Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello there, everybody,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Pollette.
Speaker 1: I'm an editor here at how stuff works dot com,
Speaker 1: and sitting across from me, as usual, is senior writer
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. Hey there, alright, Well, we're gonna start this
Speaker 1: one off the way we've started off several of our
Speaker 1: more recent podcasts with a little a listener mail. And
Speaker 1: this listener mail comes from my friend Ari Edney, who
Speaker 1: befriended me on Facebook, and she's swell, and she has
Speaker 1: bugged me quite a bit. I mean, she has been
Speaker 1: after me quite a bit to talk about a specific subject,
Speaker 1: and so let me just read. I'm just gonna read
Speaker 1: a little bit of her email, which is much longer
Speaker 1: than the X that I'm going to do right now.
Speaker 1: Could you please put together a podcast extolling the virtues
Speaker 1: of Lennox as a cheap perin free in peren alternative
Speaker 1: to a Mac and recommend your favorite flavors. I have
Speaker 1: used Red Hat and Sues in the past, and if
Speaker 1: I missed if I didn't pronounce that right. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: I don't know much about this stuff, but my favorite
Speaker 1: so far has been Ubuntu's Jaunty Jackal Loop. Thanks a
Speaker 1: whole lot. It would save us all some grief. Smiley face.
Speaker 1: I love the podcast. Erry Edney. Then, actually, we've She's
Speaker 1: not the only person who's asked us to talk about learnings. No,
Speaker 1: We've received many, many requests to talk about Lenox, and
Speaker 1: the only reason we haven't spoken about Lennox is because
Speaker 1: Chris just hates that operating system so much. He's been
Speaker 1: just yelling like every time I'm like, hey, Chris, do
Speaker 1: you want to do Lenox? I mean, it's really cool,
Speaker 1: and he says no, No, No one uses that only
Speaker 1: losers these linex M all right, Okay, truth be told.
Speaker 1: I knew nothing about Lenox other than the very bare basics.
Speaker 1: I've been a Windows and Mac us are pretty much
Speaker 1: my entire life. I mean Doss before Windows even and
Speaker 1: Apple before that. But I was the one who was
Speaker 1: holding us back because I just didn't have the experience
Speaker 1: or the knowledge base really to talk about it. So
Speaker 1: I know a little bit more now, but I'm gonna
Speaker 1: let Chris take the controls here and I will I
Speaker 1: will pipe in with smartass comments whenever appropriate. Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: I felt like we should probably start with a little
Speaker 1: maybe just a little bit of history. It's funny because
Speaker 1: every time we start talking about computer history, all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, we're twenty six minutes into the podcast and
Speaker 1: we haven't gotten at the topic, right, UM, So just
Speaker 1: a little bit of history. UM. It's a derivative of
Speaker 1: Unix UM, which was an operating system originally planned in
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties. Is a you know, a robust operating
Speaker 1: system that would be uh worked on by ultiple companies
Speaker 1: and everybody was going to come together and use this
Speaker 1: this operating system. UM. It didn't quite work out that way. UM.
Speaker 1: Actually it ended up at Bell Labs and the project
Speaker 1: actually initially UM was called something entirely different UM. But
Speaker 1: Unix is uh you know, it was actually called Multics
Speaker 1: at first UM and UH but and then the coalition
Speaker 1: of companies that we're gonna do this fell apart. The
Speaker 1: whole reason behind that was at that point in the
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties, they had all these giant computers
Speaker 1: and none of them could talk to one another because
Speaker 1: they didn't they all had their own proprietary operating system,
Speaker 1: which is exactly like it is now. Oh um oh anyway, UM,
Speaker 1: so the coalition between the companies fell apart, but Bell
Speaker 1: Labs UM some some guys that were Bell Labs in
Speaker 1: the murray Hill, New Jersey office, UM Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie,
Speaker 1: Doug McElroy and jf Osana basically kept working on it
Speaker 1: because basically their bosses felt like it was a worthwhile
Speaker 1: use of their time. I guess um and and it
Speaker 1: basically panned out for them because the more they worked
Speaker 1: on it, UM and they basically started for scratch. Once
Speaker 1: the Multics thing fell apart and the new project ended
Speaker 1: up being called Unix. UM started about spring nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 1: We uh have a belated happy birthday to to Unix
Speaker 1: and birthday birthday to Unix. That's all I can do.
Speaker 1: Otherwise we have to pay rights. Yeah yeah, and you know,
Speaker 1: I'm sure it would give you a nice greeting in
Speaker 1: binary in response to that. UM, and we're talking giant
Speaker 1: computers here, you know, the size the size of bookcases.
