Sara, at ParentingToddlers.net, encouraged me to do this, so blame her for what follows.

Frugality comes in some funny packages sometimes. It was said by someone smart that, if you want to use an alternative to windows, you can either spend money and get a Mac, or you can spend time and use Linux. As far as I can tell, this is a hopelessly true statement. Since I have far more time than money, I’ve made the switch over to using Linux to run my computers instead of Windows.

Linux is is the basis for a variety of computer operating systems. It’s “open source” software, which means that it’s free, and the source code is freely available on the net for anyone to use, abuse, fix, or improve upon. There are millions of people across the world developing all sorts of different Linux programs and operating systems. There are a wide variety of OS’s, known as distributions or distros, to choose from, like Linspire, Fedora Core or Slackware. The most popular is Ubuntu, it’s what I use, and it’s what I’m going to hopefully walk you through installing on your own machine.

The frugality of Linux is two-fold. You don’t pay for the software or any upgrades, which can save you hundreds of dollars. The really frugal part, however, is that Linux distros are much less resource-intensive than windows or Mac OS; they need less hard drive space, less memory, and less processing power to run efficiently. Linux distros are far more efficient than traditional operating systems, and therefore, you can give new life to older computers, or significantly delay the obsolescence of a new computer. You’ll be amazed how fast your old box can run under Ubuntu, I promise.

You need to keep in mind that Ubuntu, like virtually all Linux systems, is a work in progress. Enormous numbers of people are working on it as we speak, in fact. The ultimate goal of Ubuntu is that everything should “just work”. It’s not there yet by any stretch of the imagination, but the just-workiness it does have at any given time should impress the heck out of any windows user, like it did me. Each new version that comes out is kind of fun to install, I think. It’s interesting to discover how much smoother things run when you’re re-setting up your environment.

If you want to run Ubuntu, you’ll probably want to sit down and have an honest moment with yourself. I think running Ubuntu is a little tiny bit easier than running Windows, once you get into the swing of things, but if you don’t have a Linux guru on hand to install it for you, you’re going to have to make it go all by your lonesome. It’s definitely not impossible, but you should be comfortable working the guts of your computer before you consider something like this. Here’s some guidelines I’ve just made up to help you decide whether or not you should make the switch:

Are you willing to learn how to fix your computer’s operating system on the fly?

If a program you’ve installed doesn’t work on the first go, are you willing to try and fix it?

If something exists on the internet, can you find it?

If something breaks or does not work, are you willing to research the answer?

The beauty of Linux is that the answer to almost every question is lurking out there in the tubes of the interwebs. You need to be willing, and patient enough, to find it.

The key to technological literacy is knowing when to look for an answer (anytime you’re stumped), and where to look (Google). In addition to this being the secret of every good tech support guy out there, it’s the best thing you can do for yourself, no matter what OS you run. If you can’t accept this, I don’t recommend installing Ubuntu yourself. You really need a certain base-level of computer confidence that comes from tech literacy, and if you can’t dive in with both feet ready to hack stuff together, you’ll just be frustrated. If you can get someone else to install it for you, and you don’t plan on doing anything too particularly complicated, it’ll hum along quite nicely without a whole lot of intervention from you.

So, over the next few weeks, I’ll be taking you with me while I install Ubuntu on my new laptop. I’ve never installed it before, so you’ll get to see exactly what a newbie can expect, and I promise not to edit out anything dumb or embarrassing I do. Next week, we start my journey by burning an Ubuntu install disk and getting Ubuntu to work temporarily on my machine.
click here to continue to part 2