Let's review.  In the beginning there was X Windows, and every one was happy, but then the software gurus got the brainy idea of doing something like Microsoft Windows for X Windows.  What followed was a series of initial desktop applications, like KDE, Gnome, Xfce, and LXDE.  There were a few others, along with a couple of bare window managers that sprang up.  With the wide array of choices, folks interested in Linux were confused as to which distro to use, eventually KDE and Gnome came to the forefront.

In the meantime, while Linux distros were competing for users, Microsoft took over the world.  The distro's started to stabilize around Gnome 2, and folks got used to that desktop. Linux started picking up some market share.  I personally feel Gnome 2 ended up being the desktop of choice, although no disrespect to KDE, a noble competitor, especially with their latest release.  The emphasis in Gnome 2 was on productivity, not on novice users.

If you follow DistroWatch, which has been ranking the distros now since May, 2001, Ubuntu has been the top distro for five years.  It ran with Gnome 2, was stable, and had good support.  It was the Microsoft of Linux distros. Now Linux Mint has taken over.

Cinnamon Desktop

What happened?  I like to think a bunch of egos got in each others way.  The Gnome team decided they had to match Microsoft's 3d graphics and transparent desktop and decided to build Gnome 3.  It was their design, and when Canonical, the maker of Ubuntu, saw it, they said, no way, we can do it better, and the world will follow us, because we're number one.  The Gnome team wouldn't give in to Canonical, and Canonical wouldn't give in to the Gnome team.  Canonical developed their own Unity desktop.  Both teams wanted to make the desktop more friendly to the dumb Window's users as they saw Microsoft stumble with Vista.

The result was both teams stumbled, where they might not have if they had worked together.  The losers were the already dedicated Linux users who just wanted to get their work done.  They didn't care about 3d or transparency, they wanted the productivity that was provided by Gnome 2.  So Ubuntu and Gnome both stumbled by taking Gnome 2 away from the user, and forcing the user to use their latest creations, Gnome 3 and Unity.  Each turned out to be not ready for prime time.  Heck, Microsoft can foist bugs on us why not buggy desktops, wrong.

Mint decided to take a different approach.  They couldn't stay with Gnome 2, because the Gnome team wouldn't support it.  They decided to make Gnome 3 as close to Gnome 2 as possible to ease their users problems with moving to the new desktop, and allow users to continue being productive as they were before.  The result was a flood away from the Ubuntu distro to the Mint distro.  Mint is now number one.

With the knowledge the Mint team gained developing their Gnome 2 version of Gnome 3, they used to create a new desktop offering, called Cinnamon.  Mint just released Cinnamon 1.1.3.  Whew, that was a long way to go to get here, but I thought the story was worth it.

Initially the Mint team with their program, called Mate, tried to mimic Gnome 2 using GTK+ and the Gnome shell, but that approach didn't provide what Mint needed in desktop functionality.

Cinnamon is a yet another new desktop, but it's different.  First, if you've loaded Mint, and like Mint, you'll like Cinnamon. Cinnamon's main focus is on productivity.  Unity and Gnome 3's focus is on making Linux easy to use for the new user.

Cinnamon offers a bottom panel you can configure and hide.  It has all the features of the current Mint desktop, including an advanced menu system with the same layout as the Mint menu.  It has a custom panel launcher, and an advanced sound control to manage your and control your music.

Cinnamon is still in the early stages of its life.  They are working on a graphical configuration tool, and extensions and themes.  The important thing is Cinnamon is stable.  Cinnamon can be loaded with, or replace, any of those other desktops.

Cinnamon bears watching. KDE's 4.7 release is nice, and if you're a Fedora fan, this is the way to go, but if you like the old productive Gnome 2 desktop, it looks to me like Cinnamon will be the desktop of choice down the road, not Unity.