Speaker 1: Um A PDP seven actually is the first that it
Speaker 1: ran on UM and the nineteen seventy actually upgraded to
Speaker 1: a PDP eleven for only sixty five dollars. But that's
Speaker 1: sort of a test to what Bell Labs thought it
Speaker 1: could do, because you know, otherwise they wouldn't work over
Speaker 1: uh sixty five grand, you know for for an operating
Speaker 1: system UM. January one seventy isn't that what marks the
Speaker 1: Unix epoch? They had an epic. They count, They count
Speaker 1: up from January one, nineteen seventy in seconds. So back
Speaker 1: in I think it was February thirteenth of this year,
Speaker 1: we had the moment where the counter reached one, two, three,
Speaker 1: four or five, six, seven, eight nine zero. Huh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I had no idea. I remember that it was very special.
Speaker 1: My wife was upset because I forgot Valentine's Day the
Speaker 1: next day. So where were you on Unix Day? That's
Speaker 1: almost that's almost a specialist pie day. However, I knew
Speaker 1: I could get in with that UM. But the original
Speaker 1: Unix UM was written an assembler, a very old and
Speaker 1: uh robust computer language UM. And then Mr Thompson kept
Speaker 1: working on it, basically decided he wanted to write a
Speaker 1: new language for it, which he called be like in
Speaker 1: the or B and then uh, gradually as he made adjustments.
Speaker 1: There was a new language called new B and then
Speaker 1: UH a new one which you may have heard of,
Speaker 1: called C. So that's where those UH languages come in.
Speaker 1: And UM, you know, there's sort of an August history there.
Speaker 1: So UM, basically, the only the only reason we're bringing
Speaker 1: up Unix here is because Lennox is a derivative of Unix. UNI.
Speaker 1: U Unix is you know, open for people to uh
Speaker 1: to mess with and uh Lennis Torvold's who was a
Speaker 1: student at the University of Helsinki in Finland, was kind
Speaker 1: of interested in one of the derivatives called minics, and
Speaker 1: then from through he started working on his own UH
Speaker 1: Unix derived operating system, which essentially, since his name is
Speaker 1: Lenis he called it. And this is born in officially
Speaker 1: when the one colonel and so let's talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about what an operating system is before we go
Speaker 1: into Linux, just to give a groundwork. So you're operating
Speaker 1: system this is UH. It acts sort of as a
Speaker 1: liaison between your applications and your computer's hardware. It is
Speaker 1: what facilitates your applications UH and lets them work. Otherwise
Speaker 1: there's you know, your application Stone just immediately plug into
Speaker 1: your your computer's processor. UM it also an accident, right,
Speaker 1: So the operating system is is a liaison. It's also
Speaker 1: you can think of it as a foundation. You can
Speaker 1: think of it as like the ground floor of a building.
Speaker 1: And the applications are the stories that you you build
Speaker 1: on top of the ground floor. And uh. And so
Speaker 1: you know, we're all familiar with various kinds of operating systems.
Speaker 1: Most of the United States is familiar with Windows, for example,
Speaker 1: at least some format of it. Um that you said,
Speaker 1: the operating system is the ground floor, but there are Windows,
Speaker 1: and there's Windows Windows being a graphics oriented operating system
Speaker 1: graphic user interface or can we as we say, uh now,
Speaker 1: granted when, back when, back when I was starting with computers, UM,
Speaker 1: I used a command line interface which was much more
Speaker 1: It required the user to be much more of a
Speaker 1: kind of a repository of bizarre and obscure commands run C,
Speaker 1: d LS, tree, so you know you had but you
Speaker 1: had to know these different commands in order to to
Speaker 1: navigate your way around the computer. Now, the nice thing
Speaker 1: about Gooey's, of course, is that it changes all that
Speaker 1: into a graphics oriented UH interface. So that's doing all
Speaker 1: the work for you. You just have to click around
Speaker 1: to activate stuff, and all the command line things that
Speaker 1: you would normally do manually is it actually goes on
Speaker 1: in the background. So the operating system, the very core
Speaker 1: of the operating system is called the kernel. This is
Speaker 1: these are the the core programs that interact with the hardware.
Speaker 1: It's a seed like a kernel of corn. Yes, it's
Speaker 1: not a kernel like KFC. It's not that kind of kernel,
Speaker 1: not Sanders. So so you've got the kernel, and then
Speaker 1: you have various layers built around the kernel and on
Speaker 1: top of the kernel to that make up the operating system.
