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The install seems to have completed without problem. Now comes the moment of truth — the first boot. I’ve had Linux systems crap out on me right here. Normally you just shrug and deal with it, but this is my computer we’re talking about. It better as hell still work.

Fedora starts off nicely and asks some final configuration questions. I tell it to turn off SELinux (I’ve had problems with it before and I don’t want to use it until I know better how to control it). It says OK, and asks to reboot. OK. Now for the real moment of truth.

Linux starts. Linux starts fast. Really fast. My old compy boots to the logon screen in under 30 seconds. After I enter in the username and password, it gives me a desktop in about 10. Apparently some improvements have been made since Fedora Core 4. These boot times are on par with Windows XP. In fact, I think the Linux system actually gets me to a desktop faster. So… here I am on the beach. Me and Tux by the ocean of free open source.

Fedora has greeted me with a bubbly blue desktop, similar to the one I encountered when playing with Fedora Core 4. All the usual Gnome desktop stuff seems to be there. Unlike Windows, the Fedora configuration of Gnome splits up the taskbar and start menu. In the default configuration, the Gnome versions of the Start Menu, Quick Launch Bar, System Tray and the clock all live at the top of the screen, while the Task Bar resides on the bottom. The desktop button and the workspace switcher are down there too. I had forgotten that Gnome comes with four desktops for the price of one. Nice! You can have a browser in one workspace, media player in another, terminal window in a third. You switch back and forth with the switcher applet at the bottom right of the screen. It even shows you little tiny thumbnails of what’s on each desktop.

Gnome has no Start button, it instead has three menus at the top left: Applications, Places, and System. Your programs live in Applications, various file browsing programs live in Places and system related stuff (like restarting the computer) lives in System. Easy.

I know that the sound and the graphics work because the installer program correctly identified them during the install process. I suspect all my hardware is supported, even my printer. Linux is pretty good with hardware, especially older hardware like mine.

It’s going to be applications I’m going to have to figure out. Linux can sometimes be a minefield of stuff that works and stuff that doesn’t. Sometimes this isn’t the fault of Linux, but of the messed up world we live in. Fedora, for example, cannot play MP3s because the MP3 format has a nasty patent on it. Windows can play MP3s, but this is only because Microsoft pays money to licence the format. Distributors of Linux won’t licence such things not just because it isn’t GPL, but because they don’t want to pay money for it. This doesn’t mean you can’t use the MP3, it just means you have to find a way to download the right stuff to make it work. This is true for a lot of things with Linux and I suppose it holds up popular adoption of the OS, but I’m willing to work through it in return for some computing freedom.

Here’s some stuff that worked right out of the box.

Surfing the Web
Fedora offers both a panel launcher icon and a menu item for the ‘Web Browser’. This web browser is Firefox. Although the fonts look a bit different, it basically looks and acts like Firefox. I launch it and it loads a webpage, confirming the functioning of the network settings I put in. This is a large boost to my confidence with my new Linux desktop. The web browser works, and it works the way I like. The first thing I do it put in the ForecastFox extension. It gives me a tiny weather forecast in the status bar at the bottom right of the Firefox window, just as it should. I visit a bunch of pages and one of them offers to put in Macromedia Flash. It goes in no problem. Yay! Now I can waste time watching little flash movies. Most importantly, Wordpress works fine, just as it does on Windows. It looks like web browsing is a go.

Instant Messaging
I require an instant messaging client that can do both MSN and Jabber. Some googling tells me about all kinds of Jabber clients for Linux, but not all that many multi-protocol ones. Most articles tell you that Gaim is best as a multi-protocol client on a Linux system. I don’t know if Gaim stands for anything (acronyms are very common in Linux software), but that’s what the program is called.

In the Internet sub-menu there is an item marked ‘Instant Messenger’. This turns out to be Gaim. Gaim supports many IM protocols and it is pretty easy to configure; for MSN, all it needed was a username and password.

Some of the user interface ideas in Gaim seem a bit clunky, but you can turn things like text labels off to make it look cleaner and simpler. Like any proper IM program it makes noises when things happen on the network, and can be made to minimise to the Panel (the System Tray in Windows). Gaim pops up conversation windows when people say things to you, but the Windows pop under whatever you’re looking at and blink their title in the task bar. Gaim also supports Avatars in MSN, which is nice, because my old IM client Miranda didn’t. So it looks like IM is all good.

Graphics
Detailed graphics work in Linux has always been handled by a program called GIMP (or The GIMP). This is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. I deliberately picked it when I was installing the system. I’ve used the GIMP a bunch of times before and was never really happy. But it’s basically all I’ve got now. My aversion to it isn’t so much about the features, as the GIMP includes all the features you could ever want in a graphics program, but more a dislike of its user interface. Most graphics software uses Window in Window viewing of everything. The GIMP does not. When you really get going on a project your desktop comes this jumble of disjointed toolbar windows.

Though confusing at first, actually using it isn’t so bad. After I figure out which menu has what, a simple process like loading an image, cropping it, resizing it, sharpening it and saving it, isn’t all that much of a chore. Graphics are acceptable, and maybe I’ll grow to like the curious GIMP interface.

Making the Printer Work
I hadn’t really thought about it, but I suppose I should see if I can get my printer to work.

Linux keeps configuration things in the System menu. Unlike Windows, which puts pretty well all configuration in the Control Panel, this Linux system offers Preferences and Administration sub menus. I find ‘Printing’ under Administration.

Adding the printer is fairly easy. It’s one of those tasks that requires you to enter the root user’s password; bit of a change from Windows when you are the root user all the time. When you click the ‘add’ button in the printing window, a simple wizard program walks you through the process of adding a printer queue. I select my printer from the list (HP Deskjet 810C), and select the appropriate port (LPT1). I tell it to print a test page and a test page pops out. Shiny.

FTP
FTP is how images get to this blog. Old fashioned, sure, but it works. I’m hoping for a decent graphical FTP program with Linux, because command line FTP sucketh. Luckily for me, in my Fedora install this is handled by gFTP. It’s a simple enough program, local window on the left, remote on the right. It has a curious bug, though: you can drag things from the remote window to the local window, but not the other way around. To upload things you must select the items you want and click the upload arrow. Annoying, but it does what I need.

Installing a Word Processor with Yum
My install of Fedora Core Linux comes with Open Office which works okay. I still prefer Abiword for word processing — it’s simpler and faster to load. So I decide to open up a terminal window, login as root, and install it:

yum install abiword

Yum is the super package installer for Linux, just like apt-get is on Ubuntu. I’ve used it on other systems before and it works as promised. Major distributors of Linux have this clever system where they make hundreds of free programs compatible with their distribution available for download with a simple install tool. As I mentioned before, the only real downside to the install tools is that you need to know what the program is actually called to get it. This isn’t so easy if you are totally new to Linux. Linux programs often don’t have names that make any sense at first.

Fedora apparently also has a graphical package installer but the command line doesn’t bother me and it seems faster somehow. In less than a minute Abiword has been installed and added to the Applications menu automatically. Nice. This is exactly how it should work. Like Firefox, Abiword looks the same and works the same as the Abiword I’ve been using in Windows. So not only do I have my favourite word processor again, I have successfully used the package installer.

Well, so much for the easy stuff. If all a person wants is Web, IM and word processing, any decent distro of Linux can meet those needs right after the install. But I’m going to need it to do more to keep me happy. The rest of my journey will be more of a challenge, but you know, maybe that’s okay.

Next: now the hackage gets interesting.