New digs: Gnoppix and Repartitioning - or NetBSD

Well, I decided to go ahead with Gnoppix. I am through with NetBSD for now. Gnoppix, if you do not know, is Knoppix with a GNOME desktop environment. Now it is basically a modified version of Ubuntu, but I am using an older distribution. My plan to repartition my hard drive will take several steps. First, I will partition the hard drive under DOS (oh, well.........) and quickly install a CD-ROM driver for booting of the Gateway's CD-ROM drive. It is a Mitsumi drive, so I easily fetched a driver. Second, I may or may not upgrade the hard drive. I think I will put in a 6 GB one, since 1 GB is certainly not enough. After all, 449 MB is compressed on the CD. Third, I will test to make sure the CD is good first. Last time with NetBSD I messed up on installation twice. That eliminated X. Overall, I am glad this is possible, but it is too bad that NetBSD is acting in a bad way. Still, I may just try working more with NetBSD. I would rather be persistent than conceding.

Desktop Environments: KDE

Of all desktop environments, KDE, by far is the most simple and intuitive. It has an resemblance to Windows. However, it is also fairly ugly and inefficient. However, other than X, which I once used with twm, it is about the only desktop environment that I have used. I plan to try out GNOME and Xfce, which I have seen running once in a Xubuntu distribution, fairly soon.

This brings me to another point. I have begun a new article for the blog called Desktop Environments. Later will be reviews of other environments, including Xfce and GNOME. I will probably begin with Xfce, but I don't know for sure. I will also go into depth about particular packages and features of each of the next environments.

Gnoppix

Hello again. I have searched for some time on Google and have found a distribution of Knoppix that uses GNOME. I think I might install this on a laptop if I find one. I understand from a reader's comment that GNOME is much cleaner than KDE.

Programming: gcc

Three reasons to install Linux or Unix on a PC: first, hear no Microsoft, smell no Microsoft, see no Microsoft; second, GNOME; third, gcc. Gcc is the GNU Compiler Collection, a universal Unix compiler that can compile just about everything from C to Fortran to Ada to Assembly to 00010111010100. It ships with most, if not all, Unix and Linux distros. I have been using to learn C, which is much easier under Unix. But you can still use it for many other things. In fact, I can compile machine-independent code with it. Later I will tell you more about personal experiences and programs I have compiled with gcc and g++.

Desktop Environments

The thing that finally got Linux off the ground was not sash :) but a GUI called GNOME created by a young programmer named Miguel de Icaza. GNOME is an example of a desktop environment or GUI. They make computing more fun but, as I say, slower. X is also a desktop environment. I personally prefer Xfce, but I also think KDE is cool. What environment do you use? Why? Tell us about it.

Using KDE, GNOME and X with NetBSD

Okay, so you probably understand that I only use the shell. Just bash, that's right. Now I have decided to install X and, especially, KDE on my machine. To install X, I believe that you simply install it as is comes distributed on the cd (the i386/Amnesiac port). X is required for KDE, I think. So install it as sysinst will tell you. For me, it messed up my installation of 2.1, so I just forgot about it and stuck with the shell. Maybe 3.0.1 or, sometime soon, 3.1, will handle it. Next, for KDE.

I know that you can download KDE from the pkgsrc collection on the NetBSD website. However, I am still reading about how I might want to install it. Let's see.........Google Groups........pkgsrc.org..................ah.......NetBSD's package collection. I guess that you just have to install it according to a makefile in the package. The same I think is true for GNOME.

Spotlight: Solaris

Many of you may have heard of the operating system Solaris. It is the operating system that Sun Microsystems introduced in the early 1990s. It replaced Sun's earlier Unix-based operating system. Today Solaris is open source, and you can get Solaris 10 for free. It is very innovative, and among its innovations is Sun's own file system, ZFS, which is an advanced 128-bit file system. Solaris also comes with a GNOME-like desktop environment, the Java Desktop System. There are releases for both PC and SPARC platforms. And, of course, jdk runs on it. To learn more, go to http://sun.com/solaris/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_Operating_Environment.