This site is currently under RC status. That means I'm assuming everything's working right, but there could still be a couple of issues.
If you do find a fault, or have a suggestion, please let me know at the Contact us page.
This site is currently under RC status. That means I'm assuming everything's working right, but there could still be a couple of issues.
If you do find a fault, or have a suggestion, please let me know at the Contact us page.
The absolute beginner's guide to Ubuntu
This article was written for Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy). When I install 8.10 (Intrepid) I'll make the nessacery changes, but for now most points still stand in 8.10 anyway.
Characterised by its brown titlebars and wallpaper, Ubuntu is a free operating system running on the Linux kernel. Its focus is to be easy to use, making Linux accessible to the casual computer user. Ubuntu is a Zulu word roughly translating as “Humanity towards others”, which reflects the values which Ubuntu aims to follow. It is supported by Mark Shuttleworth at Canonical.
In true Blue Peter style, here's a list of all the things you'll need to get up and running with Ubuntu
Got all those? Good, let's get started!
The first thing you need to do to get going with Ubuntu is to download the installer from the internet.
Grab the installer from the Ubuntu Download page, filling in the details as explained below:
Go and play with something else while you're waiting - I'll be here when you're done downloading the file.
The file you just downloaded is an ISO. This is a file that tells the computer where to put a load of files it contains. You're going to burn this to a CD (or DVD, the steps are the same). For Windows, you'll need a program that can understand this (unlike Ubuntu, Windows can't do this itself). One I recommend is Infra Recorder.
Select and browse to the ISO file you downloadedNow that your CD is ready to roll (or is it spin, anyway), you'll need to restart your computer with the CD in the drive. But don't do it yet! Make sure you take a note of the address of this page (http://tech.kenw2.co.uk/archive/ubuntu/absolutebeginner.php) so that you can pick up where you left off once you've restarted. When you restart, the Ubuntu boot menu will open. Select Try or Install Ubuntu
From this point on, the whole proceure should last no more than an hour - half of which you'll spend watching Ubuntu do its stuff
When you restart you'll see the extra brown Ubuntu desktop. This is a fully functional version of Ubuntu. But nothing has changed on your computer: nothing is installed, and when you shut down and take the CD out everything is as you left it. I'm going to insert the obligatory “back up your stuff” message. Personally I've never had a problem, but you're playing with your hard drive: mistakes can be costly. To proceed with the installation, double-click the Install icon on the desktop and fill in the details as follows:
Everything is now set up to go through with the install. If you're sure everything is set up as you want, click Install (having backed everything up, obviously). Ubuntu will then install everything to your hard drive, which will take about 20-30 minutes.
When it's done it'll let you know and ask you to restart. When you click to restart you'll see your new Operating System, free for you to explore.
Your beautiful new Ubuntu desktop
Now that you're in a totally new environment, you'll need a few pointers on how things work with Ubuntu. Generally things are pretty similar to Windows, but might take a bit of getting used to.
There's no Start menu in Ubuntu. Instead, there's the menus spread across the top panel of the screen. These give you access to all the applications installed on your computer. is sorted according to the type of application you're looking for, making for easier discovery of them (as opposed to hunting through a huge list like the olden days). is the menu to find all of your files and folders, including your CD and any USB drives. is just that: a place to change your computer's preferences and to administer various aspects of your computer.
As a quick guide, see the table below:
Windows programs and their Ubuntu Counterparts |
||
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Ubuntu | Where it is |
| Internet Explorer/Firefox |  Firefox |
|
| Windows Live Messenger |  Pidgin |
|
| Microsoft Word |  OpenOffice.org Writer |
|
| Windows Media Player/iTunes |  Rhythmbox |
|
| Paint |  GIMP |
|
| Control Panel |  Control Centre |
|
| My Documents |  Home Folder |
Using FirefoxIf you use Firefox already, you can safely skip this section as everything is the same as Windows
Firefox isn't drastically different from Internet Explorer. If you're used to Internet Explorer 6, then it's pretty much self-explanatory. The biggest difference is that Favourites are now called Bookmarks.
