A Plan to Effectively Promote Linux and *nix Operating Systems

By daWabbit, a.k.a. Jack Imsdahl wabbit@eaze.net

One does not need to be especially anti-Microsoft or particularly pro-Linux to see that we, the computer users/consumers, would benefit from increased competition in the areas of Operating System (OS) and application software. (I’m not ignoring Mac folks, here. I just couldn’t figure out how to work them in to the sentence, too.) Competition is what drives development, after all; This is true no matter if that development is purely commercial, open source, shareware, freeware or some mixture of the various philosophies and licenses.

So the question is; what can we, as little folks, do to promote competition? I think I have a partial answer.

An established user base is necessary to drive development. And people tend to use whichever OS they start out with on an ongoing basis. Mac users stick with Macs, Wintel folks tend to stick with Wintel. So it seems to me that if folks start out with Linux (whether on an Intel platform or PPC) they would tend to stick with that. Keep that in mind as we go along.

If you’re any sort of geek, or even if you just have moderately geekish inclinations, you have unused hardware in a closet somewhere. I know I do. Perhaps it’s obsolete stuff that’s perfectly usable except that it’s old enough to have been replaced. That 75 MHz Pentium which you once thought was a killer machine now stands unused and never thought of under a box of winter clothes in storage, right? Well, why not put it to good use where it will be appreciated? Ditto for that older Mac you might have but no longer use.

Rehabilitate that old box and put Linux on it, then give it to someone who ordinarily wouldn’t be able to afford a computer or might not be inclined to try using one on an ongoing basis. I’ve done this several times now, with really good results. I’m helping the installed base of Linux users to grow, too.

I can hear the moans now; ‘Linux is too complex for newcomers’ and all that jazz. In part, that’s right, but I’ve discovered a solution that has worked rather well, albeit with some serious tinkering. I set a box up running KDE for the interface, put on only a modest load of software, kill off most of the daemons to free up resources and don’t give them the root password! That’s right; I don’t give the newcomer the opportunity to mess around in the sensitive parts of the OS. (Ain’t I a sneaky devil?) And I pay attention to their early use of the box, training them as needed, gently and with humor. Eventually, a user is ready for root access, but not at first. I’m not any kind of Linux ace, either. Merely a user. So if I can do this, surely lots of other folks can, too.

And it’s worthwhile to note that the heart of a Windows installation, or a Mac one, for that matter, is every bit as complex as the Linux one. And that users survive encounters with those operating systems quite well, in a lot of cases. Here, we can protect them from themselves for a while, until they are more able to succeed.

And even Aunt Gertrude, with her pathological fear of the VCR controls, can be taught relatively easily to use and enjoy a Linux box set up this way.

Doing things this way requires more attention on my part when the box is set up and occasional service calls after. One must check out every app for function before letting the box go to it’s new owner because they simply cannot deal with it when something fails and also because it cuts down on user frustration, which is critical to their satisfaction. Permissions have all got to be squared away from the jump. Most (if not all) apps have to be set up to launch from icons. You’ll have to set up their internet connection, printer and everything. You’ll have to go over and help them when they find another application they want to install. I regard this labor as all part of helping out, but you need to know up front that you’ll have to put some extra work in at the start and as time goes by. Maybe quite a bit of it.

I originally started using Linux for this because it carried no license hassles. I have copies of Windows 95 or 98 but don’t know their pedigree and I don’t wish to be putting illegal software on a machine. (These copies sit, unused, in my filing cabinet to this day. We were thinking of tiling the bathroom with them, but we’re afraid MS will sic their lawyers on us if they find out. There’s probably a clause in the EULA about bathroom use. There’s one about everything else, after all, but it’s beyond me to understand those things.)

Later on, it occurred to me exactly how suitable Linux was and is for this purpose, aside from any licensing issues.

