install ubuntu

Is installing via Wubi – the Ubuntu installer for Windows – cheating? I hope not :-)

After my minor PC upgrade I finally got this done last night.
Initially a bit daunting finding out about where all the codecs and upgrades need to come from.
Got Automatix2 and installed a load of other things.

Looking forward to playing with this some more – it all looks very smooth so far. Also planning on checking out Compiz Fusion.
A new level of Geekness I have ent0Rzd. w00t!!!!

Since I now work at a programming job that actually challenges me, I’ve found myself far less inclined to seek out other computer-related things to provide mental stimulation (freelance work, learning other programming languages, etc). This includes fudging around with a Linux installation that I probably won’t use too much at home anyway… I suppose I’d rather be outside or cooking or just destressing rather than worrying about config files in my free time :).

I still have a whole old box to do something with though… right now it’s not much more than a mini-table.

I am very happy to say that I finally got my Ubuntu install completed, and with the services I actually use set up properly. I took time to make security tight and the system is self sustaining by doing automatic updates. Minimal maintenance is a great thing.

1. move files between Windows and Linux
2. setup a firewall
3. setup a Source Code Manager
4. got all that junk to start-up automatically at boot-up
5. do automatic security updates to OS

To move files between Windows and Linux computers, use sftp, which is part of the sshd (openssh) daemon. This stands for SSH File Transfer Protocol. A windows client is psftp and here is an excellent guide for psftp.

To copy a directory between computers, use this command after connecting with psftp:
put -r c:\samplefolder

To setup firewall rules, use netfilter (the actual command is iptables). I couldn’t find a good online guide on how to do it, and this wound up being extremely tough to figure out and debug.

The source code manager I chose was subversion. On the linux machine, I have svnserve daemon start on bootup. Then, I use the Windows shell extension TortoiseSVN which is very slick. It’s extremely easy to back up my documents and source code into subversion just by clicking around in explorer.

To figure out how to have something start on boot-up, use this Ubuntu guide for rc scripts.

Use this Ubuntu guide for automatic security updates, which uses cron and aptitude.

Wow that was easier than installing Windows XP! I highly recommend it and it’s an amazing system.

I decided to go with Ubuntu 7.04 “Server Edition” because I have a spare computer, and want to set it up as a web server. My goal is to eventually serve up some Ruby on Rails web apps with it. This is a pretty old machine, and it doesn’t have the processing power for any graphical window manager (KDE/GNOME), so I stayed away from Ubuntu Desktop.

To start with, you go to ubuntu.com and can easily get a free installer CD. Unfortunately with Ubuntu Server Edition, during installation, you can only choose between a DNS Server or a “LAMP” Server. I chose LAMP, so it installed Linux-Apache2-MySQL-PHP by default. So, there’s absolutely NO way to configure it before install… it automatically gives you everything and the kitchen sink. Pretty weak.

It also takes a slightly different strategy than other distros in regards to managing super user rights. In Ubuntu, there’s no root user set up by default. Your first user account is automatically made part of the “wheel” group, so you have to sudo to execute any privileged comments. It’s fine, just different.

To get me started on setting up this OS, I ran this command to get some packages installed:
sudo apt-get install ssh ruby irb rubygems rails

This installed ruby and rails using the package manager, which is extremely easy. Openssh is awesome: it allows me to connect to my linux server from my Windows machine; it gives me a secure command-line. That way, I don’t have to switch between a different mouse, keyboard, and monitor just to work on linux. Here is a great guide for securing sshd.

1. configure Apache (already running by default)
2. install Mongrel (ruby on rails application server)
3. setup some way to share files (Samba or SCP)
4. setup Subversion, for source code management
5. get firewall rules setup (netfilter / iptables)
6. uninstall unneeded garbage that was installed by default (PHP)

I’ve had the install CD lying around for months now.
Somehow I got it into my head that I needed a second harddisc for my PC first.
I have 40GB of free space.
What are the pro’s and con’s of having 2 systems on one disc?

I’ll try to read up on this and see if I can go ahead. WOuld be so much easier if I could do this with the hardware I have.

and am using it right now. The wireless connection completely defeated me, but then I tried pretending that I was not paying attention but really watched the laptop through the corner of my eye and the connection came right up.

The most recent (7.04, aka “Feisty Fawn”) has improved its wireless network configuration, making it a serious alternative to SuSE. (Fedora Core keeps breaking things like FC6 didn’t have Motif, so my linux app wouldn’t work without being recompiled. Thus, I don’t consider FC to be stable for production use.)

There are still a handful of Windows programs for which there aren’t Linux-equivalents. I’ll be looking into virtualization (either via VMware, Wine or one of the others), or remain dual-booting.