login. I don’t know about you but in today’s world of mouse clicks, it would be very convenient to have a GUI of some sort. I chose Fluxbox to be my window manager. This is what I did first.

$ sudo apt-get install fluxbox x-window-system-core xdm

The command above installs:

Fluxbox
In Unix (and others including GNU/Linux) computing, Fluxbox is a window manager for the X Window System based on Blackbox 0.61.1.

X Window System
In computing, the X Window System (commonly X11 or X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays.
…
X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the screen and interacting with a mouse and keyboard.

XDM
(in full, the X Window Display Manager) is the default display manager for the X Window System. It is a bare-bones X display manager. It was introduced with X11 Release 3 in October 1988, to support the standalone X terminals that were just coming onto the market. It was written by Keith Packard.

All definitions taken from Wikipedia

It would be fine and dandy if you have a fast internet connection. Installation of these packages is easy.

“But what if I have no internet connection?”, you might ask.

Ahhh … that’s another story to be told! I will be posting it some time later because I am not feeling up to it right now. So just wait for it.

I ain’t talking about that stupid song. What I am talking about is that I have entered a whole new world in operating systems (OS): Ubuntu. What is it? Linux, well at least one of it’s many distros in existence. Yep, I have ventured into the unknown and now I am feeling like a student again. Back to square one as most would say.

It would be unfair for me to say that Ubuntu is the best distro of linux out there since it’s the only distro I have tried. What I do like about it is that it is oriented to be a home / desktop OS. It was easy to install and the default programs almost caters to the basic needs of an average computer user. It comes with the Gnome desktop environment by default. Of course, you can customize your window manager to your liking (ahh … the power of Linux!) or to use a different window manager available out there (that is if you know how and which is exactly what I am trying to learn).

The most recent release as of this writing is version 5.10 codenamed Breezy Badger. You can get copies of the installer (and live) CD from their website if you have a fast internet connection. Just download the appropriate .iso file and burn it into a CD with a CD burning tool of your choice. Or you can get free CDs (yep, free!!!) by ordering through Shipit - Free CDs.

That’s just about all I can say for now. I am still learning how to get Fluxbox to run as my default window manager for now and that’s another story. I will be posting my experience about it soon (hopefully).