Web Server

Web Pages

So now you’ve got an older computer on your home or business network with Linux running on it.  It’s not doing much, perhaps monitoring your network.  What else can you do?  Oh, as I find every day, the possibilities are endless.

One thing that most may think is hard to do, is set up a web server.  Yes, you can serve up web pages without having to sign up for a web-hosting service.  Do it yourself.

You can have them available on the net even if you don’t have a static IP address or even a domain name, just by using a dynamic dns service.  Or you can keep them available just to your private network.  Each user can have their own section to themselves.  I use one of mine for testing before moving them to whatever web hosting server that hosts the working site.  I have another one just for my personal site that I share with family & friends.

APACHE

Apache

One of the most famous of Apache is Geronimo, but we are not going to be discussing that Apache, but rather the most widely distributed and used web server software available.  It’s no accident that it holds this top spot, it not only works, but does a great job.  Much like myself.

Get it.  Install it.

Now if you’ve got Debian or Ubuntu (or derivitive) you can install with:  aptitude install apache2.  If you have a distro such as Red Hat, Fedora or Mandrake, you can use: yum install apache2.

I’m not going to go over the whole installation and configuration process here, but a wealth of that knowledge can be found here.  However, once you get the installation completed, you’ll be able to host your own web pages.

Additional Web Apps

Now that you’ve got your Web Server up and running, you can do so much more.  For starters, you can install Nagios for keeping tabs on your network.  You can install webalizer to keep stats on your web server.  I installed coppermine for serving up picture galleries (although, this also involved having PHP and mySQL being installed as well).  The possibilities are never ending.  Anything you’ve seen on the net, you can pretty much find an open source app to add to your own server.

apt-get or aptitude

Installing Software

When you install software for windows, there is many ways to go about that.  You can have a CD-ROM with the program and install directly from that.  You can download a zip file, extract the files and install the extracted program.  You can download an installer that will then download the necessary files off the net.

With Linux, there is also a variety of ways.  One of these is using apt-get or aptitude.  You may have seen on the internet instructions on installing some software within debian or ubuntu where someone gave the command apt-get install <program>.  The alternative is to replace apt-get with aptitude.  What’s the difference?

From the users point of view, there is no difference.  However confirmed reliable sources have brought out the fact that aptitude will handle dependencies much better.

To quote IRONWALKER from the linuxquestions.org forum:

Aptitude is said to deal with dependencies better than apt-get. For example, say you install a package which automatically installs some library packages because it depends on them. When you remove this package with apt-get, it won’t remove the libraries this package installed, although they aren’t used anymore.

When you install that package with aptitude and remove it with aptitude, aptitude ‘detects’ that those library packages aren’t used anymore and will therefore automatically remove them.

To sum up, aptitude will clean things up when you remove a program.  It will also check to make sure no other program needs the files it wants to remove before doing so.

The thing to keep in mind is that if you chose to use one over the other, be consistent.

Graphical Interface

Synaptic Package Manager

For those who are running Gnome desktop interface (or KDE), you can use Synaptic.  This nice program will divide up the available programs into categories for you.  You can even search for whatever type of app you are interested in.

If you prefer to hang out in the CLI, you can issue aptitude by itself on the command line and get this interface.

aptitude package manager

It’s fairly easy and similar to the Synaptic Package Manager.  You can search for applications you’re interested in, you can install packages and uninstall them.  Not only can you navigate using your arrow keys on your keyboard, it also responds to your mouse.  Click on the menu above, or an item to the left to open it up.

This is one sweet app you should familiarize yourself if you like to move around the CLI, especially if you have a system setup without a GUI.

Of course, if you know the name of an application, you can just command line it and not enter the package manager.  For instance, you can just enter sudo aptitude install <filename>.  If you are unsure if an app exists, or perhaps it’s name, use aptitude search <filename>.    AND, as if that’s not enough, if you know just part of the name, enter that in.