If you're used to Internet Explorer 7, then the biggest diference is the layout. It's more remeniscent of Internet Explorer 6, but it's not too hard to get used to.
Luckily, Firefox is skinnable so if you really need to (I did when I first switched to Firefox), you can easily make Firefox look just like Internet Explorer, using this Internet Explorer 7 skin.
Using PidginPidgin is a multi-protocal Instant Messaging application. That means it's not limited to Windows Live, or Yahoo: it can use all of them.
On first run, it'll throw up an “Accounts” window at you (if you miss it, you can open it from ). Once open, click Add and fill in the form as appropriate. Once added, it'll automatically connect you, and you're ready to start chatting.
Using OpenOffice.org WriterUsers of Microsoft Word will be able to instantly pick up OpenOffice.org Writer and use it: it's nearly identical.
The only thing you need to watch is that it saves in .odt, a free format, by default. That's fine (and I wish it was practical to do), but if you want to be able to share your file with others you're likely going to need to save as .doc (a Microsoft format). This is easy to do: when you're saving the file, select “Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP (.doc)” from the drop-down menu.
Using RhythmboxRhythmbox is aimed at being used within the one screen: your playback and library are all together. To add music to your library, go to and browse to your music folder. See the Places section for more info on where your music is. Your music will then be sorted by Artist and Album.
Using GIMPGIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a fairly complex image editing program, useful for drawing pictures and editing photos. It consists of many seperate windows, the default being the main window, with the tools and colours and the image window, where your image is shown.
Using PlacesThe menu contains various key folders on your system. The ones you need to bother about most are: - the equivalent to My Documents on Windows XP or your name on Windows Vista; - same as My Computer on XP and Computer on Vista; Any others are there because of your setup, for example flash drives.
In Ubuntu your files are stored under one “root” folder (/), rather than Windows' drive letters. Some key folders are:
Ubuntu has pretty much everything you need to get up and running out of the box. But there's times when you need something extra.
Fortunately, Ubuntu makes installing new applications rediculously easy. Open , and the installer application will appear.
The layout is pretty simple:
On the left you have the types of applications which are available. On the top you have the toolbar, then the list of applications and below that the description for the selected application.
To find an application, use the Search box, and the list will be filtered as you type. When you've found the application you want, tick the box next to it and click Apply Changes. Ubuntu will then ask you for your password. While Vista has something similar Ubuntu had this feature since its inception. It's a security measure which prevents just any application accessing critical system files without your say-so. Because we know and trust what's asking for permission, we enter the password you typed in at Ubuntu's installation. Give it a few minutes while it downloads and installs, and then that's it: your new application is installed!
By default, Ubuntu only lists applications which it supports straight away. That's all well and good, but there's lots more in the other sections.
To remove the filter, select All avaialable applications from the Show drop-down. Let's give installing a try.
Because of patent and copyright restrictions, Ubuntu can't include support for many “restricted” formats, such as MP3, Flash and others, out of the box. But there's an easy application which adds support for these.
Search for “ubuntu restricted extras” and install the application as described above. Once done, everything should work great.
Every so often, Ubuntu will let you know that there are updates available by showing you this notification:
Ubuntu makes keeping all your applications up-to-date easy, with all being updated in one go.
When this happens, click the icon (or go to ) and click Install updates. It'll then ask for your password (we trust this application as well), and then download and install the updates for you.
Now that you've got Ubuntu up and running and have learned a thing or two about how to get around, you should be ready for exploring the world of Ubuntu by yourself. Have a play, make it your own. I promise you'll love it so much you'll wonder what you did without it!
I'll be doing subsequent article on how to get a bit more advanced with Ubuntu, including customisation, recommendations and more. Be sure not to miss it: subscribe to the RSS feed below.
Another positive factor about Ubuntu is the helpful community of users it has. There's loads of places you can go for help:
Android launched
Android is the Operating System which is shipped on a (future) range of new phones and mobile devices which has Linux at its core. It was backed by Google and will be open sourced soon.
