For part three of my Linux installation adventures I will be covering the basic installation. As stated in my previous article for the basic installation to be considered a success I will need to install or find suitable replacements for the following:

• Microsoft Office

• Skype

• Outlook

• Firefox

• AVG

I have also decided to go with Ubuntu mostly to see if it lived up the major hype its been getting in the press. So first we will kick off with the installation of Ubuntu.

Firstly I download Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) from www.ubuntu.com and burned it to DVD as a data file. The download was quite large at 715MB. For those of you who don't have an unlimited internet connection and would like a copy the DVD, just send a PM to me and I should be able to get a copy to you, if you ask nicely.

The installation was the simplest that I have ever seen for a Linux distribution, I just put the CD into the drive and off it went at boot time with a good looking and very simple graphical user interface. The interface then guided me through the install which was so simple that my mother could have done it. The installation did everything automatically, there was no complicated disk partitioning or other such options which will scare off anyone who is not IT savy. Such options were available if you decided to do the advanced installation. Also the CD is a bootable version of Ubuntu so you can have a play with the functionality before you've even installed to your hard drive which is nice for people who would just like a look.

Once the flawless and extremely straight forward installation was complete the first thing that hit me was the beauty of Ubuntu's GNOME (the graphical interface used with Ubuntu), it is a huge improvement over the last version of GNOME which I used, which admittedly was several years ago. It is defiantly better looking than XP and probably not far off Vista and OSX.

I had a look around to see which goodies had been shipped with the system and was pleased to see Firefox and Open Office 2.2, the superior (in my humble opinion) alternative to Microsoft Office already installed and ready to go. Open Office has packages which are the equivalent to Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Access, and can open and edit files produced by those programs flawlessly, which meant Microsoft Office could be struck from my list of requirements above, along with Firefox. There was also a plethora of other software packages already installed which were pretty much the type of things you get with a standard install of XP.

Although there was a standard email client already installed, I decided to install Thunderbird as I have used it in the past and find the best option on Linux. The installation of Thunderbird was a simple as ABC, within the operating system I just hit the 'Applications' button then went Add/Remove -> Internet -> Thunderbird Mail, checked the box and clicked OK, this then automatically downloaded Thunderbird from the net and installed it on my computer with out me needing to do anything. This was exactly the same for both Skype and the Ubuntu anti-virus package, which when installed meant that I now had installed or replaced with suitable alternatives every program on my basic list in less than an hour and without one single problem or delay.

The only small issue that I had was a hardware one, my Thinkpad's built in microphone did not work. After a few Google searches I discovered that I needed to un-mute the microphone in AlsaMixer. To launch AlsaMixer I went Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal and then once in the terminal typed 'aslamixer' and pressed return, you are then presented with a graphical mixer, please read the documentation on how to use the mixer as it will save time trying to figure it out yourself.

In part three I will be trying to install all of the application that I use for work, these applications can't be substituted with suitable alternatives so I have to find ways to may each of them work, this should be fun!

Stay tuned!

Update: I ran into one other issue which also seemed to be hardware specific, for some reason my cd-rw drive couldn't read disks that had been burned in Windows, after doing some homework it turnout that this was an encoding issue. To fix the problem I had to edit the /etc/fstab file. To do this I had to switch user to root on the command line and then run 'gksudo nautilus' to open up nautilus as root, I could then edit the file where I had to add the option 'auto' to the start of the options string.

For me this is a black mark next to Ubuntu in what was otherwise an impeccable install. Being able to read and write CD's is a mainstream function which required a fix that would probably trouble an inexperienced user. Admittedly this flaw was probably specific to my brand and model of laptop, but none the less I can't remember the last time I had to configure basic hardware in a windows install. These are the kind of issues that need to be ironed out before you have any chance of going mainstream.