There's something else important about Cinnamon.  Mint didn't come out and say, "Use us, it's your only choice, and tough luck if there's bugs", like Gnome 3 and Unity did.  You can use Mint, while Cinnamon is continuing development, and has the proper time to bake, and become very stable.

Mint 12 with the Menu Open showing Office tools

You can download the new version of Mint, but it is not trivial.  I downloaded the full DVD version which clocks in at a mere 1 Gb.  The download took about 3.5 hours even with my fast Internet connection.  I suspect the problem was the large number of people downloading from the site, since it was the first day Lisa was available for download.  You can download a CD fitting version which is smaller, but you will then have to download additional codec's after you get the new version installed.  If you don't want to spend the time to download the iso image and burn a DVD, I recommend you buy the DVD from Mint for $15, which will support Mint development.

I checked the downloads checksum value by running "md5sum linuxmint-12-gnome-dvd-32bit.iso," from the terminal window, checked this with the checksum on the Mint web site, ee3d6e2ca498bc7685b7f17cdb5f2eea, and got a match, all set.  I'd hate to cut the DVD and encounter problems later, caused by trouble with the download.  Those problems would be tough to find.  Better to check the checksum and have peace of mind.

Click your name on the upper righ to shut down

Mint 11 comes with a nice DVD burner program, Brasero, which burned the downloaded ISO image to a DVD in about 10 minutes.  I'm ready to do the upgrade to Mint 12.  Time to reboot the computer, and say goodbye to Mint 11.

I loaded the DVD into my drive and rebooted.  Mint 12 came up from the DVD in about 3 minutes.  The new interface is not that far off of the Mint 11 and Gnome 2.  I did notice my home folders now have icons on them, and there are more icons in the Menu with a slightly different layout.

On the desktop is the icon to load Mint 12 on the hard drive.  Clicked the icon...everything worked fine, except, ALL STOP!  You are presented with three choices to load Mint 12: Choice 1: Load Mint 12 next to Mint 11 and retain all your Mint 11 data.  This means you have a dual boot.  On each boot up you can pick Mint 11 with your old data, or Mint 12 with new data.  Choice 2: Blow away all your data, blow away Mint 11, and replace it with Mint 12.  Choice 3: Repartition your disk to something else.  I didn't like any of those choices.  I choose to remove the Mint 12 disk, get out my trusty Lexar 16 Gb Firefly (my favorite USB jump drive), and save my data.

Back to the installation, Mint 12 requires an Internet connection and 5.6 Gb to load.  I clicked on the install button on the desktop and decided on Choice 2 above.  It takes about 15 minutes to install depending on your hardware.  There are no more difficult choices and everything runs smoothly.  Once you remove the DVD and reboot, the operating system loads in about 2 minutes.  Welcome to Linux Mint 12.

On the upper right task bar you may find an icon on the left end to install additional drivers.  I needed to install a Mint tested Nvidia driver for 3d graphics.  Next to that is a shield icon,  which is the update manager, click on this and install the latest updates.  The driver and software updates take another 15 minutes to load.  Your all finished.

Click the upper left infinity logo. This shows the windows view.

Things I notice different are the icons on the left in the lower right menu for your most frequently used applications, see the first picture.  The menu system is fast and responsive.

There is an infinity icon in the upper left task bar, click on this and your open desktop applications show up.  If you click on an application window, you expand to that screen.  The infinity icon is on all screens, this then is a fast context switcher between the windows of your open applications.

Clicking the infinity icon and the applications menu showing sound icons

In the infinity view there are two menu choices, the default is windows, if you click on the applications menu in the upper right, all your application icons appear.  In the applications view you can pick a category in the right sub menu, and the icons are filtered to just show that category.  This reminds me of the Ubuntu Unity Dash, but I like the look of this Gnome 3 interface better.  I wonder which came first Gnome 3 or the Unity Dash with right menus?  Since the right menus appeared in Unity in the second release, I give a nod to Gnome 3.