Speaker 1: The kernel is the important thing to remember here because, uh,
Speaker 1: the when we talk about the Lenox one point, Oh,
Speaker 1: that's we're really talking about the Linux kernel there. And
Speaker 1: then because Lenas decided that this operating system should be
Speaker 1: open source, he allowed anyone to look at the code
Speaker 1: and make changes and make their own derivatives. Um, and
Speaker 1: that started a pretty uh, pretty robust craze of operating
Speaker 1: system development, I would say, at least within the open
Speaker 1: source community. True. Um, So it's funny because it's it
Speaker 1: really is very much like a tree. Once you start
Speaker 1: with Unix. I mean, they're all the other derivatives of
Speaker 1: Unix other than Lenox, like you know, Berkeley Standard Distribution,
Speaker 1: which some of you know as b S D or
Speaker 1: os X, which is not OS ten, the Mac Operating
Speaker 1: System UM, which was developed for Pyramid communters in early
Speaker 1: in NINETEENES and q n X, which you know, I
Speaker 1: know from the connection to the Amiga after they were
Speaker 1: talking about redoing the Amiga os UH using q n
Speaker 1: X as its base. But there are tons of those,
Speaker 1: and then a lot of these have other derivatives like
Speaker 1: b s D UM shares some of the kernel with
Speaker 1: the OS ten operating system for the Mac UM, and
Speaker 1: likewise Lenox has lots and lots and lots of derivatives UM,
Speaker 1: some of which we've already mentioned, some of which are
Speaker 1: for pay. Like red Hat, UM releases different versions, and
Speaker 1: you know they're they're certainly welcome to do that. They
Speaker 1: can package their own Linux operating system and sell it
Speaker 1: to you if you like, and you can get support
Speaker 1: from the company, which other versions of Linux you cannot. Right,
Speaker 1: there's a trade off. There are plenty of free versions
Speaker 1: of Linux. We and versions in Linux in the Linux community.
Speaker 1: We call those distribution a distribution of Linux, and so
Speaker 1: each distribution is really a version of Linux. So it's
Speaker 1: somewhere on that that tree, that tree that branches out
Speaker 1: from the Linux kernel and uh yeah, so some of
Speaker 1: them are free, some of them you pay for the
Speaker 1: free ones. You know, there's no investment up front. But
Speaker 1: the downside of that is if something does go wrong,
Speaker 1: there's not really a person you can just easily go
Speaker 1: to and say, hey, this isn't working. Fix it. You
Speaker 1: can go to different Linux communities, either online or you know,
Speaker 1: even if there's a group that meets in person, because
Speaker 1: there are people who do that. Um, you may be
Speaker 1: able to go to someone or some community online and
Speaker 1: and state what your problem is and get some help
Speaker 1: that way, but it's not going to be as quick
Speaker 1: as it would be if you had a dedicated helpline.
Speaker 1: So that's one downside, um. But the flip side is
Speaker 1: you've got people who really want this stuff to work,
Speaker 1: so they're gonna work very hard to fix any problems
Speaker 1: that that exists on the back end. You know, if
Speaker 1: it's a user error, that's one thing, but if it's
Speaker 1: something that's fundamentally wrong with part of the operating system,
Speaker 1: you can bet there's someone out there working to fix it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think it's funny because I've talked to so
Speaker 1: many people who really love Lenox and they seem a
Speaker 1: little surprised in some way that Lennox is not more
Speaker 1: popular UM. And I think I think it comes down
Speaker 1: to a lot of the In a lot of cases,
Speaker 1: the people who really really like Lenox UM don't mind
Speaker 1: getting their hands dirty a little bit. They they're kind
Speaker 1: of interested in trying to make it work and figuring
Speaker 1: out how to bridge gaps that might be bridged otherwise,
Speaker 1: um by a company operating an operating system, offering an
Speaker 1: operating system, or you know, the company in between that
Speaker 1: and the company oper offering I can't talk today offering
Speaker 1: a a program that you buy. And sometimes you know,
Speaker 1: you go, okay, well I've got this file, but I'm
Speaker 1: not sure what player I can use to play this file,
Speaker 1: and in some cases there's not one. UM. So you
Speaker 1: don't call, you don't get on the phone with tech
Speaker 1: supporter or email somebody. You have to start searching on
Speaker 1: forums or talking to your friends who know how to
Speaker 1: use Linux and saying, well, you know, what is this thing?
