This weekend I had a encounter with Linux. For the bulk of you out there it’s free UNIX. Unix is a operating system like say, MacOS or Windows XP or Vista, They make your computer do things intelligently.

I grew up as a UNIX type. My past is entrenched in UNIX but I left that world about 10 years ago and had not returned. I was curious about how far the new free UNIX (Linux) systems had advanced so on a whim I decided to install a Linux call “Ubuntu” . I was pleasantly surprised , it installed with no problems. This was not the UNIX of old I was used to. I remember endless hours installing the old AIX , SUN and other BSD and AT&T variant Unix operating systems.

So how did I do this. It’s really not that hard:

First you need a PC to install Ubuntu onto, I happened to have a older Pentium 3 system that I was not using. I pulled it out of the closet, plugged a 80 Gig Hard Drive in, plugged a old CD drive in the system , plugged in a keyboard, a mouse and attached a monitor. I was set to go.  

Next you need the Ubuntu installation disk. Ubuntu has what is know as a “live” CD it allows the computer to boot and run off of the CD alone. I did this initially for several reasons.

Got to the Ubuntu site http://www.ubuntu.com/ Click on the Download Ubuntu site.

There will be a desktop and server editions and also several versions. I chose the desktop edition and downloaded the 8.10 version.

This will give you a “ISO” file on your CP on which you downloaded it., you now need to “burn” that image to a CD in order to install the Operating system on your target PC.

I use a product called “Nero” on my PC to do this. It’s pretty straight forward. The Nero Express icon allows you to select “burn an image”. I selected this and browsed my pc selected my ISO image and burned it to CD. I popped it out and I have a Ubuntu Desktop 8.10 Live CD.

I walked over to the PC I had built. I powered up the system, inserted the CD and then repowered the system. The PC found the CD and started booting up and after a few minutes like magic Ubuntu’s graphical interface popped up and wham I was running Ubuntu off the CD. I did this to check and see if my system was compatible. This was a incomplete test but it appeared to work and I hit the desktop Icon to install it to disk. I answered the various install questions and like magic in a few more minutes I have it installed and running off my Hard Drive. The Ubuntu system checked for updates and magically again it found updates and installed them.

I now have a Linux System up and running easily and on spare hardware. I utilize this as a print server as well as a proxy server ( filtering system ) .