Another thing new is if you bring up your browser, you'll find duck-duck-go as your new default search engine.  This allows Mint to share in search revenues. Duck-duck-go is a different type of search engine.  You can read about it here, and there is an illustrated guide to duck-duck-go here.

The new MSGE interface that Mint has designed is a pleasant mix between Gnome 2 and Gnome 3 and allows users to gradually get use to the Gnome 3 interface.  This is really Gnome 3, but with the Gnome 2 application menu, bottom panel, window list, task-centric desktop, and visible system tray icons.  If you want, you can gradually turn off Gnome 2 features and end up with a complete Gnome 3 desktop as you get used to Gnome 3.

To shut down and turn off your computer, like in Gnome 2, you click your name in the upper right task bar, and click "Shut Down."   You also have a choice to restart from the "Shut Down" menu.  System settings are also configured from this upper right menu.

The developers at Mint are to be commended for the way they had the interest of Gnome 2 users in mind when designing the MSGE desktop.  They could have taken the easy way out and just moved to Gnome 3 like everyone else has had to do.

This is a responsive, beautiful desktop.  Yes, it is a nicer interface than the Unity desktop.  So far, I like what I see.  I highly encourage you to back up your data, and update to Lisa.   You'll love her just as much as Katya, if not more.

The NERDTree plugin with the help screen open

Vim plugins offer additional functionality to the Vim editor that could not be created with a simple .vimrc set option.  There are quite a few plugins for Vim, and we'll review the most popular shortly.  You can find information about plugins on the Vim web site under scripts.  There are some 3,799 Vim plugins at this writing.  Chances are you can find, and add, the functionality you want in one of these plugins.

These plugins are written in a language called "vimscript".  Vimscript files end with a ".vim" suffix.  Plugin installation varies slightly from one plugin to another, but for the most part installation is farily standard and simple.  In your home diretory, you'll find a .vim directory.  In the .vim directory, you will create, or there is already, a plugin directory. ~/.vim/plugin.  Your ".vim" plugin files will go here.  Any documentation will go into ~/.vim/doc, and are usually just .txt files.

When Vim starts up, it looks in the ~/.vim/plugin directory. and any .vim files it finds there, it loads automatically, piece of cake.  Each plugin will have a slight learning curve to figure out how to use it.  This is usually found in the documentation.

When you find a plugin you like, you can "google" it, and find the script page on the Vim web site. The instruction for each plugin is in a standard format that will answer most of your questions.  You will usually find a .zip file that you can download, extract the files, and copy them to the appropriate .vim subdirectory.

A word to the wise, chances are they'll be a github page for the vim plugin you want to download, you can clone the plugin from github.  I recommend using github over the vim web site, because the plugins are more up to date on github, and they install easier.  If you don't have git installed on your computer yet, see my articles on git to get you started.

Go to your home directory and run git clone.  The command to get the plugin from github usually goes something like this: "git clone http://github.com/scrooloose/nerdtree.git" and that's it.  Git installs the plugin with appropriate directories for you without the extraction and downloading from the vim website, much easier, and more up to date.  Git will usually create a directory for the download, inside the directory, you'll find the .vim subdirectories.  Copy these to ~/.vim and your plugin is installed, and your all set.

There are a lot of good articles on the Internet on each plugin.  However, I would like to give a special shout out to a series of YouTube videos on Vim Essential Plugins put out by nettuts+.  Each video shows you how to install the plugin, and how to use it.  Watching the plugin video is the quickest way to get up and running with a Vim plugin. Kudos, good stuff.

Out of the some 3,799 plugins, which are the plugins people use the most, and you should consider trying out?

I've included a link to the web page in the plugin name, and the link to the YouTube video on the plugin when available.  You can also find additional written articles on Vim plugins if you search by the plugin name.

