Old PCs die a terrible death, lonely and forlorn. In the Windows world you need to upgrade your physical PC hardware every 3-4 years as well as buy the newest operating system, wasting money and stressing your budget. As an IT professional I not only do not buy into this propaganda, but rail against it. When the Windows operating systems on old PCs do not receive any upgrades, the PC slows down, often heavily laden with fat, bloated software. Ubuntu, a Linux OS version, and Xubuntu, it’s lighter version, may be the answer to unlocking the innate functionality of your old PC.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with old PCs and they should last decades, not 4 years. When the Windows OS as well as other software cannot be upgraded, this reduces the usability of your PC. Often times the system as taken on so much bloated software baggage that it can hardly run. This software baggage can be from the OS or from downloaded programs. While there are programs that can help reduce this garbage, a slimmer and more efficient operating system may be your answer. Great care is needed when deleting software from an Old Windows PC because the delete of an important file could disable the computer.
Ubuntu, a variant of the Linux operating system, is by far much smaller than Windows. You can download the base of Ubuntu onto one CD, or 700MB. From this single CD you can actually run the OS on your Windows PC in order to test it, or you can install it. Installation can be a pure Ubuntu or a dual boot, where you have a choice to boot up with Ubuntu or Windows. This all comes on one single CD. I call that efficient.
Granted when you boot up with the Ubuntu CD, your PC will run slow. You really cannot run an operating system efficiently from a CD player, so expect this. When you install Ubuntu on your system everything will be faster than running from the CD.
Xubuntu is the slimmer version of Ubuntu, slimmer meaning there is less software and therefore works better on old PCs. Like its larger sibling Ubuntu, Xubuntu fits on one single CD. I chose to install Xubuntu on my old Intel P3 boxes. I noticed that with my original 256k of memory, Windows XP actually ran a little better than Xubuntu. Once I upgraded to 512k of RAM Xubuntu was much superior. It is really important to check how much memory and disk space you have before trying an install. Note that installing Xubuntu on 256m of RAM takes a long time, like 1.5 hrs.
Once Xubuntu 10.04 LTS was installed there were quite a few updates that were needed. This was easily done from Uubuntu’s Software Centre. Here there are trusted software upgrades that are pretty much guaranteed to work. This is quite different in the Windows world, where you hope that an upgrade will not impale your beloved PC. The Software Centre is quite impressive, not only efficiently upgrading your PC, but keeps track of all your installed packages. More importantly, the installs all worked. This was impressive, coming from the Windows world.
Xubuntu’s Software Centre also has many other downloads such as games. The Little Weed was happy to download and test these games, which he was easily able, and the games worked. What he did not like, he deleted, all without impacting the PC.
Firefox was very easy to upgrade and ran straight out of the box, as did hooking up to the internet. I also downloaded and upgraded Google Chrome as well as Skype, all without issue.
After the initial install, I had a PC running Xubuntu, with a functioning browser that can get to the internet. There were a few more games on the PC, I noticed. I have yet to install Open Office, but I know I can do this from the Software Centre. Impressive.
Networking was a big issue with Xubuntu. I found it very easy to find my Windows-based network printer, and attach to it and print a test sheet. The issue I struggled with is that Xubuntu could not view files on other Windows PCs on my network. After a lot of internet searching I found the answer: Xubuntu, which uses Thor as its file manager, has no such capability as yet. Ubuntu, the larger sibling, can do this. The solution is to download and install Ubuntu’s file manager, called Nautilus. Seriously? An OS that does not allow you to browse other PCs on your network? This issue should be included in the new version of Xubuntu.
Once I installed Nautilus, again through the Software Centre, I had a PC that I can use to browse the internet, using Firefox or Chrome, instant messaging through Skype, print to my network printer, browse files on my other networked Windows PCs, and is quite fast to run. There is also an easy way to find new software that is safe to download, run and if you do not like it, to delete, all without impacting your PC. All this, without having to pay royalties to any company to use the software. This, I think is the advantage of Xubuntu.
The next step in my Xubuntu experience was to install Eclipse and set up the PC to interface with an Arduino microprocessor. While I found numerous instructions on the internet, most were outdated. Downloading Eclipse was easy. What was difficult, much to my surprise, was to find a logical location on the disk to put installed programs and to install them there. This is similar to the “Program Files” directory on Windows.
This is where I ran into issues with Xubuntu. From internet advice, best practice was to install all programs in the /opt directory. In fact, this is where Google Chrome automagically installed. I am good with this. I will simply create another directory in /opt called /Eclipse, unzip/untar and install Eclipse in this new subdirectory. Much to my surprise from Thor or Nautilus I did not have authorization to create a new directory, even as an administrator. I was a little surprised at the high requirements to create a directory, but then again, this would prevent users from messing their PC up with unnecessary directories.
To create a directory the administrator has to go into Terminal mode, a command line interface, and do a sudo command. Not only does the admin have to be more technically savvy, they need know a lot more about Xubuntu. Similar to DOS from the 1980s, Terminal has some online help. Switching back and forth from Terminal (ctrl alt 1) and Xubuntu (ctrl alt 7) was easy, thankfully. Making the Eclipse directory was not so difficult after I was in Terminal and did a sudo. Ditto for deleting a directory. Moving from one directory to another was similar to DOS. Extracting Eclipse into a directory did not work. What I eventually did was extract Eclipse to a directory under my user name, and then using Terminal and sudo to move this directory to /opt. In the end it all worked.
There is a lot to Xubuntu. For the average user Xubuntu offers a safe and efficient operating system which runs very well on low powered PCs with 512m of RAM or more. With 256m of RAM Xubuntu will be a little laggy, but will still work.
For administrators, installing software and getting around the file system in Xubuntu can be more difficult. Overall I am really impressed with Xubuntu and so are my Little Weeds.
