Is Freedom Ever Free?

While talking with co-workers regarding the merits of using Linux and open source software I always get the same foaming at the mouth comments about not being compatible and blah blah blah that I always seem to dispel if they are willing to give a little effort.
But in retrospect I think I've over simplified the difference of being a computer user and a computer operator.

When I grew up I had two paths to take when I was introduced to computers. Like Neo I chose to take the red pill and find the truth of the computer world, how it works, investigating new technology and rejecting commonly thrown about metephors like viruses, bad code, glitches, etc. that was bandied about to explain users that had gotten themselves into a bind with bad input. I could have of course easily chosen the blue pill like so many user sheeple and stared numbly at my screen playing games and clicking buttons to work other peoples inventions, considering my PC's as glorified televisions.

In reality a user will be led by the hand by their GUI and play the games and use the program and cry to their local repairman for help when they get themselves stuck. Why? Because they can't be bothered by learning and troubleshooting their problems for themselves. When things are going good they will never expand their mind with learning.

As I grew up, the "secrets" of the computer world were discovered in thick user manuals, and gleaned from the sage wisdom of older technicians and programmers. Today however wisdom is still gleaned from our peers and wiser "geeks", but the way we listen to them has changed vastly. With the power of the internet connecting so many of us from vast far flung places and probably never coming face to face in our daily travels, we are able to read or watch each others solutions, opinions, and various bits of wonder. This is why I write, in hopes that someone may need a solution that I have created or gleaned from others work.

Every operating system from the original MS DOS versions and Unix command lines, to the new Windows, Macintosh, Linux GUI systems will all need a learning curve to operate proficiently. Don't be fooled into thinking that one is easier than the other by virtue of it's flashy appearance. They all have quirks and problems to overcome, they all break down from time to time with careless use, and they can all get similar jobs done with the correct applications. To be truely free you must free your mind by taking on the yoke of knowledge and learning so you can choose how you want to use your computer. Every OS is only a tools, so swallow your red pill today and find out... How's your tool working for you?

Complete Your Uninstalls In Windows

Have you ever had a program that for whatever reason doesn't seem to be working or was set up wrong? Like many users I usually just uninstall it and re-install it and see if it's any better.
Now days it seems that after the re-install the program comes up with the same settings and user information as before I uninstalled it.
WHY?
This is such a plague to me and my customers that I started searching for answers, and like so many things I found it at work.
While troubleshooting the peachtree accounting software I had a case where after installing on a Microsoft Vista machine the software would not load. We needed to install using the Administrator Rights, but even after uninstalling and re-installing the program didn't work.
One of my co-workers explained that even after uninstalling a program, many times items are left in the registry or in the file system and these settings remain for future installs to point to.
The cure? RevoUninstaller.
Revo Uninstaller helps you to uninstall software and remove unwanted programs installed on your computer even if you have problems uninstalling and cannot uninstall them from "Windows Add or Remove Programs" control panel applet.
Revo Uninstaller is a much faster and more powerful alternative to "Windows Add or Remove Programs" applet!
With its advanced and fast algorithm, Revo Uninstaller analyzes an application's data before uninstall and scans after you uninstall an application. After the program's regular uninstaller runs, you can remove additional unnecessary files, folders and registry keys that are usually left over on your computer. Even if you have a broken installation, Revo Uninstaller scans for an application's data on your hard disk drives and in the Windows registry and shows all found files, folders and registry keys so you can delete them.
With its unique "Hunter mode", Revo Uninstaller offers you some simple, easy to use, but effective and powerful methods for uninstalling software. You can use it to manage your installed and/or running software programs.

The software comes in two packages. The first being the full version installed to your local PC, and the second being a portable version (easily used on a thumb drive or a shared network drive)

This is by far one of the most useful tools for Windows that I've ever found and has become a permanent edition to my tool collection.

Calling all geeks! If any of you play the download games that give you a one hour preview, let me know if after uninstalling with RevoUninstaller and re-installing the game, do you get another perview?

WINE, It’s Not Just For Boozers Anymore

It’s been a while since I posted and I’ve got so much information to put out there for our new Linux users.

By now you’ve probably had a chance to peruse the package repositories and maybe even tried out a few new programs. Now you might ask, “why isn’t such and such program listed” or “I really liked this one program” or “I want to run my favorite game”.

What’s the answer? WINE. No, I don’t mean get sloshed and forget the whole ordeal, but rather the program WINE which stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator. I know, it makes no sense to me either.

