Banish the Damn Command Line!

Go to any Linux forum, and ask someone how to accomplish something, and some well-intentioned but utterly moronic science geek will spew out an answer that the person asking will quickly brush aside as useless.

Why is the answer useless?

Because the user wanted to push a button, click with the mouse, drag and drop, and get a result quickly. However, the typical Linux expert is a computer science nerd who thinks a graphical interface is for children, so he thinks he is being helpful by teaching us all how to use the command line and type in complicated commands that look like code out of a Hollywood movie.

Every someone writes in response to a new Ubuntu user, "That's easily done. Just open a terminal and..." the glazed over lack of interest on the part of the target audience is almost audible through the network cable.

Guys: NO COMMAND LINE. NONE. EVER. NADA. If you have to drop to the command line in an OS, the OS is doomed to being used by scientists and programmers only. The goal for Ubuntu is to reach a wider audience: Your grandparents, small children, artists, and people who DO NOT LIKE COMPUTERS.

Everything must be accessible via the GUI. It should be possible to run Ubuntu with total effectiveness without even knowing what a terminal window is.

If you think the terminal window must be opened to solve a problem, you are missing the point. The need to even have a terminal window IS THE PROBLEM.

Eliminate it and banish it to the background. Experts will always be able to find it and configure it to be reachable. The rest of us refuse to use it, as we get paid to work on things other than our computer.

Software Installation Must be Simplified in Ubuntu

This morning I went over to The How To Geek to read the How To Geek's instructions for installing Adobe Reader for Ubuntu. Why anyone would ask how to do this or care, I don't really know . That's why I was browsing the aforementioned article - to find out what advantages it has over the built-in PDF reader that Ubuntu comes with. It turns out it has none, and that there is no reason to install Adobe's product in Ubuntu.

What struck me were the comments (I left one as well). The people who had read the article and tried to follow its directions were met with all manner of ill-fated experiences attempting to do something as simple as install very mainstream software on their supposedly user-friendly Linux PC's.

Ubuntu must be enhanced to handle downloading and installing free software. The current method is aimed at techies, uses unfriendly terminology, is scattered into different places in the operating system, and leaves the user confused and intimidated if they do not work in the technology sector.

For Ubuntu acceptance to become more widespread, this needs to be addressed.

The problem:

1. Users was to download and install software on their Ubuntu PC's
2. There are multiple locations in the menus to try for this (applications | add/removed... Synaptic Package Manager)
3. Software can be installed without using either of the above menu items
4. How to uninstall software from the system is unclear
5. Software cannot simply be found on web sites and easily installed as in Windows by ordinary users
6. Some software installs require command line usage (the command line must be banished and hidden away somewhere dark and infrequently visited before true usability is achieved)

The solution:

1. Handle downloads like archives (automatically open up an install/uninstall handler when someone downloads a file
2. Get rid of the concept of "repositories" and never use the unfriendly word "repository" again. It sounds like a government warehouse and ordinary users will never go so far as to mess with these
3. Remove the item "Synaptic Package Manager" and never display such a thing to users again. Automate everything behind the scenes and instead only show "installed software"
4. Develop a service to detect software being installed by the user which triggers a helper program to track all installed files and config changes to undo them later and place a helpful, friendly item in the Add/Remove menu
5. Find a single place to install software (program files in Windows) where it goes. I put all of mine in /opt when given the choice. Why is some there and some in other places? Because some idiot scientist had some lofty reason for it. That scientist needs to be banished - Ubuntu is not for scientists.

Making software installation easier and more friendly is a key obstacle to Ubuntu adoption. Until users can click links, download files, click the icons, and see software install automatically guided to the right locations and uninstall with a single click, Ubuntu will remain unfriendly Linux that the average PC user will fear.

Fix it.

Understanding the Ubuntu Filesystem

In Windows you have your C:\ drive. That's where everything is. C:\windows\ is where the files that drive your operating system live. C:\Documents and Settings\Users\your login\ is where the files specific to you live at such as My Documents, Desktop, and Local Settings.

Why the hell does Windows call your hard drive C:\? I'll tell you. It's because back in the early days, there were no hard drives. You would turn on your Apple IIe or Commodore 64 (what I grew up with) and the operating system was built into the hardware. When you wanted to load a program, you had to attach either a cassette tape player or a floppy disk drive which used 5.25" floppy disks. Back then they were actually floppy, too.

If you wrote a program or document you wanted to save, you had to insert a floppy disk or an audio cassette, and you had to type a command like SAVE , 8 "Document". Then you went and had dinner and watched two TV shows while your document saved for an hour.

Since those drives were your first drives, they were lettered with A:\. Then the IBM personal computer came along and inside it was a very small hard drive. It was the third drive, behind the tape recorder and the floppy disk drive. Thus, it is called "C:\" and your CD/DVD drive is called D:\... everything else is lettered E, F, G, etc.

In fact, in Windows you can letter your drives anything you want.

But did you know that you can also create virtual drives? That you can have both C:\ and D:\ on the same piece of hard disk drive hardware? You can. That's because you can partition your drive. Most people use one large partition on their drives, so each drive gets one letter, but you don't have to do that. You can have multiples.

Unix, and therefore Linux, is far more graceful in handling things, and if you learn the system, you will come to understand that it is not necessary to have A drives, B drives, and the like.

Linux has root. Root is called /. The slash is forward instead of backward. Root is where everything starts on a filesystem or "host."

