Living Outside the Box – Part Deux

Written on July 24, 2009  |  by RP Mickler  |  Leave a Comment Leave a Comment  |  Bookmark and Share

Some of my readers might remember my experimentation with open source solutions back in February. My mission: identify and use open source products instead of common ISV (Independent Software Vendor) products from Microsoft. I wanted to try out the alternatives so I could talk about them honestly with students and clients.

So, in another post that’s just part of an on-going process, I’m going to outline what I’ve done to radically re-think my computing environment: living outside the box.

Workstation:

I reformatted my production machine and installed Ubuntu 9.04. Ubuntu is an open source (free) alternative to Microsoft Windows. Ubuntu installed in less than eighteen minutes and updated in seven; it identified every single one of my peripherals and automatically provided drivers. I was productive immediately. If I compared their installation times, Ubuntu installed six times faster than Windows Vista and even did a better job at providing drivers. It’s also performed cleanly with no reasons to shut it down, nor has the system stalled or suspended for any reason. The machine is more responsive than it was under Windows.

Software Applications:

Using Ubuntu has been a breeze because you’re able to receive software packages through an Add/Remove feature built in to the operating system. Ubuntu’s common distribution allowed me to quickly find and install tools, utilities, games, and Internet software that I need to do my job. All installed and uninstalled cleanly. A couple of applications of note that I found real useful:

  • Twhirl: A great Twitter solution that installed cleanly on Ubuntu.
  • Pidgin: An instant messaging application that interfaces with all major IM engines. So, I’ve got an instant messaging system that is a common interface for Google’s Talk and Yahoo!’s IM. Once it installs, it’s almost native to the Ubuntu o/s desktop, so it was a very seamless experience getting it installed and using it.
  • Skype: The popular Internet phone service has a Linux distribution. It took minutes to get it installed and it configured easily with my mic and soundcard. A couple of clicks and I was signed in.
  • Scanner Utility: A generic scanner tool, this thing recognized my USB flatbed scanner instantly and I was off to the races.
  • Amarock and LastFM: I was familiar with both of these applications before I moved to Ubuntu, but it was a relatively painless experience getting these guys up and running for music.
  • PDF Printer: Ubuntu has a PDF printing solution available in its software distribution. It installs a PDF-printer so you can output anything from the o/s to PDF. Pretty slick.
  • VirtualBoxOSE: The open source version of VirtualBox that is received through the Ubuntu installation was pretty good at getting me started with installing a virtual machine for Windows – see below. Eventually, though, I ended up uninstalling it so I could install the latest parent version of VirtualBox.

Internet Browsing:

FireFox is a part of the Ubuntu distribution. I guess the only thing that I could complain about that is there’s a price for such a pleasant painless experience with Ubuntu. Its software distribution is governed by a “benevolent dictator” that doesn’t necessary feel compelled to rush out and distribute the latest and greatest FireFox (now in it’s 3.5 release), so I’m stuck in a lesser 3.12 release until it’s approved. If I felt gutsy, I could try decoupling this install and put in the 3.5 release on my own, but, eh: why push it? That’s the trade off you get for more or less guaranteed interoperability.

Productivity:

Ubuntu also ships with OpenOffice 3.1. It was able to open up my Microsoft Office 2003 and 2007 documents right away. I’ve also been able to open up student docs created in MsOffice, and exchange docs with colleagues and clients without complaint. Now, OpenOffice isn’t entirely seamless with MsOffice – there have been obvious (and sometimes problematic) results when opening up Word, PowerPoint, or Excel docs in OpenOffice. The interface is a little different and it’s been a chore to take on that learning curve.

Ubuntu’s native email client is Evolution. In order to get it to work the way that I want, I’ve had to install a couple of plug-ins, but what I’ve got now is a suitable Outlook replacement. It handles my three mail accounts and RSS feeds; I was able to import all of my Outlook *.pst files into Evolution so I have all of my former mail and mail history; it handles my Contacts in several contact folders/lists, my Calendars, and my Memos. Evolution has many similar features to Outlook like rules, filtering, and search capabilities. Again, a learning curve, but it’s been all-together a fairly pleasant experience.