WINE is a program that runs windows programs at the application layer without the need of a Microsoft Windows operating system physical or virtual machine.

If you read my last post for Back to School you’ll see two real world examples.

Once you install the WINE program from the repositories installing Windows programs is a breeze. To be more accurate though, it’s a straight forward process and it either works or does not.

1. download program or browse to installation file on CD
2. right click on installation file and choose open with WINE
3. do exactly what you would when in windows
4. after installation right click on the start icon and in it’s properties click on the run as a program option

And that’s all folks. No more whining when you should be WINEing.

Back to School and Going Linux

Now that I work for one of the largest academic publishing companies in the world I am faced daily with questions about PC’s and Mac’s. Remember my philosophy of not bashing Windows or Macintosh systems because a computer is only a tool and you should be using whatever tool that best suits your needs.

Last week I got a call asking how to install e-brary reader so the student could view one of our e-books. What was the problem? You guessed it, Linux. This student somehow got a PC that had Linux installed on it but she really didn’t know much about it. Normally we only give support to PC and Mac users, and when looking at the ebrary or adobe site they give the same standard support as well.

Insert me. The heart of the matter is that our company supplies electronic books of all nature of subjects. Why would a student that wants to study math or psychology or biology be prohibited from viewing a book only because they don’t have a PC or a Mac. It’s not like they need to run proprietary platform specific software that I am getting to despise more every day. They only need to read. We use two different technologies to manage our e-books. The first program is Ebrary reader which enables the books to be viewed online through Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Safari browsers. The second program is Digital Editions which allows a book to be installed on your computer and a license applied to your pc or Adobe account to prohibit the free distribution of copyrighted materials.

Before I continue my monologue, let me go over how I was able to run both of these programs. My Linux platform of choice is Ubuntu…

viewing your e-book in linux from Computer Doctor on Vimeo.

Ebrary.

Problem: only runs on IE, Firefox, and Safari for Windows and Mac

Solution: get a version of Firefox for Windows to run on Linux

1. Install WINE if not already installed (this is a run environment for windows programs)
2. Download Firefox for windows from www.firefox.com (look for other platform versions and choose windows)
3. Right click on the firefox installer .exe program and choose open with WINE
4. After installation use the install ebrary reader link from the bookstore or from http://www.ebrary.com/discover/get_ebrary_reader.html
5. Now right click on the new firefox icon on your desktop and select properties and check the run as program option

Adobe Digital Editions:

Problem: not supported by platform

Solution: get and run the windows version of digital editions

1. go to http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/403/kb403051.html for the manual installation of digital editions
2. select the link in number 2 of the windows instructions and save to your desktop
3. right click on the adobe installer icon on your desktop and choose open with WINE
4. finish installation with defaults. See the adobe website for details
5. when finished right click on the new digital editions icon on your desktop and select properties and check the run as program option.

The only irritation to installing this way is that in order to get e-books you must be able to save the e-book url icon to your computer first and then drag and drop to your digital editions program. This is no problem for my company since that’s how we supply our books, but for the Adobe free library they have flash player link buttons that don’t supply the url.

Now back to the monologue…

In 2009 Abbey Schubert purchased a Dell computer loaded with Ubuntu. While I salute Dell and other manufacturers for bringing a Linux option to purchasers I feel that there are no easy manuals available to help brand new users get underway with the daily tasks of using their system. I know that if Abbey went to my church or school that I would have been able to help her or any other student use their Linux computer for 95% of their daily tasks barring the few time they might be forced to use software that a few features do not currently work in the WINE environment or have a direct equivalent in open source software.

Remember that just as I never bash operating systems much, I will not bash new users that find themselves in unfamiliar territory and are panicked about the possibility of not being able to get their work done.

Do I need Antivirus like I did in Windows?

This question has been a topic of a lot of concern for many new users to Linux, and the common answer may be a little misleading, so before I give my endorsement for any tools or products I want to answer the heart of the question first.

Does Linux get viruses? No. Or to answer a little more truthfully, not usually, not easily, not to most users.

Why isn't Linux plagued by all the viruses, spyware, malware, root kits, ect. like Windows? The answer in twofold. First because Linux is set in a way as it becomes improbably that an outside program can be granted root access without the user knowing. Second because at this time the vast majority of desktop users have a Microsoft OS running their machine. If you want your virus to spread, you must write it to affect the biggest user base. For a more detailed explanation feel free to read this article.