Speaker 1: You know learning to program yourself. Yeah, and that's and
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people, um, you know myself
Speaker 1: included in in some cases, are just lazy. They just
Speaker 1: want it to work and they don't want it. They
Speaker 1: know that if you want the plug in for so
Speaker 1: and so, you go to their website and download it
Speaker 1: or that it's even if your browser is gonna prompt you, hey,
Speaker 1: I can't play this. You want me to go get
Speaker 1: the plug in for you? Um, thankfully. Uh. There's tons
Speaker 1: and tons of software that's cross platform enough, like Mozilla's Firefox.
Speaker 1: Firefoxes Firefox regardless of whether you're using it on Mac
Speaker 1: Windows are Linux, and Firefox is pretty smart and goes, well,
Speaker 1: you know, hey, I know there's a plug in for
Speaker 1: this that works for Linux. Would you like me to
Speaker 1: go get it for you? Um? You know. So that
Speaker 1: I think that helps. That's going to help adoption more.
Speaker 1: But I think there's that's why there's that gap, as
Speaker 1: people just want to turn on their computer and have
Speaker 1: it work for them. Well, there's the other problem is
Speaker 1: that there's not one easily recognizable flavor of Linux. You know,
Speaker 1: when you when you're talking about Linux, you are talking
Speaker 1: about hundreds of different variations none that there are a
Speaker 1: few that are really popular and leap to mind faster
Speaker 1: than others, Ubuntu being one of the the big ones
Speaker 1: right now. But uh, you know, if you're talking to
Speaker 1: someone who just said, you know, you just tell my
Speaker 1: I use a Linux based machine, and they go when
Speaker 1: they do a search for Linux, you can get confused
Speaker 1: very quickly. You know. When you're talking about Windows. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's still a lot of variations. I mean, there's still
Speaker 1: versions depending on what you know. It is a Windows Vista,
Speaker 1: is an XP is it? Do you have Windows seven early?
Speaker 1: What did you do? Um? But you know it's lenox.
Speaker 1: That problem is compounded because you're talking about hundreds of variations,
Speaker 1: not just you know, a few, like even even up
Speaker 1: to a dozen. If you're talking about the Windows ones.
Speaker 1: If you're talking about Max, you're talking about you know,
Speaker 1: leopard or snow leopard or pole cat or whatever the
Speaker 1: hell they're calling that. Um, I don't know, they've got
Speaker 1: a cat fixation over there. But uh, yeah, it's I
Speaker 1: think that's one of the big barriers is that, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's there's not an easy thing to point to
Speaker 1: and say this is what I'm talking about. Like you said,
Speaker 1: This is one variation of what I'm talking about. I think, um,
Speaker 1: there's something else too. People don't trust it because it's free.
Speaker 1: Well that's so too, you know. You think about, well,
Speaker 1: if it's free, that must mean that it's somehow inferior,
Speaker 1: when when really most I would I would think that
Speaker 1: a lot of Lenox fans would argue that the opposite
Speaker 1: is true, that because you have this big, open community
Speaker 1: all dedicated to trying to make stuff that works really well, um,
Speaker 1: that the products are in some ways superior to the
Speaker 1: things that are available on the market. Uh. We were
Speaker 1: talking earlier before we started recording about the fact that
Speaker 1: if something if something is is missing a feature or
Speaker 1: a function, you've got developers out there who may recognize
Speaker 1: that and will work to go ahead and include that
Speaker 1: so that the next version of that has that functionality.
Speaker 1: Whereas if you are purchasing a big name product from
Speaker 1: Apple or Microsoft, you may have to wait a really
Speaker 1: long time before they get around to adding more features
Speaker 1: and functions because it's whatever the corporation deems important. In Linux,
Speaker 1: you're talking about what the community deems important, and that's
Speaker 1: likely to be a whole variety of things. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and they're gonna be looking at it from a you know,
Speaker 1: a user and developer standpoint, as opposed to what's going
Speaker 1: to make money. You know. So, yeah, well I can
Speaker 1: I can tell you that. Um, you know, if those
Speaker 1: people are discounting Linux because it's free, sorry pardon the pun, Um,
Speaker 1: they're wrong because frankly you can do if you're if
Speaker 1: you're looking for I mean, this story goes back to
Speaker 1: the whole low cost thing. Um, You're you're totally getting
Speaker 1: far more than what you're paying for with it, because
Speaker 1: basically what you're paying for is the cost of a
Speaker 1: c D. You download a distribution of Linux, you burn
Speaker 1: it onto a CD, then use that c D to
Speaker 1: boot your computer and install Linux. Actually, in most cases,
Speaker 1: you can run the distribution right from the CD and
Speaker 1: you don't even have try it out. Yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: one of the really nice things I like about Lenox
Speaker 1: is that if you are nervous about installing this operating
Speaker 1: system on your machine, if you think, well, what happens
Speaker 1: if I don't like it? You know, I've got Windows
Speaker 1: pre installed. What am I gonna do? A lot of
Speaker 1: these allow you to boot directly from a CD, so
Speaker 1: you can test it out, see if you like it,
Speaker 1: and then make your decision based upon that experience. So
Speaker 1: if you decide, you know what this is neat and all,
Speaker 1: but I prefer the functionality I have with Windows. There's
Speaker 1: no buyer's remorse or anything. Yea, yea, and you can
Speaker 1: you could do this. I mean, if you think about
Speaker 1: what most people do with their computers. You know, they
Speaker 1: get online, they check email, they use the web, they
Speaker 1: use productivity software. Wait we said most people. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: didn't say that, Uh, just pointing out that that was
Speaker 1: Jonathan um in case you were listening. Of course, they
Speaker 1: know what your voice sounds like. Um No. I mean
Speaker 1: for what most people do at their desks, you know,
Speaker 1: at at their jobs, you don't need Windows for that
Speaker 1: at all. You could do Linux and use all free software.
