Another Post On Linux
There are various Linux versions that you can install onto your computer. Still don’t know what is Linux? If you are tired of using Windows such as XP and Vista, you could always install Linux as the alternative operating system for your computer. It’s free to download, and it’s legal to do so. How come? Just like any other software that is available on this earthly world, each Linux version comes with a license, and Linux’s licenses are there to protect computer users like you and me. If you read Linux licenses clearly, you may be surprised that you could download Linux’s source code, change the source code, recompile the source code, repackage the source code, make the source code as your own, and so on. If you are totally new to Linux, you probably think that this is bogus! What make you think that way? You and I, and so many other people — we grew up accustomed to proprietary software, and the only way to get these proprietary software is to buy them. Linux and other open source software are under open source community — in this way you and I get to use these software with less restrictions.
People who are loyal Linux users love to brag about how much more secured Linux is when it’s compared to Windows Vista and other Windows versions. Though it’s not nice to trash other software just because you are in love with another comparable software, it’s true that Linux is much more secured than Windows. Why? Linux was designed to be secured from the very beginning! Linux has smaller user base, and this is why not too many hackers are fond to attack Linux users. Linux has always applied various methods to allow Linux users to define files/system permissions. Windows Vista is trying to do the same but not as restrictive as Linux’s permission system; Windows Vista and its predecessors has always emphasized user-friendly user-interface over security. There are no known virus that could affect Linux, but you could not say the same for Windows. One could argue that some hackers could create viruses that specifically target Linux, but it’s so much harder for a virus to do harm to Linux since Linux employs much more restrictive OS environment; hackers don’t want to waste their time on creating viruses for Linux. You could say that you don’t need virus scanner for Linux OS. Some Linux users installed a virus scanner such as Clam AntiVirus just to scan their computer files to make sure that only uninfected files on Linux get transferred to Windows — in this way Windows computers won’t get infected by viruses. The virus infected files themselves could not harm Linux system!
Linux is not too hard to use if you try to learn it at a steady pace, but impatient users may find that Linux is much harder to learn and to use than Windows. Luckily, Linux versions such as Ubuntu, openSuse, Fedora, Mandriva, PCLinuxOS, and other flavors are beginning to make friendly GUI(s) (Graphical User Interface), and so new Linux users may find that it’s not too hard to learn how to use Linux.
If you are new to Linux, you may find that most Windows software won’t be able to run on Linux, but Linux has a software called Wine that could emulate Windows environment, and in this way you may be able to run some Windows software on Linux. Wine is free as most other Linux’s software. If you are worrying about being less productive on Linux OS, don’t be! Linux has so many free software that are basically providing similar functions to Windows’ software. Open Office, Gimp, Evince, Gedit, Pidgin Internet Messenger, Brasero Disc Burning, VLC, and thousands of other software that Linux carries are perfect examples of why you can still be very productive when using Linux. Want to make your Linux looks as cool as Vista? You can do this too by installing correct software packages and do some configurations. (Hint: Compiz) The capability of making your Linux plays videos, MP3, share files, write documents, spreadsheets, hosting websites, hosting email servers, programming, and so on are all there. It’s up to you to take up Linux as your next favorite Operating System!
If you go back a decade ago, installing Linux was a scary thing to do, but now a day it’s not the case anymore. I suggest you try Ubuntu out, because Ubuntu is very easy to install. What’s Ubuntu? Ubuntu is Linux! You can find all type of Linux at Distrowatch.com. Searching through Google is another fine way to find documentations that show you how to use Linux.
Here are some tips that I suggest you should do when installing Linux! If the Linux version that you are installing has an option that automatically partition your hard-drive, and since you are new to Linux, I suggest that you should use that option. You could also partition your hard-drive the manual way. If you plan to partition your hard-drive the manual way, I think you should make your boot partition with the size of 100 MB. You should also make your swap partition doubles the size of your available RAM (a type of computer memory that could be accessed randomly). You could also make a /home mount point as a separate partition, because when you reinstall Linux again, you could keep your users’ files. Making your /var mount point as a separate partition is also a good idea, because /var is where Linux dynamically write files to. Other people also suggest that you could make your /tmp mount point as a separated partition for security purpose, but there are only so much separated partition you could make, I suggest you plan this out carefully. In theory, you could create 3 primary partitions, 1 extended partition, and 64 logical partitions. Those logical partitions will have to go inside your extended partition. Making this easy, you could create /boot with 100 MB size as your first partition, /home as your secondary partition, /swap as your third partition, / as your extended partition, and inside / you could create more partitions for various mount points. For examples, you could create /tmp, /var, /opt, /etc, /root, /bin, /sbin, /mnt, /dev, and so on as your logical partitions. I think you don’t need that many logical partitions, and those that you need are probably /var, and /tmp.
Let say you pass the point of default installation from a Linux DVD or CD, I suggest you that do not connect your computer to Internet yet! It’s best that you have a readily firewall software on CD, USB flash drive, or DVD; by installing the firewall onto your brand new Linux installation before connecting to the Internet is one of the best practices in securing your computer from prying script kiddies. You could always grab APF firewall from http://www.rfxn.com/projects/advanced-policy-firewall/, then place this on CD, USB flash drive, or DVD before you begin your Linux installation process. Installing APF on your Linux computer is easy! Copy the APF tar.gz file onto your computer, open up a shell terminal, do “tar xzvf apf-current.tar.gz,” go into the extracted apf directory, and then do “./install.sh.” You need to configure your APF firewall before it works correctly to protect your Linux computer. The configuration file for APF firewall is in /etc/apf/ and the file is called conf.apf. To edit conf.apf, you have to be a root user. APF’s configuration file is pretty much self explanatory, and so you should read it carefully before you edit it. Also don’t forget to start your APF firewall! How? On Ubuntu you do “sudo /usr/local/sbin/apf -s,” but on other Linux system you need to be root and then do “/usr/local/sbin/apf -s.”
After you got a firewall going on your Linux computer, you should do an update for your Linux. Why? If you are installing Linux from a CD or DVD, then those Linux’s system files are pretty darn old. Updating those files help ironed out security issues. Updating your operating system is very important! Doing this help your operating system stays up to date and avoid security holes. If you are using Ubuntu, udpating is easy! For Ubuntu and similar Linux versions (Debian), you could do “sudo aptitude update,” and then “sudo aptitude safe-upgrade.” You could also do “sudo synaptic” to see thousands of available software/packages that you could install onto your Linux system. I suggest that you should only install what you need, because the more software you install, the less secure your computer gets — this is true for all operating systems. Why? Many software have unfixed security problems, or unknown security problems, and by installing only the software you need, you are minimizing the risk of exposing your computer to security issues. You should also search the web using Google to find out what other useful commands that you could use on Linux through shell terminal. If you prefer using Linux’s GUI only, you could, but shell terminal allows you to do much much more than what GUI is offering.
Have fun playing with Linux!
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