The following command yields these results:  aptitude search blend

p   blender                                                     – Very fast and versatile 3D modeller/renderer
p   blender-ogrexml                                  – Blender Exporter for Ogre
p   enblend                                                    – Tool for compositing images
p   kwin-style-blended                             – a window decoration theme for KDE

Surprise

If you do bring up the aptitude package manager and find yourself in need of a little time killer, hit Ctrl-T and then P.

This works on my Debian system, but on my Ubuntu box it drops me back to the command line with the following message: “Ouch!  Got SIGABRT, dying..”   –  Weird.  I’ll have to figure that out another day.

Hard Drive Partitioning with GParted

Partitions?

For those who are uninitiated in partitions, here’s the quick and easy low down.

If you have just one hard drive and you wish you had two, you can divide and conquer.  Of course this does not give you double the storage space, it just gives you two logical drives on one physical drive.   Now it’s possible to divide it up even smaller, and smaller.  This is accomplished by partitioning your hard drive.  There are different type of software for this, but what my friend Sean pointed out to me is definitely worth having.

In the past, it was not something you would want to do when you have data you don’t want to lose, especially your operating system (unless you plan on reinstalling anyway).  Microsoft used to, and possibly still does, include fdisk which could partition your drive.  However, doing so was the equivalent to formatting it first.  It’s not something you wanted to do as an afterthought.

When you install Ubuntu (or Kubuntu, Edubuntu, etc.) it will ask if you want to erase your hard drive and start fresh with it being your sole operating system, or if you would like to dual boot (that is having the choice of booting up into Ubuntu or Windows).  If you chose the dual boot option, then it will want to setup a partition, setting aside a portion of the hard drive for Windows and a portion for Ubuntu.  You get to decide the size of the partitions.  It works very well.  I have never lost my Windows operating system once even after a dozen separate installs.  Pretty slick.

A lot of people like to do this the first time they install Ubuntu, so they can keep Windows installed if it turns out they don’t like Ubuntu.   Sometimes too, they may have certain programs that are necessary and work ONLY in Windows.  I use this last option.

Partition Messup

Now one day I was installing Ubuntu for a dual boot setup, however grub kept giving me a hassle.  So I would try to re-install.  I did this a few times.  Then I noticed that my hard drive was shrinking.  Every time that I went to re-install, I was losing an unrecoverable partition from the previous attempt.  Why exactly, I don’t know.

The fix came in the form of GParted.  I downloaded the iso file and burned that to a CD-ROM and then rebooted off the CD.  Up came a graphical interface and I was able to see the partitions of each of my 3 drives.  I was able to delete partitions, make new partitions, or combine partitions.  I was also given a choice of filesystem format from Fat32, NTFS, ext3 and many others.

GParted screen

Problem solved.

This is a disk I will keep in my arsenal for sure.  What’s nice is that it’s a live-cd so if someone needs help with their PC, there’s no need to install any software, download anything, just slap this puppy in the drive and boot.

Linux? Isn’t that for programmers and computer geeks?

Well, sure it is.  But so is Pepsi, Television, and water-balloon fights.

Simple fact of the matter is that everyone has a computer now-a-days.  We all use our computers for different things.  And we all want our computer to WORK!  Specifically, we all want our computers to be FAST!  It amazes me to this day the amount of frustration that people are willing to put up with in a computer.  Slow boots, lag, viruses, crashes, the infamous “blue-screen-of-death”, etc.  Think about it.  How many times have you heard something to the effect of…  “I just bought this $1500.00 laptop, and it takes over 5 minutes to boot up and allow me to use it!”

If your car functioned this way, you’d drive it off a cliff.  Fortunately there is a solution for “Average Joe Computer User”.

I’m not as “techno-savvy” as some, and not as “computer-illiterate” (to coin a phrase) as others.  But I do know when something isn’t working right.  Windows XP, or Vista always seem to just run …slow…  So I started complaining about it, one night, to my friend Tyler.  Well, Tyler is something of a Techno-Buff, and he told me to try Linux.  And to be perfectly honest, it took about three months to muster up the courage to try it.