Linux supports and runs well on a lot of older hardware, which is of course what we’re dealing with in these situations. If sufficient swap space is configured in the installation, Linux generally needs less memory than the common Wintel installation; which shortage commonly afflicts those older boxes. (I stuff in as much memory as I can and I routinely put in a swap at the beginning and at the end of each drive and give them an equal priority of –1. If two drives are present, I do that on both and install /home and/or /usr on the second drive.) Even on older hardware, Linux is robust enough to withstand the ham-fisted treatment new users are likely to give it, especially when they don’t have root access. Pared-down Linux installations which still include a fair number of installed applications are small enough to fit on older, smaller, disk drives with room to spare. Linux is a bit more friendly to boxes with lower available resources, running comparable apps to a Wintel installation at somewhat lower resource consumption levels, depending on the application, naturally.

Those who complain about lack of applications in Linux are usually power users who actually make use of a lot of the bells and whistles available in, say, Microsoft Office, or Adobe Premier or what have you. It is patently unfair to compare their computing habits to those of the ‘average’ home user, or even most users in business. The truth of the matter is that almost all newcomers and (indeed) most users barely touch the capabilities of their machines or applications. They chat via their browser or on IRC, word process the occasional letter to the kid's teacher, do e-mail, maybe edit snapshots of the cat and surf the web. Linux can accommodate these users splendidly and, as their needs and desires grow, their capabilities to manage the computer do too.

The desktop interface is critical, in my opinion. KDE provides good drag and drop capabilities and is (I think) a bit easier for the newcomer to navigate than Gnome. In the end, it’s a matter of choice and you may wish to experiment (beforehand or with your users) rather than take my opinions as fact. I install bash as the command line shell, simply because that’s what I use at home and know best, and remove the rest of the shells from the installation. I always compile a kernel specifically for that particular installation and keep a copy of it on their disk in case a reinstallation is necessary. (And I keep careful notes of what has been done to accommodate that system, so I can redo it in the event of some catastrophe.)

Abiword, KOffice, Open Office, Star Office and more are available and no new user is likely to need any added capabilities in the near future, if ever. Besides, by the time they do, these applications will likely have those capabilities built in, so rapidly are they developing. There are good browsers, from Netscape/Mozilla to Konqueror to Opera with more on the way. Java Runtime Environments are supported in most Linux browsers. The GIMP splendidly accommodates their needs for graphic processing. Blender is available for those wishing to experiment with animation. There are some games available, for those who lean that way, with more coming. And all sorts of CD rippers, burners and MP3 compressors are out there, with many multimedia apps in development or already released. Many ‘special’ uses are accommodated in Linux software which can be installed and even the new user can be trained to use these quickly and without much trouble.

I do impress upon the new users that they cannot simply bop out to Joe’s Computer Heaven and Storm Door Company and buy whatever new hardware they desire. That they must check with me first. This way, I can assure they only get things compatible with their setup. The same goes for software, of course. You’d be surprised how often I have been asked to install Windows software (the user had just gone out and bought) on a Linux box. And on those occasions when I install hardware for these folks, I include them in the process, as instruction. Especially if a kernel recompile is necessary.

Printers and scanners are a hassle, admittedly. I am still not ever satisfied with CUPS (Common Unix Printing System) and SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy) has been anything but sane or easy for me. Still, they work dependably enough, if I put in the required effort to get them running. (And, trust me, you don’t even want to know what it took to get my scanner working in Windows 2000!) USB support in Linux is coming on fast and has reached a fairly decent level.

It might even do to concoct a special distribution of Linux for just this type of installation. Something small, based perhaps on Debian or Red Hat: and containing only a skeleton installation of apps and recovery tools. One could download the core installation and only the drivers, etc. that are necessary to that particular installation. Then you could burn a CD for just that install. Applications can easily be added, later, if needed. And most current distributions come with far more apps than the general run of users will ever put to use (Can you say GAWK?). Perhaps Peanut Linux (which I have, but have not thoroughly checked out) would be a suitable basis for this use. I have used Mandrake (Red Hat based) almost exclusively, up to this point. Debian, however, has APT, which makes updating much easier and more reliable (in terms of satisfying dependencies) than any RPM based systems I have yet encountered. Seems each flavor of Linux has something to recommend it.

Go ahead and experiment. I think you’ll see I’m right about Linux being more suitable to new users than has ever been admitted before.