Speaker 1: You're just paying for your hardware. You could download a
Speaker 1: distribution of Linus, and everything you need to do right
Speaker 1: there is free. You can listen to music, you can chat.
Speaker 1: All those programs are actually they're all pre installed with
Speaker 1: some distributions. I installed um Bun two on our test
Speaker 1: machine and it's get all that stuff pre installed. Now.
Speaker 1: There of course, otherre are other issues. For instance, if
Speaker 1: your Office does not adopt Linux completely, you know, corporate wide,
Speaker 1: then you may have compatibility issues if they're running other
Speaker 1: proprietary software depending on what it is, and some stuff
Speaker 1: like you know, things like basic word documents and things.
Speaker 1: They're they're Linux programs that will easily open those up
Speaker 1: and you can make edits and all that kind of stuff. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, open Office is available for Mac, Windows and Linux,
Speaker 1: and it has its own standard, but it also reads
Speaker 1: and writes files in dot doc format. Yeah, that so
Speaker 1: you can share with Windows people exactly so, But if
Speaker 1: you are using any other proprietary software, let's let's say
Speaker 1: that goes beyond just the word processing or spreadsheets or whatever,
Speaker 1: that might be a problem because it means, you know,
Speaker 1: if it if it's designed to run on Windows, Uh,
Speaker 1: it's not going to run on Lenox unless you have
Speaker 1: either some sort of emulator or someone has built a
Speaker 1: version of it specifically for Lenox. So there are there
Speaker 1: are other barrier. There's the whole software barriers. The same
Speaker 1: thing in a way that that prevents a lot of
Speaker 1: people from switching over to Max because they sit there
Speaker 1: and they'll say, wow, this is a really cool machine.
Speaker 1: It's very sexy and sleek and pretty, but I can't
Speaker 1: run blah blah blah on it because it's they don't
Speaker 1: make it available for Max. Well that that same problem
Speaker 1: exists for Linux to some extent. Then again, there are
Speaker 1: solutions to that too. You could use uh Sun's virtual Box,
Speaker 1: provided you're not a company, because it's well, I mean
Speaker 1: you could, you just have to pay for it. But
Speaker 1: if you are a user at home, you can use
Speaker 1: virtual box and run Windows and Linux at the same
Speaker 1: time simultaneously on your machine. Or you can always dual boot,
Speaker 1: which you are not running them at the same time,
Speaker 1: but you get to choose which operating system you want
Speaker 1: to use. True enough, but that does compartmentalize your resources.
Speaker 1: So but if you are looking for an easy way
Speaker 1: to take a computer, even a lower power machine, because
Speaker 1: Lenox uses many fewer resources than say, I don't know Vista,
Speaker 1: it's not as big a draw on your computer's hardware. UM.
Speaker 1: And I'll say why in a second, UM, you could
Speaker 1: totally use an inexpensive machine UM with less processor requirement
Speaker 1: and uh you know, in free installation of of Linux
Speaker 1: and you're pretty much off and running UM. Now, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's why it's so popular. With netbooks is because those
Speaker 1: you know, those machines don't have nearly the process of
Speaker 1: power that a full sized laptop would have, which is
Speaker 1: why Lenox is found on some of those. UM The
Speaker 1: thing is, uh, this and this might affect people, especially
Speaker 1: uh us Mac users who like everything fancy. Now that
Speaker 1: we've got to S ten. Uh Yeah, Linux just isn't
Speaker 1: as pretty in a lot of cases. I mean, there
Speaker 1: are ways around that too. But actually that's one of
Speaker 1: the things that I've read from the Linux community. Two
Speaker 1: is they're trying there. They want to spice up the uh,
Speaker 1: the look and feel, the gooey a little bit more. So.