Business:

I had to ditch QuickBooks because it doesn’t come in a release for Linux. So, I actually purchased an annual subscription to Intuit’s cloud computing product where I can access my QuickBooks stuff online. Unfortunately, I was dismayed to learn that the online product can only be used by FireFox or IE running on Windows… and there I was, thinking that I had cleverly solved that problem!

I also can’t avoid that I have to work with Microsoft Access. So, I had to install a virtual machine. The free virtual machine, VirtualBox from Sun Microsystems, was just released in its 3.0 edition and it had a number of fixes that allowed me to overcome some technical limitations with the OSE version distributed with Ubuntu. After some tech-head study and fixes, I was able to install the 3.0 version, and then installed three virtual machines: XP, Vista, and Windows 7 RC. Under the XP VM, I’ve installed Access, and I can toggle between that my Ubuntu desktop in real time. That also allowed me to access my QuickBooks account online. Getting the virtual machine to work the way that I wanted was probably the first real technical challenge to overcome.

Finally, along with that came the issue of my online lectures. One of my universities that I work with requires the use of Adobe Connect Pro/Breeze/Flash to deliver the lecture. What I found was that Flash incorrectly identified my mic by looking at the first soundcard in my driver list in the o/s, and it doesn’t allow to switch or pick from the available devices, so I couldn’t deliver my lectures on the Ubuntu system. I’m now playing with VirtualBox to see if I can’t pass through my mic that way… this was probably the second technical hurdle that I’ve had to toy with.

Music:

Listening to everyday music through Amarok is just fine. I was also able to get my iPod to sync against my music. Where I ran into trouble is play-back on iTunes-purchased music which is digitally-encoded and licensed to be read by the iTunes player. The Amarok player can’t read DLR-encoded *.m4a’s. My next technical problem will be learning how to strip that digital license away from my music so I can use it freely in Amarok.

Backup and Disaster Recovery:

Ubuntu was able to detect my personal UPS just fine, and provided an advanced power management dialog natively to manage it. I have to say that my next-next technical issue will be to setup backups: I’ve tried numerous products without success so far. It’s on my list of things to do!

Enterprise Architecture:

Earlier this year, I transferred all of my mail handling away from a hosted Exchange box to Google Apps for $50/year. That was 1/4 of what I was paying annually for the same service, and Google handles all of my antivirus and antispam filtering. Meanwhile, through using Evolution, I integrated my Calendars, Contacts, and Mail through Google Apps. What this means is that my mail folders, calendar and appointment events, my contacts, and all of my regular PIM information gets synchronized to Google in the background. That allows my iPhone then to hit Google for each of these functions and set them as the default Calendar, Mail, and Contact list. Instant, airless synchronization that I hadn’t been able to get with my Blackberry and couldn’t have gotten without investing in BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server).

Also, I was able to transition my web services away from IIS in favor of a LAMP configuration running WordPress; much thanks to my host and developer, Workshed, for that! I’ve been able to integrate my Google Docs, Analytics, and Adsense with WordPress and manage my website more like a configurable application, saving me oodles of time and money, and allowing me to concentrate on what really matters: generating content.

Summary:

So what we have here is a near complete abandonment of Microsoft Windows Vista, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Live Messenger, Internet Explorer, QuickBooks, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Windows Server, and iTunes. I’ve been able to find reasonable alternatives that provide the same functionality and have, in my estimation, could have potentially saved me over $4,000 in commercial software licensing.

I have to say that the experience this year has also reinvigorated my passion for working with computers. Linux isn’t my strong point, and it’s taken me a little bit to learn what I can do with it, and it’s been exciting to be exposed to somthing new and to try to make it do what you want it to. Reminds me of when I was first exposed to DOS. It’s been a real kick in the pants! Further, though, I’m able to talk to students and clients alike now about legitimate, open source/cloud computing options that they have in comparison to commercial software.

R