Thursday, February 23, 2006

The easiest operating system I have tried yet.

I tried to install Linux some years ago. I gave up using it as my primary operating system as I thought I had to use too much time setting it up.
Things have changed and Ubuntu is an example of an operating system that requires almost no setup. It installs with a collection of applications that will satisfy most desktop users.

For instance if you want to install mono on your system so that you can run .Net application you do the following.

sudo apt-get install mono

  1. "sudo" changes the user to be the administrator.
  2. "apt-get" is the package manager.
  3. "install" is the action you want with the package.
  4. "mono" is the name of the package.

Now all you have to do is follow the instructions on the screen. You will be prompted for the administrator password, and asked whether you want to install all the dependent packages. It doesn't get much easier than that.
Next I want a development environment :

sudo apt-get install monodevelop

Actually I could have started with this command. Monodevelop is dependent of mono, and it would have installed mono automatically.

Once a program is installed this way, you will be notified if the packages has new versions.

1 comment:

  1. My biggest concern with installing linux (again..) was hardware issues. But I am pleased to say I haven't had any.

    I did spend some time trying to get my wifi to work. I thought I had to find drivers and compile them... By accident I noticed Ubuntu had already found the card and was just waiting for me to configure the network. So all in all. This installation was quicker than windows and I didn't need to go looking for drivers for any of my hardware. Good experience :-)

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