Speaker 1: They wanna they want to kind of adopt that esthetic
Speaker 1: approach that Apple has masters. Yeah, and and the reason
Speaker 1: why if they can get more people and gain critical mass,
Speaker 1: you know, they could they could take over the world.
Speaker 1: And people say the operating system war is over, but
Speaker 1: I think it's just a matter of time before somebody
Speaker 1: comes out with something better, and Lenox could very well
Speaker 1: be that. Well. And you look at some of the
Speaker 1: other UM operating systems out there that are based on
Speaker 1: the same sort of stuff. I mean Android, the Android
Speaker 1: operating system for Google phones, that's got based off the
Speaker 1: Linux kernel. Well, that's that's true. We didn't talk about
Speaker 1: any of the other stuff. There's tons of stuff. You
Speaker 1: may have something running Linux in your home right now.
Speaker 1: For example, if you have a Ti Vo, it's got
Speaker 1: Lenox in it. Lots of things have linings in it. Yep, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a very versatile operating system, very robust
Speaker 1: and uh and like you said, because it demands so
Speaker 1: compared to other operating systems. The demands are so low
Speaker 1: for for hard um for processing power. It can run
Speaker 1: on lots of different things. Now, granted, even the people
Speaker 1: who love Lennox say you shouldn't think of Lennox as
Speaker 1: a way to turn your old machine into a cutting
Speaker 1: edge like lightning fast computer. That's not that's not going
Speaker 1: to happen. But it will allow your computer to run
Speaker 1: and operating system that allows you access to most of
Speaker 1: the programming that you're accustomed to, even on an older machine.
Speaker 1: It extends the the useful life of a computer by
Speaker 1: a few years. Really. Uh, you know, I've got computer.
Speaker 1: I've got a couple of computers at my home that
Speaker 1: probably couldn't run I know, I've got one that couldn't
Speaker 1: run Windows Vista if I wanted to, it just doesn't
Speaker 1: have the capacity for it. But it could run a
Speaker 1: Linux based operating system without too much trouble. Now, again,
Speaker 1: it's not gonna go lightning fast. It's not going to
Speaker 1: suddenly turn my machine into this miracle computer. But it
Speaker 1: is going to work, and it might run Linux fashion
Speaker 1: that run Windows. Um. You know, I I just think
Speaker 1: it's uh it's one of those things that I'm really
Speaker 1: glad that I tried using a while and it's got
Speaker 1: some definite advantages um to the Windows operating system. A
Speaker 1: little while ago for the blog, I wrote about this
Speaker 1: um uh third party app store for Mac called Bodega. Well, actually,
Speaker 1: Lennox has something very much like that built in. It's not,
Speaker 1: uh like exactly like the app store, but it's called
Speaker 1: the Synaptic Package Manager. And so say you're looking for
Speaker 1: something that would run that will play music files, you
Speaker 1: can go in and search those and see if you
Speaker 1: can find something. If you say, oh, well, this looks interesting,
Speaker 1: maybe i'll try that out, you can tell it to
Speaker 1: go ahead and install it. It will take it will
Speaker 1: get all the files it needs and install it on
Speaker 1: your machine for you without you having to search on Google,
Speaker 1: for example, and look for things. Well, I don't know
Speaker 1: which one is the best. You know, you might be
Speaker 1: able to You'll have all of them right there. And UM,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure that not every piece of Linux software
Speaker 1: is in it UM. Again, I have somewhat limited experience
Speaker 1: with Lenox to only a few dozen hours with it,
Speaker 1: But lots of is in it. And you can generally
Speaker 1: find programs that you need UM just by looking in
Speaker 1: the package manager, without having to go online to the
Speaker 1: web and start fooling around with that. So I think
Speaker 1: that's a nice feature. I think that the operating system
Speaker 1: should help you find software. It's like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: what do you want to do? You want, you know,
Speaker 1: to balance your checkbook, while here are some financial programs,
Speaker 1: try one of these. You want to build a website,
Speaker 1: here's some cuff for it. I'll help you do that.
Speaker 1: I think it's it's nice. And it also has UM
Speaker 1: a version of what the Mac os has, a spaces,
Speaker 1: basically multiple desktops that you can flip back and forth between.
Speaker 1: So it uh, it's sort of like virtually having more
Speaker 1: than one monitor, and I think that's a very nice feature.