After I bought that MSI-Wind (Netbook), and it came with a copy of XP on it, this itching feeling in the back of my head (It’s a different itch… I’ll explain that itch to my doctor thank you very much.) just kept saying that this computer “SHOULD” be able to run faster.

Enter Linux…  There are many different “flavors” or “Distributions” of Linux.  So, my friend Tyler told me to try “Saybayon” Linux (the one that comes with its very own rubber mallet shaped just like the dent in my skull) “It’s the best distribution for performance!” …he says.  Well, he may be right, but it’s about as easy to get running as your bowels after a pizza party.  Then I enter the arena of openSuSE.  It works… but it takes up about 25GB of my 80GB HD.

Finally I was looking into distributions and I found Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex.  Ubuntu advertises itself as “Linux for Humans”  After a lot of deliberation, I came to the conclusion that I was, in fact, human.  So, I fired it up, had it installed in about 40 minutes, I had some Wi-Fi driver problems, but got those worked out fairly quick with the help of the incredibly friendly people at ubuntuforms.org.

Then… About a two weeks ago, I downloaded the latest distro of Ubuntu.  9.04 Jaunty Jackalope (Net-Book Remix).  Loaded it onto my MSI-Wind in about 20 minutes, and EVERYTHING worked perfectly on first boot.  The Net-Book Remix of 9.04 has a kernel made for the Intel Atom Processor that is in my MSI-Wind.  Now, this computer not only functions, but like driving a Ferrari, you can FEEL the performance.

Now… here’s the best part.  When I first used Linux in college, it looked like this:

$

And that was confusing to me, and the other 99% of the world.  Now, it looks like this…

Graphical user interface, file browser, web-browser, backgrounds, etc.  Everything you want from an operating system.  Along with functionality.

Besides performance, what else would you want to run Ubuntu for?  Well, Ubuntu has a constantly updated repository of maintained applications from Canonical (people who maintain and update Ubuntu), and third party or open source (community) based applications.  All available right in Ubuntu.

Well, doesn’t Windows have all of this?  Certainly.  And Viruses.  Did I mention that Ubuntu doesn’t have viruses?  Don’t believe me?  Google it yourself, or check out this link…

http://lovehateubuntu.blogspot.com/2008/04/why-windows-has-viruses-and-ubuntu-or.html

One thing that Windows can do, that Ubuntu doesn’t, is charge…

Windows XP – $99.95
Windows Vista – $249.95
Microsoft Office Home and Student – $149.95
Adobe Photoshop – $599.95 (No wonder only professionals buy it.)
For a grand total of… $849.85 XP, $999.85 Vista.

Ubuntu 9.04 – Free
Open Office 3.0 (100% MS Office compatible) – Free, Included in Ubuntu
GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) – Free, Included in Ubuntu
For a grand total of – Jack Jiminy Squat! Without being a software pirate!

Yes, the prices on the Windows software is full retail, and you can probably get a better price than that, but still, if you have to pay $5.00 for any of it, you’re still not getting it for free.

So I shall summarize…

Windows XP or Vista comes with a web browser, media player, notepad, and solitaire.

Ubuntu comes with a full set of productivity software (Open Office 3.0), Graphic Editing (GIMP), Internet Software (Mozilla Firefox, Evolution Mail, Pidgin Instant Messenger), and Games.

So… Isn’t that for programmers and computer geeks?
The answer is a resounding No.

Ubuntu 9.04 is made for the average computer user.  You and me.  Linux for Humans.   It makes your computer run faster, be virus free, added functionality, and has access to FREE software to download at any time.

Why am I so “Pro-Ubuntu” ?
I don’t work for Canonical, or even write code for Linux.  I’m just your average white suburbanite-slob. (Thanks Dennis Leary) I think people  just like to get what they paid for.  Think about it…  We all have HDTV’s, but no HD content.  We all have nice cars, and have to drive 55mph.  We all listen to music, but can’t crank it up because we’ll wake up Mrs. Nesbitt.  We all have computers, and have to suffer with Windows…  Not anymore.

Give it a whirl…  Go to www.ubuntu.com, and dowload Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope LiveCD.  It even allows you to try it without any change to your windows system.