On the other hand there are reasons you might want to have an antivirus program installed on your Linux distribution.

• to scan a Windows drive in your PC
• to scan a Windows-based network attached server or hard drive
• to scan Windows machines over a network
• to scan files you are going to send to other people
• to scan e-mail you are going to forward to other people
• some Windows viruses can run with Wine
• Linux virus infections are theoretically possible

Before I give an endorsement to any antivirus program, know that I am a new user to antivirus on the Linux side and only give these as recomendations and am open to endorsements of products from people that have had real experiences with combating real viruses in Linux.

The first suggestion I have is going with ClamAV antivirus which you should be able to find in the repositories or at their website. This is an opensource software project.



The second suggestion I have is using AVAST which many of you will recognize from my windows articles about antivirus software. Although this is proprietary software, it is free for home users and you can find more detail at their website as well.

To summarize, I would not lose sleep wondering if your Linux system is being overrun by viruses, but for curiosity sake or for insurance in the future when Linux takes over the PC world I would check out these or other antivirus options.

Friendly Faces

So this weekend I took a quick trip up to rural Michigan not far from Detroit with my girlfriend to meet her family. Of course, much to my girlfriends chagrin, I got to talking about computers with her nephew and niece. I don't normally like to sit around and talk to the High School and College age kids, but while their parents were missionaries in South America they became Linux users.

Although they were used to using Open Suse, the similarities to Ubuntu were wonderfully interesting to learn. I have to be honest with my readers in that I used Knoppix a long time ago as a pre-install environment to fix windows and didn't know it was linux, and I used Mepis for about a year before I started using the Ubuntu line of distros. That's all the linux experience I have because I was an instant fan of Ubuntu. I am also dabbeling in CentOS, Fedora Core, Backtrack, and looking into possible training with Canonical for the Ubuntu server system.

I had a wonderful afternoon of total geekieness and want to give a shout out (if that's what cool people still do now days) to Ian and Ashley and wish you good luck in the coming year of school.

Getting software like you never did with Windows.

By now you've read a few articles about some great software, but how in the world do you get this software?

In the windows world you find, or more likely buy, the software and run the .exe file, but in the Linux world there isn't a whole lot of downloading and running.

Of course for advanced users you can download the tar ball, or the gz and compile the software, but before I get a migraine we'll just pretend I never mentioned this paragraph until later. Much Later.

I'm going to discuss a few new concepts today that will probably be foreign to most Windows and Mac users, but is very important to the core of the Linux community.

1. Most software is free. Free means different things to different people and in different contexts.

• There is Free as in speech. This is free as an entitlement. This is software that is provided free of charge and open source so you can modify it and re-distribute it.
• There is Free as in Beer. This is free for you to use, but proprietary in that you can't change it.

2. The safest way to obtain this software is from the software repository in the package manager.

• a package is a software bundle that needs to be compiled or installed
• software is a package that has been installed
• the repository is a group of packages that is maintained by your distribution to insure the best possibility of compatibility
• the package manager is a graphical interface to browse, select, install and uninstall the packages

For Ubuntu the default package manager is Synaptic. I like synaptic because it is a clean easy to understand, straight forward package manager. When I select the title of a package it has a description and sometimes a screen shot of the package. Even when I'm using a different distribution that may have it's own package manager, I alway install synaptic and use it as my go to package manager of choice.

Installing a package is as simple as

1. finding the package you want
2. checking the box next to it
3. accepting and marking the dependencies that may be needed
4. clicking apply

• Dependencies are other packages that are needed to run the software you are asking for.

NOTE: Occasionally you will be asked if you are sure you want to install the package because it is unsupported, it may cause a conflict, or some other objection. You will have to make up your mind if you want to risk overcoming the objection or not.

Uninstalling a package is exactly the same except when you check the box you will want to select mark for uninstallation or mark for complete removal and then applying.

I know these concepts and procedures are new and will take some getting used to, but I want you to start thinking of the Software Repository as a free candy store where you can come and go as you please and take as much as you want without having to worry too much about the dentist or getting a stomach ache.

Creating text documents, spreadsheets, presentations and databases; almost like you did in Windows.

