Clara Raubertas // Freelance Web Design, Web Development, and Web Consulting // Cambridge and Boston, Massachusetts clara raubertas design. development. consulting.

So Internet Explorer 7 has been out for a while now, and I finally caved — I can’t get it to work using the wonderful ies4linux, so I need to have a copy of Windows available to test sites in action.

Fortunately I still had the re-installation disc from the copy of Vista I wiped from the laptop when I got it. Here’s how I set up my dual-boot:

1. Burn an Ubuntu Live CD; boot from that CD, and launch the GParted partition editor from the System > Administration menu.
   

   Note: This step is where I ran into the most issues. I tried to create a new partition for Windows, following the instructions from this guide — but the Windows install would freeze at “expanding files 0%”, and later give me error # 0×80070017. Googling suggested that this error might have been a problem with the disc, but that didn’t really make sense since this was a factory disc. Eventually I figured out that it just meant there was some problem communicating between the disc and the hard drive — Vista didn’t like the partition I’d set up after my Ubuntu partition.

   Here’s how I solved this issue: I used GParted to move my Ubuntu install forward on the disk, then created a partition (without formatting it) for Vista at the beginning of the drive. Then — since Ubuntu’s bootloader was still at the beginning of the drive, and Vista gets confused when it sees that trace of another operating system — I needed to zero out the new partition, with dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda1 where sda1 is the new partition. Warning! If you try to use that command without knowing what you are doing, you may well zero out your whole drive!! ALWAYS HAVE BACKUPS.

2. Put in Windows CD; choose “Custom Install”; select the new partition as the destination (it should be called “Unallocated” or something — it was pretty recognizable after my work with GParted); click through until it starts installing; wait a LONG LONG time.
3. Boot into Windows! Plug in ethernet cord; reboot to install drivers, etc. that allow me to have nice things like correct screen resolution and wireless internet.
4. Use the Ubuntu Live CD and these instructions to restore my bootloader and set up dual-boot
5. Happily choose between Ubuntu and Vista every time I boot up!

In general, this install would have gone a lot smoother had Vista been able to peacefully coexist with another bootloader. Different versions of Linux have no problem living on different partitions, and when you have an existing Windows install, you can easily install Linux in a separate partition without any confusion. But then, I guess that’s because Linux is designed to be used the way its users want to use it, and Windows is designed to be used the way Microsoft wants you to use it.

Using Vista a little bit gave me a better appreciation for people who try Linux and don’t care for it — I found myself disliking things about Vista just because it was unfamiliar and didn’t come set up the way I like it. But even though I know I could customize it and get more comfortable with it, I’ll still stick with Ubuntu for most of my computing, since I know it’s what ultimately gives me the most flexibility.

I posted recently about buying a new laptop — how is it working out, you may wonder?

Pretty well overall. The screen has remarkable clarity, the keyboard is comfortable, and the battery life is okay; on the other hand, the speakers are the quietest and tinniest-sounding speakers of any computer I’ve ever owned/used extensively. At 14.1″ for the screen, it’s just a little bulkier than I’d like (the 12″ iBook was a perfect size; how come computers that small now seem to be a luxury item?), and I’d prefer a slot-loading drive to the tray DVD drive it has. But overall it meets my needs, for now.

Judging by a quick Google search, I’m probably one of the first people to install Linux on this particular machine. It was a little tricky to find an install disk that would boot correctly; it’s a 64-bit machine, but the Hardy 64-bit installer had a problem with xorg and the Gutsy 64-bit disk had a problem with the installer. The Gutsy x86 disk worked fine — though I had to use the partitioner to wipe the entire disk rather than creating a partition alongside the Windows partition, since this computer came with a hidden partition with a “backup” install of Windows Vista. This seems like a particularly egregious invasion of the user’s freedom to use the computer as they wish — fortunately, blanking an entire hard drive still works!

Wireless and sound didn’t work right away; I used Ndiswrapper to install the RTL8187B Realtek driver, which I was able to download from the internet. To get sound to work, I needed to install linux-backports-modules-generic, run alsamixer and turn everything to unmuted/full volume, and reboot.

I did the installation process the day before Hardy’s official release; on release day, I used the updater to install the new release, and everything that had been working before still worked fine. I still haven’t gotten around to fixing suspend/hibernate, which didn’t work out-of-box, but I’m optimistic that I’ll get it going when I have more time to tinker.

So with the release of Hardy Heron, an Ubuntu-using blogger puts the new system to the “girlfriend test” — he gives his Windows-familiar but Ubuntu-n00b girlfriend a list of tasks to accomplish, and watches her try to accomplish them (she’s able to do most, but not all, of the tasks without any instruction).

This blog post has gotten a lot of attention in just a few days, and with good reason — it touches on a lot of hot-button issues regarding Linux and Ubuntu. The blogger says, “Linux won’t truly be ready for the desktop until someone computer illiterate can sit down at a the computer and with little effort do what they want to do” — and he considers his intelligent, tech-savvy girlfriend’s failure at a few of the tasks to be a sign that this isn’t the case. This is a problematic assessment — many of the tasks he chose are the kinds of things only power users even think to do (Photoshop a picture, download a torrent). A truly computer-illiterate user or even an ordinary non-power-user would be interested in much more basic tasks — e.g. I installed Ubuntu on my mom’s laptop a few months ago (hi, Mom!), and she hasn’t had to ask me for tech support, presumably because she only uses her computer for a handful of things and those things are easy to do.

That said, this type of test is definitely a useful way to see what aspects of the interface are more and less user-friendly; for example, installing Flash, which is one of the first few things I do on any new installation, is completely non-obvious and requires command-line usage — not a good idea for something many non-savvy users will want to do right away.

Of course, there’s always going to be the double-standard folks who will use any non-user-friendly aspect of a Linux distro as an example of how “Linux is too hard”, while ignoring any program that’s buggy, interface that’s confusing, or task that requires the command line on another OS. Their counterparts are the “Linux isn’t Windows!!!” people (”Linux isn’t Windows, so don’t expect someone used to Windows to be able to use it easily”) — I agree, Linux isn’t and shouldn’t be a clone of Windows, but if you want Windows users to switch to Linux, you should care about making Linux easy to use for people used to Windows, just like if you want new computer users to be able to start out on Linux you should care about making it easy to use for people who haven’t used a computer before. Fortunately we’ve seen a lot of progress in these areas in the past few years, and I’m confident that Linux developers will continue to produce distros that are easier and easier for all levels of users.

Oh, and for the “Linux users don’t have girlfriends”(/”girls don’t use Linux”/”there are no girls on the internet”) people? Get over yourselves. It’s not funny, it’s not original, and it’s not true… in fact, I happen to live with a Linux user who not only has a girlfriend but had her install Flash for him :).