/ is the beginning of everything - the folder that all other folders are in. If you think about it, it makes sense to use a forward slash. When you use text to describe folders inside folders, the forward slashes look more obvious:

/
/etc
/opt
/home
/sbin
/var
/mount
/media
/bin

The nice forward slashes show how everything spills down from above.

When you attach a new hard disk, you "mount" it in the filesystem. That means that you tell your operating system, when it boots up, to use that hardware to put a certain part of the filesystem on it. You can mount pieces of the filesystem to hardware anywhere you want.

For example, you can have two hard drives, and everything goes on one drive, and then /home and everything below it goes on the other. The possibilities are endless and allow a system administrator to use 50 hards drive and spread a single host across them all by attaching various directories to each hard drive.

Theoretically, you could just keep doing this forever.

So, what the heck are those directories in Ubuntu Linux, anyway?

/home - this is the equivalent of Windows' "Documents and Settings." It contains your documents, and all of the individual settings for you for any program on your computer. Those settings are usually in hidden folders - hidden folders have a . at the beginning of the filename like this: .name

/opt - this is a good place to tell software to install when you run any sort of installer outside of the Ubuntu add/remove function or synaptic package manager.

You know what? If you are a beginner, you really don't need to know where anything else is. It all installs and uninstalls automagically using the built in menu items. Most people who use Windows don't know where anything is outside of My Documents, and it is perfectly reasonable that plenty of people will use Linux without giving a crap how it works. So, that's it.

And, by default, you aren't allowed to modify anything outside of your /home directory anyway.

Ubuntu 7.10 even puts a folder for your home directory on the desktop. Isn't that sweet? That way you won't lose it. :-)

No File Extensions in Ubuntu Linux

One of the big differences between Linux and Windows is how files are named. Windows references the last part of the file name - filename.doc, filename.xls, filename.txt to determine what kind of file it is. If you change that ending, the operating system changes the way it views the file and what kind of program it loads to view it.

Linux doesn't do that. File names have nothing to do with what kind of file you are looking at in Linux. Unlike Windows, you can successfully name text files "To do list" without any file name extension at the end, and the operating system will treat the text file as a text file. In fact, you can put .txt at the end like in Windows, if you like. You can also try changing the extension to .jpg (an image format), and the operating system will still treat the file like a text file.

Linux doesn't care about those file extensions.

Some Linux applications care, however. The Gimp, the famous free Photoshop Look-alike that comes free with almost every Linux distribution anywhere, saves files using extensions. Change the extension in the program, and The Gimp saves the file as a different type of file.

I find it liberating to not have to change file extensions to get my operating system to use a file correctly. No more pop-up windows that say "You have changed the extension on your file. If you do this, Windows might not be able to display it properly. Are you sure?"

Yes, I'm sure. Change my extension to .linux on everything. :-)

Email in Linux

One word: Gmail.

If you are using any sort of program at all on your home computer to manage your email, you are making a mistake, imo. Gmail is the ultimate email software.

Advantages:

• Email is stored forever (I've only used 5% of my 6 gigs)
• Email is stored remotely (no backing up - no archiving - no lost messages)
• Email is available from any networked computer
• Great spam filters
• The ability to label email as it comes in

Disadvantages:

• Your stupid company might block Gmail at the office and stop you from reaching it

Gmail is the best way to go when it comes to managing personal email. I know very few if any people who use a home PC who really require a to-do list, calendaring, and email in a client application that resembles Microsoft Outlook. Why bother with any of that when IT experts use Gmail and solve all of their problems easily?

How to Get Wiggly Windows in Ubuntu Linux

Ever seen the Windows in Linux wiggling about and other cool effects in one of those videos on YouTube? Try this one:



The Linux desktop effects leave MAC and Windows varieties in the dust.

Wondering how to do that? It's easy if you download Ubuntu 7.10 or higher. Just right click on the desktop. Choose the table labeled "Visual Effects" and amp up the settings to set up custom effects. If you have any sort of decent video card of recent variety, your desktop will be pleasantly wiggly, swirly, and springy in no time.

Windows and MAC users: Sorry. No wiggling or other special effects for you. You're stuck with your default configurations.

Make Fonts Look Nice in Ubuntu Linux

After much tweaking, I finally figured out a very simple way to make fonts in Linux look just like they did in windows. Linux has poor support for Fonts in the default installation. I don't know why this is, and I won't bother you with a long rant about it. It needs to be fixed, imo, but that's how it is.

How to fix:

Go to the top menu bar and click on SYSTEM | PREFERENCES | APPEARANCE.

Click on the fonts tab.

Select the radio button for "Subpixel Smoothing" if you have an LCD like I do (most people do these days).

Then click on the details button and select NO HINTING or HINTING NONE.

That will smooth them out just like Windows Cleartype.

Next, you can also install a package that contains fonts that are just like those in Windows.

Go to APPLICATIONS | ADD/REMOVE....

Search on MS Core Fonts. Select it for installation, and install. Done. Now you have Verdana, Arial, and other common Microsoft fonts on your linux installation, and your display of Web pages should improve dramatically.

Back in the days when I was running earlier Linux distributions, I used to have a devil of a time with fonts in Linux. They looked like crap, web pages would display too large of text here, too small there, and it was always too blurry or too pixelated. They have truly improved things in Linux to a professional level where fonts are concerned.