Android is a software platform and operating system for mobile devices, based on the Linux operating system, developed by Google and later the Open Handset Alliance. See article on Android
Here's why a phone manufacturer would be better off loading Android onto their devices rather than making their own Operating System:
This makes it a great option for handset manufacturers, as it saves them the work of making their own, and, being open source, they can rip out whatever they want and replace it with whatever they want, such as replacing Google stuff with that from Windows Live. It also benefits the consumer, as they're not restricted or limited in any way if they don't want to be.
What with the release of Apple's iPhone, people were curious about what Android would have to offer as competition.
What a disappointment: it's closed and feature-incomplete, oh and fugly. “What's wrong with it?”, I hear you ask. Well, here goes...
I'm not particularly impressed with the first incarnation of Android. Which is a shame, because I so much want to like it, what with its openness, Linux core and Google integration.
But this is only the first release, and many see it as a test version (as Google is really beta-happy). In some ways it's still got a few things which the iPhone lacks (like MMS support and ability to install applications independently). And maybe it'll be possible to upgrade the firmware when Android 2.0 comes out: that's Open Source's strong point after all.
For now though, I'll grudgingly stick with my LG U890 and see how Android pans out. I hope it doesn' disappoint.
Pet hates
This is a list of things in the Tech world which really grind my gears:
Why do I hate such a common package? As soon as you start doing anything advanced with a word processor you start to lose control. You highlight this, change that and before you know it your lovely neat document has different styles applied all over the place. Let me give you an example:
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog
A string of plain, unformatted text. How boring. Now let's emphasise some text:
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog
As you can see, "quick brown fox" has been emphasised. Actually, it might look better in Bold and red:
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog
That stands out a lot more - a bit too much in fact. Let's change it to white instead
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog
That's better. But we want to say where the fox is. Let's add “in the field” after the word “fox”:
The quick brown fox in the field jumped over the lazy dog
Hang on! Why's it red? And italicised? Didn't we get rid of that? This is why I hate Word Processors - they don't show you where and how the styles are applied, with unexpected results. Bring in HTML, and you can see everything about where things are applied, and have a lot more control.
What overpriced crap these things are. I've heard loads of "reasons" why iPods are sooo much better than, ahem, MP3 Players (isn't the iPod an MP3 Player as well?), such as:
As for iPhones - here's a rough guide to using the expensive stupidly-high contracted Smartphone (it's not a mobile phone, stop kidding yourself):
All basic functions which my £30 NEC e313 phone can do, and can be expected from most modern day phones. “But it's sooo shiny!”. Hmmm, indeed
I swear, one day I'll stop reading the internet - the population's lack of grammar knowledge winds me up too much. OK, a mistake is fine. But it happens too often to be a mistake all the time.
Back to the classroom... There's two rules for putting apostrophes in the word “its”:
So why do people everywhere insist on writing phrases like “on the back of it's screen”?! Raaar!
Maybe now that we're over that little episode we can all do it right, can't we now...
Ah, the old rut. Good for getting stuck in. We get used to the way we do things “because I've always done it that way”, regardless of how well it works. We struggle through things, and if anyone else suggests a better way it's disregarded.
Case in point: the move from Internet Explorer 6 to Internet Explorer 7. Suddenly things had changed from Toolbar and address bar, with one window per website to having tabs, and a totally different layout. And everyone thinks the world has been flipped upside down! People are scared of change, and never click an "Upgrade" button. As a result, 50% of the Web still uses Internet Explorer 6, which is bad for the web. The same goes for web browsers, operating systems, or even different ways of doing things.
Just because it's different doesn't make it worse. Which brings me on to the next and final point...
Here's how web design works. Put in the content, then change the colours, styles and layout. At every step you test it in a browser to make sure you're doing everything right. This takes a few hours to complete (there's extra steps after this as well, but we'll leave that). All goes well, with the vast majority of it working fine.
Then comes the most infamous stage, as well known to any web designer: the Internet Explorer test.
You see the design you've laboured over destroyed in an instant. Internet Explorer does random things with the layout, with loads of things making no sense. If it makes no sense how are you suppose to fix it?