Speaker 1: I would like to get on my Windows desktop that
Speaker 1: I use at work. I've got it on my Mac
Speaker 1: at home. I've got it, you know, on the Linux
Speaker 1: test machines. I'd like to see Windows do that too, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: where you can set up different approaches depending on what
Speaker 1: you want to use the computer for. Ye yeah, Like
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily need my Neo Steam uh m m
Speaker 1: O RPG icon sitting right there on my desktop for
Speaker 1: my my work layout, but you might need to access it,
Speaker 1: you know, in between, so you can flip over, you know,
Speaker 1: to the other to the desktop. I use that sometimes
Speaker 1: for music when I have the Pandora up and running
Speaker 1: in my in my browser. But I may not want
Speaker 1: to look at that, and I keep you know, and
Speaker 1: keep sting in the way I can move it to
Speaker 1: the other desktop backing it again, like as useful, It's
Speaker 1: very efficient and U I've got to say, if I
Speaker 1: had a choice between Linux and Windows, you know in general,
Speaker 1: and probably choose Linux just because I like it a
Speaker 1: little bit more and the more I know about it,
Speaker 1: the more I like it. And we should also point
Speaker 1: out that Linux is also very very popular for things
Speaker 1: like on servers. A lot of servers run Linux, and
Speaker 1: a lot of work stations, so stations that are usually
Speaker 1: used to to check up on things like servers and
Speaker 1: server farms. Um. And part of that is because it's
Speaker 1: it is bust and yet again it doesn't demand too
Speaker 1: many resources, so more of that machine's resources are dedicated
Speaker 1: to what it's supposed to do, which is serve content
Speaker 1: or route traffic or whatever. Um. So yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: another one of the more popular uses for for Linux.
Speaker 1: In fact, a lot of the really really big data
Speaker 1: centers are filled when machines running Linux Googles for example. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and um, you know, if you go hunting for a
Speaker 1: Linux distro to download, you're going to find your you
Speaker 1: will find two versions generally, uh on virtually anybody's servers,
Speaker 1: at least the ones I've checked. You're gonna see desktop
Speaker 1: or server. Like, well, you know, I'm gonna choose desktop
Speaker 1: because that's what I'm going to use it for. But
Speaker 1: you could get a PC and add the server software
Speaker 1: on it and you can run your run your own
Speaker 1: home server, which I've actually considered doing. Yeah, because I've
Speaker 1: got a couple of machines that are just gathering dust
Speaker 1: and if everything's in working order, then I might I
Speaker 1: keep saying this though I talked about turning one of
Speaker 1: them into a media center many many episodes ago, and
Speaker 1: now I don't have TV. I went the opposite way.
Speaker 1: I went the I went. I don't know how I
Speaker 1: turned left when I was supposed to go right. It
Speaker 1: was that darn Albuquerque sign. Always gets me, always gets me.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, I think we should. I think we
Speaker 1: should revisit this in the future. And er Andy did ask, like,
Speaker 1: what what flavors of Linux do you like? Well, I've
Speaker 1: only used the ubun two and so UM. I liked it,
Speaker 1: but I have nothing to compare it against UM. I
Speaker 1: have very little. I admit I have very little too
Speaker 1: compared against UM. I considered DSL, which is damn small,
Speaker 1: Linux a very much smaller distribution. You know what, I
Speaker 1: have Android. Now that I think about it, I guess
Speaker 1: I could argue, but it's not the same thing. It's
Speaker 1: I have the TVO operating system, right, Yeah, androids awesome,
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's just it just it's just based on
Speaker 1: the Linux kernels. Um. Yeah, I mean I tried what
Speaker 1: I thought. It was pronounced susy. The novel actually that
Speaker 1: that distribution is called is called Susy s U s
Speaker 1: E and it's UM from Novel the company. It is free, UM,
Speaker 1: and I messed with it a little bit. I still
Speaker 1: prefer one too, a little bit more. UM. And I
Speaker 1: have used another very very specialized version of Linux, but
Speaker 1: it is for computers. It's called sugar Stick UM. It
Speaker 1: basically is a distribution of Linux that is designed to
Speaker 1: fit on a one gigabyte thumb drive as educational four kids. UM.
Speaker 1: And the graphics are very very simple so that it
Speaker 1: fits on that small drive. But UM, it's it's pretty
Speaker 1: cool you can boot from this little thumb drive and
Speaker 1: use the system. Of course it's not you know one too,
Speaker 1: and that's the one I'm used the most. UM. I
Speaker 1: did use Kubon too a little bit. UM, but it uh,
Speaker 1: you know, they're so similar because both of them are
Speaker 1: from canonical so um, you know, yeah, it's it's my
Speaker 1: favorite too, But I don't have as many distributions to
Speaker 1: compare it to, right, So sorry that we haven't experienced
Speaker 1: the whole wide world of Lenox. We'll keep playing with it.
