Pinderkent

As has widely been reported, Ubuntu 7.04 is now available. While I know a great many people use Ubuntu as their primary GNU/Linux distribution, I have usually avoided it as I prefer KDE over GNOME. Because of that preference, I have leaned towards Kubuntu instead. Kubuntu essentially takes Ubuntu, and replaces the GNOME desktop environment with KDE. And when there's a new version of Ubuntu released, soon after we get a new version of Kubuntu. In this case, that version is Kubuntu 7.04.

While I find myself using Solaris and NetBSD more often these days, I do like to keep up with what is happening in the Linux world. So today I decided to download and install the newly-released Kubuntu 7.04. After installing it and using it for a little while, I am very impressed. Dare I say it, I think Kubuntu puts up quite a challenge for Windows Vista to face.

Installation
The installation is, of course, the first part of Kubuntu that many users will experience. Being quite used to the text-based installer of a system like NetBSD, I do not think that I'm a good judge of how easy or difficult a typical individual would find it to install Kubuntu. But I will say that for my installation attempt, it went flawlessly. Each step to be performed was explained in a clear and concise manner. The progression was sensible, and in the end I got a system that was working. I have no complaints here.

KDE
Although KDE 3.5.6 isn't a new release by any means (it was released at the end of January 2007), it's a very enjoyable desktop environment to use, and the Kubuntu developers do a really good job of integrating it with the rest of the GNU/Linux system. My one main complaint has to do with the default theme. Namely, I dislike the use of the 3D gradient sort of effect used in the window title bars. The grey area, which intersects the lower half of the window title, is distracting and pointless. Of course, the theme can be quite easily changed, so this is not a major problem by any means.

Usability
I have found the usability of Kubuntu 6.10 to be excellent. As always, KDE provides a very clean, integrated and effective desktop environment. All of the major types of applications are present for starters. Konqueror provides a fast, memory-efficient and standards-compliant web browser. Although I prefer mutt, KMail is truly a very powerful email client. Kopete is a complete instant messenging solution. Of course, there are many, many other useful KDE applications to choose from. And beyond that, there are the thousands of other open source applications that are so easily installed.

Kubuntu does a great job at showing off the maturity of today's open source software. More importantly, I think it shows how the commercial offerings from various other companies are facing some very stiff competition from their open source counterparts. In terms of usability, Kubuntu is more than ready for the corporate desktop. As mentioned earlier, it provides essentially all of the basic applications needed to run a business, all without the cost and licensing hassle of many of the commercial offerings. And I do not doubt for a moment that many home users would find it to be a practical, high-quality system, as well. In many cases, I think Kubuntu would render Windows Vista sufficiently useless, or at least not worth the cost of using it.

Performance
Although I have not performed any benchmarking, I do get the impression that this release of Kubuntu is more efficient and responsive than the last release of Kubuntu that I tried on this test computer, Kubuntu 6.10. Applications seem quicker to start up, and even when using them they feel much more responsive. Switching between tabs in the Konqueror web browser, which was noticeably slow under the installation of Kubuntu 6.10, happens almost instantaneously now. The application menu on the taskbar also seems a whole lot more responsive, with the list of applications being displayed virtually instantaneously. I don't know if this possible performance improvement is due to the use of GCC 4.1.2, Glibc 2.5, or the Linux kernel 2.6.20. Regardless, I am always pleased to find software getting faster as time goes on, rather than getting more bloated and inefficient as is often the case with many of the commercial desktop OS offerings.

Conclusions
Kubuntu 7.04 is the real deal. The installation was easy and successful. In terms of usability, everything is there: KDE offers all of the necessary applications, and Kubuntu offers the integration. The performance is suitable. And unlike Windows Vista, Kubuntu 7.04 is a pleasure to use. So I'd suggest that you try it out.

Most of us have older PCs that we have little use for. Linux advocates often suggest turning such systems into home data servers. A number of people have written how this can be done, with one recent article suggesting the use of Ubuntu.