You spend hours of trial-and-error trying to figure out what the hell is going on, and how to fix the godforsaken thing. Eventually you get there, but you end up having to make things "wrong" and cut out features to make it work for the lowest common denominator that is Internet Explorer.
What annoys me most is that the users are blissfully unaware of the frustration and hours of hackery every web designer has to go through just to get the effect that should be happening already. The old “well IE works”. Nnnnngggghhh!!
And Microsoft makes sure noone knows about, or considers other browsers, and has a monopoly power over the web. You're scared to use Firefox because “it's different”. Not really, you just need to adjust slightly - not half as much as every web designer has to adjust for every IE user. If none of this makes sense, there's more here.
Maybe one day there'll be a world without IE. I can dream I suppose...
and hope that some of what I've said will change the world, now that it's been published on the interweb...
*tumbleweed*
Oh well, at least I've let off a bit of steam. Keep reading for more fantastic (and probably more informative) articles from KenBW2 tech!
Firefox v Internet Explorer
Don't bore me with the details, show me the summary
I'll start off by explaining what I'm on about. Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox (as well as Opera, Safari and others) have one thing in common: they're both Web Browsers; programs that you have on your computer for looking at websites. So what's a web browser?
A web browser is a software application that enables a user to display and interact with text, images, videos, music and other information typically located on a Web page at a website on the World Wide Web or a local area network. Text and images on a Web page can contain hyperlinks to other Web pages at the same or different website. Web browsers allow a user to quickly and easily access information provided on many Web pages at many websites by traversing these links. Web browsers format HTML information for display, so the appearance of a Web page may differ between browsers. See article on Web Browsers
You can have more than one of these installed on one computer, and some browsers are restricted to just one Operating System (like Safari, which, up until recently, was Mac only).
The job of a web browser is to display a page (written in HTML or XHTML code, along with CSS) as it was originally intended by the person who wrote it.
This is all well and good. When it works. But the reality of this is it doesn't. Why? It angers me to even utter the words... Internet Explorer.
That (X)HTML I was on about - it's overseen by a group called the W3C. The idea goes that they make a load of rules about how certain things should look, and the browser vendors (the people who make browsers) follow said rules. On the most part, they do. Let's take a trip down history lane...
It's the early 1990s. All is quiet in the world of the internet - the infrequent uses are mainly by geeks and researchers.
Then Tim Berners-Lee happened... He took the idea of the internet and applied it to a way for people to easily send text, and a funnily-named thing called "HyperText" (which is where we get HyperText Markup Language, or HTML). This meant that the text could interact with other objects on the internet. This is the idea that brought you the joys of (Hyper)links and pretty pictures: the text was able to bring up another page, or any other object. The World Wide Web was born: a web of pages which linked to each other which a user could browse. (Invented a by a Brit I hasten to add :D)
Fast forward a few years to the mid 1990s and we come to the “Browser Wars”. There were two main players in the browser market at that time. In the blue corner was Microsoft's Internet Explorer, and in the green corner was Netscape's Navigator. Battling with each other, both browsers tried to convince users (like you and me) to use their browser. Both took the basic form of HTML and added their own extensions onto it, with versions of each browser being released on a phenomenal scale. However, in these days of war, there was little collaboration. They were moving in opposite directions in their attempts to gain market share and their methods were so diverse that whole websites had to be rewritten for each browser.
It was clear that this couldn't be sustained. In 1996, Netscape Navigator had 80% of the market share, with Internet Explorer taking only 5% of the pie. Netscape was in a dominant position, the clear favourite of the day.
But today, the once great Netscape is dead. After being bought by AOL, it is no longer in development. So it's clear that Microsoft reigned victorious, with the familiar big blue “e” dominating the web.
The rapid rise of Microsoft Internet Explorer at Netscape's expense. So how did this happen?
Clearly something major had happened to cause this turnaround. While both Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer had always cost a fee, Microsoft decided it would be a good idea to simply give Internet Explorer away. This explains a part of the uptake. But the thing that really clinched it - for the part that really made the usage shoot up, Microsoft had a more subtle trick up its sleeve.