Speaker 1: What we have experience we've enjoyed so far. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: haven't had any horror horror stories at least so No, Nope.
Speaker 1: The only the only thing I had in trouble with
Speaker 1: was installing initially, and that was a few when I
Speaker 1: actually started using I tried to use the six point
Speaker 1: four Oh sorry six point oh four, and I had
Speaker 1: so much trouble installing that. But with uh Gutsy Gibbon
Speaker 1: and Johnty Jackalope, I really didn't have that much trouble
Speaker 1: at all. But I don't think I tried intrepid ibex. Yes,
Speaker 1: and karmit Koala is due out this fall, so um
Speaker 1: that the next version of of Ubuntu Linux is not
Speaker 1: far off if you're ready to switch from Polecat with
Speaker 1: naming things after animals. Microsoft is not on board with this,
Speaker 1: and Lenox even has a cool uhge chosen by Lennis
Speaker 1: Torvald's himself, also open source. You can you can use
Speaker 1: it's under the CANW so you can use it freely
Speaker 1: if you like. Um. No, I was gonna say that
Speaker 1: Windows ye, Windows seven doesn't follow the animal thing, and
Speaker 1: yet we can't figure out where the seven comes from.
Speaker 1: Every time I count up, I don't come up with
Speaker 1: seven whenever I go through the different versions. So if
Speaker 1: you know where the seven comes from, Microsoft Windows seven
Speaker 1: right us tech stuff at how stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: because we don't know. Yeah, I'm sure there's some weird
Speaker 1: there's some weird math in there where it works out.
Speaker 1: But you know, you just have to ignore this. And
Speaker 1: Mr Gates, why if it's balmer, then it'll be a
Speaker 1: very entertaining email with profanity maybe maybe the word developers
Speaker 1: eighty times. Uh. Well, that's that's everything I've got for
Speaker 1: for life. You're done, you know. I hope that. I
Speaker 1: hope that was a good Lenox episode. I really do
Speaker 1: intend to come back to it. I want to. I
Speaker 1: want to keep going with it and come back to
Speaker 1: it because I could use the nap um. All right,
Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen. That brings us to our second installment
Speaker 1: of Listener more so pleasant. Yes, isn't it nice? So
Speaker 1: here's our listener mail. This comes from Larry. Just listen
Speaker 1: to the three D Printing podcast. I can't believe you
Speaker 1: change the listener mail sound frownie face. Your podcast has
Speaker 1: never made me this sad before mentioned so pleasant as
Speaker 1: to risk, sigh as to risk. I was so shocked
Speaker 1: I couldn't even really listen to the podcast. I guess
Speaker 1: we'll go back and re listen to it now, Larry,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. We had a lot of people writing us
Speaker 1: and saying that they found my listener mail delivery very annoying,
Speaker 1: and the Clackson even more so. In fact, there are
Speaker 1: people who are saying, keep the way you say listener mail,
Speaker 1: but get rid of the alarm. So eventually we decided, well,
Speaker 1: we'll try and and switch it around, and so we did.
Speaker 1: We we got the new sound effects, and I decided
Speaker 1: I would do listener mail a little differently and hopefully
Speaker 1: you'll get used to it and you'll come to love
Speaker 1: it the way you love the old one. And if not,
Speaker 1: I suggest all the people who love the old way
Speaker 1: go into the thunder dome with all the people who
Speaker 1: hated the old way, and you fight it out amongst yourselves,
Speaker 1: and whoever comes out, that's the version I will do
Speaker 1: from then on. So so eight and seventy five intern
Speaker 1: one leaves what are stuff? From the B side had
Speaker 1: an opening? Well, we can ask around. I hear there's
Speaker 1: some shifting in some of the podcasts, So just keep
Speaker 1: your ears open. Techonic stuff technics alright, So if any
Speaker 1: of you have anything else you want to add, I've
Speaker 1: already given the email address once but once more. It's
Speaker 1: tech stuff at how stuff works dot com. Do you
Speaker 1: want to learn more about various operating systems of other
Speaker 1: things that make computers go beep? You can check that
Speaker 1: out at our website how stuff works dot com and
Speaker 1: Chris and I will talk you again, probably about Linux
Speaker 1: really soon for more illness and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Does it how stuff works dot com And be sure
Speaker 1: to check out the new tech stuff blog now on
Speaker 1: the house stuff works homepage, brought to you by the
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