One of the hardest parts of switching to Linux for me was how was I going to replace the Microsoft Office Suite. Ok, in reality this was almost painless for me. A little story about my past... At one time I left a comfy desk job to work at my old companies shipping dock and was eventually promoted to the lead clerk and had my own office of sorts. I had an antique pentium 3 computer with no productivity software whatsoever. I asked our local IT departments "computer expert (1)" for a version of Microsoft office even if it was only 97 or 2000 but I was denied because I didn't need it. Well anyone who really knows IT, knows that a no is just an opportunity to find another way. So I found my way to the great people at Sun Microsystems and their Open Office free productivity suite. I was able to do all my documents and spreadsheets and that was enough for me at the time. So enough about my ancient history.

According to their website, Open office is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose. As an introduction only I'll give you a rundown on their products and the Microsoft equivalent.

• Writer: This is almost identical to Microsoft Word. You can open almost all word documents with the only exception I've found so far is the newer graphical add in's found in Office 2007 like the colorful spreadsheets and such.

• Calc: This is almost identical to Microsoft Excel. You can open all excel spreadsheets and be able to use the calculations. The only exception is that macro's are not compatible.

• Impress: This is almost identical to Microsoft Powerpoint. You can open most any PPT presentation from powerpoint.

• Draw: This similar to Microsoft Visio. The graphics aren't in my opinion nearly as nice as in Visio, but... you can get graphics from anywhere... but I'd never suggest to do anything to infringe upon other software products. Enough said.

• Base: This is somewhat similar to Microsoft Access. You can open Access databases with Base, but only the tables will import. As an advanced database programmer I was disappointed that the forms are not compatible... at this point. I'm holding out hope that at some point in the future this will be "fixed". In the meantime I'm still looking at base and may learn how to create forms and do all the things I do now with Access.

One other program that I relied on heavily from the Office Suite was OneNote. A beautiful and easy way to take and organize notes. There is a program in Linux that I love just as much, but that is for another article. One thing to remember is that no set of software is perfect and so easy that it can be mastered in one sitting. It took me 10 years and 5 versions of office to consider myself a power user and perhaps a SPE (software product expert) or SME (subject matter expert) so give yourself a break and take time to learn Open Office and it's own set of special features and tricks.


(1) a two year degree in computer science from the local junior college shouldn't be construed as being a computer expert by any means.

Reducing fear durring the switch

Lets take a pause in the middle of my list of things to make switching to Linux easier.
Perhaps you want to switch now, or are in the middle of the switch and you're asking yourself "what happens if I can't do something that I used to do in Windows?"

This is a normal question that every Windows user I know, including myself, asks. Don't feel bad. First of all, I have never run into a situation where I couldn't find my solution in Linux. Second of all, you don't have to quit Windows cold turkey. I'm going to show you how to put Windows on the back burner, but keep it close at hand like a security blanket, just in case.

What I'm talking about is being able to run Linux while not uninstalling Windows.

Solution 1. Use the Live CD. Most mainstream Linux distributions have a Live CD, that is a CD that can be booted up from and has the stock, out of the box OS ready to be used in RAM. You can install and use programs, Access the internet, use your wireless connection, create documents, ect. Just know that anything you change from "stock" will be lost when you turn off your computer.

Solution 2. Run the OS virtually. This is one of my favorite options for more powerful computers. In essence this is running a virtualization program like Sun's VirtualBox which emulates an X86 processor and allows you to install an OS from a CD or ISO file. In this way you can be booted up in Windows and then "boot up" Linux inside the Windows environment. On a different note, once you go to Linux you may want to run a virtualization program in Linux to "boot up" windows inside the safety of Linux.

Solution 3. Dual Boot Windows and Linux. This is probably the most common option used. Unlike Windows, most Linux distributions require fairly modest hard drive requirements so you could easily install Linux in a partition. Using this option will also install the Grub boot loader which will bring up a menu when your computer boots up. By default Ubuntu will be first in the menu along with the Ubuntu restore mode, Ubuntu Memory tester, the Windows and Windows recovery mode (if available).

In a future article I will go over the Grub boot loader and how to change the countdown timer to load as well as the order that OS will be displayed.

To summarize though, DO NOT feel bad if you want to hang on to multiple operating systems. This is your computer and you should use it the way you want to. For me however I find that I boot into Linux more often than not.

How to IM just like you did in Windows

One of the next requests I normally hear from new linux users is how do I send instant messages? Although I'm not as bound to instant messaging, it is a major part of other peoples lives.

I've used the Yahoo IM in the past and the first thing I looked for was how hard it would be to install the yahoo chat client on Linux and after reading a few forums I realized that installing Yahoo IM would be a disaster. Sorry Yahoo, but true is true.