What other common computing technology is used by the vast majority? Why, Microsoft's very own Windows of course! So Microsoft used this to leverage their way into the browser market. Personal Computing was on its way up, and people were eager to see how they could benefit from the internet. When they turn their brand new Windows PC on they want a way to get onto the Internet. Well lookey here, on the desktop. “Internet Explorer” summed up everything they were looking for. As far as Joe user was concerned, this was the Internet.
Netscape did eventually make Navigator free, but it was too little, too late. It didn't stand a chance anymore.
The Browser Wars had ended, and out of the dust came Internet Explorer Version 4, the sole victor.
The standard original HTML was in a right mess. In the frenzy of the preceding years, it had been twisted, added on to, modified: it was barely recognisable. Something had to be done. This is where the aforementioned World Wide Web Consortium came in; headed by Tim Berners-Lee. They fixed up HTML, gave it a nice new suit and gave it some direction - a reason to exist. The idea was simple: clearly the browsers cannot take control of the development - only someone independent. The W3C would make the standards, and the browsers would implement them. Their slogan: To lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the Web.
.
In these days, however, there was only really one browser worth speaking of. Internet Explorer was later developed, allowing some support for Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), a new standard by the W3C used to change the styles (colours, positioning, backgrounds etc: everything but the content) of web pages.
With the release of Windows XP in 2001, Microsoft released another version of Internet Explorer: version 6. This had full support for the first edition of CSS. They were up to date on the CSS front, but, a relic from the Browser Wars, were still somewhat behind on the HTML front. But it didn't matter - no-one was around to threaten their position. Internet Explorer continued to reign alone for years to come.
Meanwhile, quietly in the background a few fanatics of the wounded Netscape Navigator decided to revive its glory. They took the approach of rebuilding a browser on a similar model, right from scratch. This was to be called Mozilla. This fully featured browser included an email application and many other features. However this was seen as too big, and a more lightweight browser was released in 2004, known as Firefox. This featured many aspects of next-generation web browsers, including tabbed browsing.
Microsoft didn't see this a threat, however. They owned 90% of the market, therefore had full control over it.
The W3C released an update to their CSS Specification, and later updated HTML to a new technology called eXtensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML), which would be the future of website design. As per the idea behind the W3C, the browser manufacturers should now update their browsers to support these new technologies, so that web designers could take advantage of the new features.
But there was no need for Internet Explorer to be updated. Pretty much everyone used it, and therefore, whether or not there were alternatives was irrelevant, as all websites would need to be compatible with Internet Explorer, or else risk losing 90% of its users
Usage of Firefox quickly increased due to its no-charge approach, near-perfect standards support and advanced features, and now takes up around 10% of the market.
Naturally, Microsoft didn't like this emerging competitor, and attempted to reaffirm its position. It set to work reviving its Internet Explorer team, and in 2007 released Internet Explorer 7, sporting features such as Tabs (which had been in other browsers for years) , a streamlined interface, and, most importantly, improved W3C Standards support.
The web heralded the coming of IE7 as a sign that things were set to change at Microsoft, and to some extent it was. But standards support was still sketchy, and still broke web pages designed to follow them.
The other major browsers: Firefox, Opera and Safari continue to follow these standards, and even now support standards in development, such as CSS3.
The Web relies upon standards to be universally supported so that it can be viewed in a variety of browsers, Operating Systems and devices such as mobile phones. In its current state, the Web can't move forward to support new technologies until Internet Explorer can, and as a result suffers.
To enable a fair and beneficial Web a variety of browsers should be in use at any one time so that any one doesn't get monopoly power, enabling it to control how and where websites are viewed.
You can find the 3 major standards-compliant web browsers freely downloadable below:
KenBW2 Tech launched!
KenBW2 Tech is hereby officially launched to you, the lucky public.
This blog aims to be different from the average Joe Blogs (see what I did there?) technology site in that you, yes, you can get to understand how technology can improve your life.
So what am I all about? Well, you can find out about me at my Social Networking page. Alternatively you can learn more about this site on the About page.
That's it for now. Happy browsing!