New Life For An Old PC
I confess to being a packrat. In the dark recesses of my basement are a number of antiquated PCs (and a couple of original MACs) waiting for a ressurection day that—realistically speaking— will never come.
Or so I thought.
As it turns out, there is new life for a couple of my old computers, thanks to a new Linux distrubution called Ubuntu. An article on the operating system in a recent issue of Maximum PC prompted me to get an old computer out of the closet and give it a try.
I hadn’t used the Dell computer in years because it was a 400Mhz Pentium II with just 512MB of memory and a 10GB hard drive that ran on Windows 98. In other words, the operating system made it useless, and it didn’t have enough power to justify purchasing a copy of Windows XP.
But after reading the article, I thought I’d Ubuntu give it a try.
After downloading the latest version, I burned it to a cd and booted the computer from the optical drive. Ubuntu can actually be run live from the CD—a useful trick if you just want to try it out. Once the operating system is up, it gives you a choice of installing to a hard drive, or running it from the CD. I had nothing to lose, so I went straight to the install. Although I could have run it on a separate partition, I just chose to overwrite the entire hard drive.
An hour or so later, it was up and running.
And I couldn’t be more pleased. Ubuntu automatically recognized the video card, the sound card, the zip drive, DVD and all of the other hardware. I didn’t have to do any tweaking at all. I plugged a flash drive into a usb slot, and Ubuntu picked it up immediately (try that with Windows 98). I was instantly online when I plugged in the network cable.
Ubuntu has a gorgeous looking graphical interface that hides all of the Unix nastiness (although you can, of course, still type commands into a terminal window). It’s easy enough for a typical home user. As for performance, it runs wonderfully—better than Windows 98. It’s fast and stable. In many days of use, I have not had a single problem—not even a minor hiccup.
One of the best things about Ubuntu is that it comes with a nice selection of useful software such as the Microsoft Office clone called Open Office, Firefox, and a Photoshop clone called GIMP. Adding additional software is a breeze. Ubuntu comes with an Add/Remove Software utility that accesses an online list of available programs and utilities. You can browse the list by categories, then download and install the programs just by clicking. I found high quality, free Linux versions of nearly all of the software that I use on my XP machine. I had them all downloaded and installed very quickly, and with no problems.
There’s just one thing that I think would keep Ubuntu from unseating a commercial operating system: it’s not particularly easy to get it to play mp3s, and commercial DVDs. To do that, you have to seek out and install codecs (software that decodes the data so you can play it.). These are not terribly difficult to install, but are probably too hard for the typical home user. Ubuntu needs to have some sort of automated process for this; it would be even better if these came built in. (I understand that there are some copyright problems with this).
I’ve now moved the Ubuntu machine to my classroom, where I use it for grading (our grading system is online and operates through our web browsers), and for making worksheets, and powerpoint presentations.
It’s a nice little workhorse for school. Its certainly more useful and reliable than the PC provided for my room by the school district. That nastly little plastic box runs on Windows 98 (the district got a deal on that one—XP was already available), crashes incessantly and—even at 800 Mhz—is slower than the 400 Mhz Ubuntu Box.
Here’s a thought: Public schools could save tens of thousands of dollars by abandoning Microsoft products and going to Ubuntu and other open source Linux products. They’re free, easy to use and at least as secure as Windows. Even better: the kids won’t be able to install and play their games and music software on them—problems which are constantly gunking up and bringing down our system).
If you want to try Ubuntu, but don’t want to download it, you can get a disk from Amazon for a very reasonable price:
You also can get a Ubuntu instruction book that has a DVD in the back that includes a full distribution:
Posted by The Editor on 11/10 at 08:22 PM
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