Now, I'm all for the reuse of old hardware wherever possible. It's damaging to the environment to improperly dispose of such systems, for instance. In business settings, we can often repurpose older PCs and servers in a number of ways. Older PCs often make excellent firewalls and web proxies. By installing an OS like OpenBSD or NetBSD on such hardware, one can get a secure, affordable and yet powerful system. But I'm not sure this holds true for the home data server suggestions.

The article I linked to earlier contains these lines which form a good basis for the point I will proceed to make: Your old computer likely has enough memory, and a powerful enough CPU to run Ubuntu, however, if you intend to use this server as a major central file server, it will likely need a new hard-drive. You can deal with that on your own.

The main portion we need to focus on is that part about obtaining a new hard drive. While this may not be necessary, it does begin to highlight some of the problems we will encounter when setting up such a system.

One of the main problems concerns reliability. It is pointless to store data on such a server, only to have an older hard drive fail due to wear and tear. So putting in a new hard drive is almost a necessary task. While storage space is quite cheap these days, a new hard drive may be far too much of an investment to put into an old PC.

Now, the use of an old PC for data transmission, rather than data storage, is more sensible. The hard drive of the system becomes almost inconsequential. The footprint of a usable NetBSD installation can be made very, very small, for example, so space shouldn't be an issue. Likewise, there's little loss if the drive does fail due to age. The most that is lost are some configuration files. So that is why such systems often work well as proxies or firewalls; the focus is on passing along data, rather than storing it.

We also have to keep in mind that running a PC consumes electricity. It's a cost that not everybody thinks about. In some places electricity is quite expensive, and that cost alone could far exceed the benefit derived from having a file server. Furthermore, it will generate heat, which may drive up cooling costs in the summer.

So if you do have an old PC and are in need of some storage space, I think the best thing to do would be to go out and buy an external hard drive. This is especially true if you'd need to buy a new hard drive for the old PC anyways. Such external storage systems are quite portable, and use a small fraction of the power of a full-blown PC. As nearly every modern system supports either or both of FireWire and USB, you'll be able to use it with nearly any existing PC you own. In the end you'll get many of the benefits of running another file server, without many of the costs.

As we are well aware, the One Laptop per Child project has gotten a lot of publicity lately. And as would be expected, major companies are taking note. Intel's ClassMatePC is one example of a similar product. I was reading that a version of Mandrive Linux 2007 will come pre-installed on the ClassMatePC systems.

But this got me thinking: is Linux really the best option for such a system? While the hardware will likely be more than capable for a wide variety of tasks, it still makes sense to utilize it as fully as possible. And that's where I think NetBSD should come in.

NetBSD is more than suited to these sorts of applications. Its long history and philosophy of portability have come together to form a system that is sleek and minimalist, yet also very powerful. And it often delivers many of the benefits of a system like Linux. For instance, it can directly execute many Linux binaries on the i386. Of course, the POSIX-like interface it offers also allows for many such applications to be natively compiled for NetBSD. The NetBSD Packages Collection just goes to show how much useful software is available and very easily installed.

I have used NetBSD on a wide variety of older systems, and I have to say, it works wonders. When using NetBSD, it's quite possible to turn old Sun SPARCstations into very capable mail servers or web proxies. Now, these low-end laptops are far, far more powerful than such obsolete Sun systems. The enjoyable experience of NetBSD on a 33 MHz SPARCstation 10 will no doubt be quite magnified on a 900 MHz Celeron-based system.

Konqueror is a web browser developed as part of the KDE project. KDE is, of course, one of the major open source desktop environments. Over time, Konqueror has become well-known for its high quality and standards-compliance. So I really wasn't surprised when today I read an article stating that KHTML 3.5.6 is the most CSS3-compliant browser. The article does make one comment that I would like to address, however: It really is a shame that only a tiny proportion of web users have access to this excellent browser.

I would consider that statement to be incorrect. Virtually every web user can use Konqueror. All they would need to do is install an operating system like Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Solaris, or Mac OS X. For most people, at least one of those operating systems will run on some piece of hardware they have available. And easily enough they'll be able to install KDE, and be able to experience the full benefit of Konqueror for themselves. Of course, that will change once KDE 4, which will likely offer native support for Windows systems, is released.

