Ubuntu LiveCD Installation and Command Line Tutorials

I did not have any difficulties installing the Ubuntu LiveCD, but reading the instructions made me really anxious. I used Ubuntu for some time two years ago, so I knew what to expect. I knew the interface, set-up, how the OS works, but I had installed Ubuntu on a computer back then and this time I am going to use the LiveCD on a computer which is not mine and which I am not going to use in a month. Once I did it, I relaxed. It was the old interface and everything worked as expected. I repeated the re-boot, played with the language options, and then started the Terminal application.

I worked my way through the tutorials - the ones in the VTC were well accompagnied by the lessons from Learning the Shell from Linuxcommand. I do not deal with permissions often, but I have to do it from time to time and evrytime I have to revisit the relevant documentation, hence I read this part of tutorials carefully. Navigation in the file system and directories and manipulating files were good summaries, but fairly basic. The Input/Output chapter was quite interesting. The chapters on layout of Linux file system were rather technical, so was the tutorial on partitions. I was scratching my head over all those blocks and different drives, but the practical examples made the partition tutorial clearer. However, I still would appreaciate a more realistic scenario and reasons why would I like to have different partitions on one disc.

Wine, Microsoft, and Gaming

I became intrigued by Wine. The post in Ubuntu Forum that originally piqued my interest was about interoperability problems between Firefox and Wine. There were other threats related to Wine there, as well - one of them was dealing with playing commercial games on Ubuntu machines. I am not a big player myself, but I occasionally wondered what Linux users do and I could not imagine, they would just kept whining and would not figure out a solution. There seem to be very few commercial games that run on Linux . A Wikipedia entry on Linux gaming (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_gaming, accessed on 2009-05-20) revealed that the situation is not that bad, even if one did not see any of the usual suspects mentioned. Wine delivers a compatibility layer that enables Linux users to enjoy the hottest products of the gaming industry.

I have to admit that I was impressed by the concept and I can imagine there maybe even some interest and support for such compatibility-enabling and/or cross-platform tools in different economic and legal climates. Wine epitomizes the challenges of open source software. On one hand, it enables Linux users to work with Microsoft applications, even if the software may be acquired legally and paid for. On the other hand, the application is often clunky, does not always run smoothly and reliably and often other scripts and application have to be employed in order to run a desired application. It does not help that Microsoft does not seem to be interested and tries to makes it rather difficult for Wine developers to keep their product up-to-date.

The prospects are not all that bleak. Google bundled Wine into their digital image editing and organizing software Picasa, so that it runs on Windows, as well as on Linux. In addition, Google seems continuously interested in Wine which is a rather positive sign, for now...

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_(software) (Accessed 2009-05-20)
http://www.winehq.org/ (Accessed 2009-05-20)