So I looked around a little bit and found a program already installed by default that would handle my yahoo IM's and more.

From the pidgin website they state "Pidgin is a chat program which lets you log in to accounts on multiple chat networks simultaneously. This means that you can be chatting with friends on MSN, talking to a friend on Google Talk, and sitting in a Yahoo chat room all at the same time."

Pidgin supports the following chat clients AIM, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, Google, Talk, Groupwise, ICQ, IRC, MSN, MySpaceIM, QQ, SILC, SIMPLE, Sametime, XMPP, Yahoo and Zephyr.

The only downside to this that I can find is that it can become confusing. I set up my yahoo account and my MSN account and before I knew it I had a long list of people and it was unfamilier who was messaging me from which list.

You can try to install individual IM clients for Linux if you can find one, You can try to install the Windows version using WINE, but for ease of installation, just stick with pidgin and enjoy.

Checking your e-mail just like you did with Outlook

If you are new to my blog site, I am in the middle of a series on how to switch from Windows to Linux. I am not a Windows basher by nature and by my nature I will continue to use Windows as well as Linux and to a small extent Macintosh.
About three months ago I noticed that my Microsoft Outlook 2003 kept freezing up on me and become unstable. I tried upgrading to Outlook 2007, but the problems kept persisting. I couldn't find any help at Microsoft or much help online. All I really wanted to do is get my Gmail through IMAP, and have a handy dandy calendar open at the same time.
I had a few options available...

1. suck it up and keep working with outlook
2. check my g-mail with the website and start using a calendar google provided
3. start using thunderbird and do without a calendar
4. other

I decided on the other option. I already had Ubuntu dual booted (as I still do) and decided to see what was going on there. What I found was the default e-mail client Evolution. I was a little doubtful as I shamefully always am, but what I found was a full featured e-mail client with all the tools I was already looking for.

• POP and IMAP support
• HTML message capable
• A calendar with day / week / month views with an event alarm feature
• To-Do tasks
• RSS feed reader

Importing my G-mail account was easy. I could have went to the g-mail homepage and probably found instructions there, but instead I did a google search and found a fellow blogger that has a wonderful step by step tutorial on setting up g-mail with imap. You can find the article on Victor's blog.

NOTE: if you are trying to set up multiple g-mail accounts using IMAP you will probably run into problems because your computer can only sign into one g-mail account at a time. I got around this annoying problem by having my different account all forwarded to my main account.

Browsing the internet with Ubuntu just like you did with Internet Explorer

So now that you have your desktop looking a little more familier to you, it's time to start "using" your computer to do all the things you would normally do.

The first thing that most people ask about is "how do I surf the web?" and this is a good question.

Some of the common Linux browsers are Epiphany, Midori, Chromium and Seamonkey.
While still using Windows I started using Mozilla's Firefox. This is a cross platform browser for Windows, Macintosh and Linux.

Here is a list of things that are the same.

• tabbed browsing
• bookmarks (just like favorites)
• RSS reader
• search box
• uses standards for compatibility with most webpages

Here is a list of things that are different.

• smaller memory resource needs
• inherantly more secure
• if it crashes there is a way to restore back to the last pages you were viewing

How do I move my favorites from Internet Explorer over to Firefox in Ubuntu???

1. From the Internet Explorer file menu, select Import/Export. (If you don't see the menu bar, just click the key to make it appear.)
2. When the Import Export Wizard launches, click Next. Select Export Favorites and click Next.
3. Select the folder you wish to export and click Next.
4. Choose to export to a file. And save it in My Documents.
5. Click Next and click Finish to close the wizard.
6. Copy the file to a CD, usb drive, FTP site, or e-mail it to yourself so that you can open the file on your Ubuntu system.


7. Now in Firefox, select the Bookmarks menu, then select Organize Bookmarks.
8. In the Bookmarks select File, Import.
9. Choose From File, then click Next.
10. Select the file from the location where you saved it, and click Open to start the import process.
11. Ha Ha Ha Ha, there is no further steps. It is just that easy.

Now as long as you are connected to the internet through your cat5 cable or wireless router you can start surfing, facebooking, blogging, reading your RSS feeds and everything you would normally have done when you were using Internet Explorer.

NOTE: In order to see embeded media on webpages, you will need to install the Adobe flash, Macromedia flash, Gstreamer base and Gstreamer good plugins including all the suggested dependencies. Don't worry though, these can all be found in the free package repositories. (of course package repositories are free to the consumer by nature)