It's often the most flashy and rapidly-developed open source applications that get the most attention. Most people focus on projects like Beryl, Metisse, Firefox, OpenOffice.org and Ubuntu. But we can't forget the importance of the open source software an average user doesn't see every day. This is a list of nine such programs and libraries.

9. GNU GDB
As any C or C++ developer knows, a good debugger is an essential tool. On many open source operating systems, GNU GDB plays that role. The innards of applications can be examined using GDB, allowing one to determine where in a program a bug exists, and what may need to change to fix the problem. It is without doubt that GDB has contributed greatly to the high degree of stability we experience when using systems like Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD.

8. X Window Server
The command line is all that is needed for many tasks. But others, including web browsing, image editing and video manipulation, benefit greatly from the use of a graphical environment. This is where an X Window implementation comes in. Some of the most popular implementations today include X.org and XFree86.

7. GNU Binutils
The tools of the GNU Binutils package may be among the most unknown to non-developers. But those who do implement software know the importance of tools like ld, as, and ar. Without linkers, assemblers and library archivers we likely wouldn't be able to produce the large scale systems we have today.

6. GNU Bash
To truly make use of an open source UNIX-like system, one needs to have a good shell. GNU Bash is just such a shell. The default shell of many Linux distributions, Bash draws features from existing shells such as sh, ksh and csh, in addition to adding useful functionality of its own.

While system like FreeBSD, NetBSD and Solaris offer their own shell implementations, many users and administrators on those systems still choose to use Bash, just because it has a large feature set and is widely portable. They can learn how to use it on one system, and will be able to bring that knowledge to any other system they use that has Bash installed.

5. tar, gzip and bzip2
A major aspect of open source software is how it is distributed. In source form, a popular distribution method is that of a tar archive compressed using either bzip2 or gzip. To create and extract the actual tar files, a number of applications exist, including GNU tar, FreeBSD tar, OpenSolaris tar, and star. Without these utilities, it would be difficult and costly to share our open source software.

4. GNU GRUB
While not all open source operating systems use GNU GRUB as their bootloader, it has become a major player because it so easily allows a single PC to boot operating systems as diverse as Linux, Windows and FreeBSD.

3. C Library
The C library is one of the most essential libraries on a UNIX-like system. Without this library, the vast majority of open source applications will not run. Even applications written in languages like Python or Perl depend on a C library being present, as the standard interpreters for those languages are themselves written in C.

Being somewhat system-specific, a number of C library implementations exist. Most Linux distributions use Glibc or uClibc. FreeBSD libc, OpenBSD libc, NetBSD libc and OpenSolaris libc are also well-known C libraries used by many people every day. Thanks to these libraries, we are able to write portable C code with relative ease.

2. Open Source Operating System Kernel
The kernel of an operating system provides the basis upon which we can implement higher level functionality. For most of the major open source operating systems, the kernel provides the basic infrastructure needed for us to build device drivers, filesystems, networking support, and also the userland applications and libraries we directly interact with.

Linux distributions are clearly built around the Linux kernel. As with the C libraries mentioned above, the FreeBSD kernel, OpenBSD kernel, NetBSD kernel and OpenSolaris kernel are also frequently used by many. They form what may be among the most essential parts of an open source operating system.

1. GCC: The GNU Compiler Collection
Without a good compiler for various high level languages, it's quite difficult to write the large scale applications that we depend on today. That's why GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection, is listed here as the most essential open source application. Even software as essential as the Linux or FreeBSD kernels would not be usable without the presence of GCC.

GCC is truly a remarkable compiler system. It supports languages like Ada, C, C++, Fortran, Objective-C and even Java. It also includes the runtime and class libraries needed for such languages. Even more remarkable is the number of platforms that GCC not only runs on, but can generate code for. When we consider that even some of the major open source operating system kernels are useless without GCC, we can truly see how important of an application it is.