NERDTree - An explorer window for your vim editor with bookmarks.  The most installed plugin, ever.  Type "?" in the NERDTree window to see the Help screen in the first picture above.  If you look at my .vimrc file in the picture below, you'll see I've mapped the F2 key to open NERDTree and the F3 key to close the explorer window. Cool.   I highly recommend this plugin.    The NERDTree video.

Mapping Hot Keys to open and close NERDTree in my Vimrc file

SnipMate - A code snippet library that you use to "tab" code snippets into the file your editing.  You can create you own snippets by editing the file.  A snippet file is shown on the right in the below picture.  The SnipMate Video 

SnipMate snippet library files with a file open on the right using NERDTree

NERDcommenter - Quickly comment and un-comment blocks of code with tags determined by whatever language is open in the editor.

MRU - "Most Recently Used" Open recently edited files.

Matchit - Jump to the matching word or tag in a file.

Bufexplorer - Quickly switch between open buffer windows, and edit several files in a single editor session.

Project - Set up a list of files that your working with in a project that stay on the left side of the editor window for quick access.

Align - Align the equal signs and other symbols in your file for easier reading.

Taglist - A source code browser that creates lists of classes, methods, functions in your code for quick access.

There are many more language specific plugins that will help you with your coding, and there are color themes available, along with color sampler plugins for coloring language syntax.  I think this gives you a flavor for what Vim plugins can do for your Vim editor.  All you have to do is give a couple of plugins a try, and you'll be hooked on getting your Vim editor just the way you want it.  Enjoy.

When vim first opens, it looks for an initialization file, .vimrc, in your home directory, ~/.vimrc in Mac and Linux, and $HOME/.vimrc in Windows.  Let's take a look at a fairly simple .vimrc file before getting started.

A simple .vimrc file

The .vimrc will not be there when you first configure a system, you'll have to create it.  Let's do that, in your home directory, type: "touch .vimrc"  Now that we have a configuration file lets see what we can do with the editor.  If you have been typing a bunch of switches when you open vim, you'll find we can put them in the .vimrc file and save you some typing.

Let's get started.  Open up .vimrc in vim and put at the very top of the file the following line, "set nocompatible" without the quotes.  This has to be the first line in the file.  "set nocompatible" tells vim that you are going to use the vim variables in this file, rather than the standard vi configuration.  Comments in the .vimrc are done with a single double quote.  Variables should be one to a line.

The easiest way to do this is just list the options and what they do.

set nocompatible    " use vim defaults.  MUST BE FIRST LINE

" LAYOUT
set number          " show line numbers. Handy when you get error messages with line numbers.
set nu                " show line numbers, same as above
set title           " show title of the file in vim title bar
set ls=2            " show status bar with file path and name
set showcmd         " displays an incomplete command in the lower right of the window
set ruler           " show the cursor vertical and horiz position in the lower right corner, or right status line
set nowrap            " don't wrap lines
set showmode        " show the current mode of the editor

set history=1000    " keep the last 1000 commands and last 1000 search patterns
set background=dark " make background dark, i.e black
set mouse=a            " enable mouse usage
set virtualedit=onemore    " allow cursor one line beyond last line
set spell            " turn on spell checking
set backspace=indent,eol,start  " cut blank spaces at the front of the line, end of line, and before the insert cursor when starting insert mode.

" MOVEMENT AND FORMATTING
set ttyfast            " smoother changes
set ttyscroll=0        " turn off scrolling
set autoindent        " indents if previous line was indented
set noautoindent    " no autoindent
set smartindent        " smart indenting
set nosmartindent    " turn off smart indent
set cindent            " cindent
set nocindent        " no cindent

"FOR SEARCHING
set hlsearch        " highlight searches.  One of my personal favorites.  All valid search results are highlighted in color.
set incsearch       " do searching as characters are typed in the search pattern
set ignorecase      " ignore case when searching
set noignorecase    " don't ignore case
set sm                " show matchin braces
syntax on            " syntax highlighting

"FOR KEYMAPPING  bind a single key to vim commands
:map <F2> :previous    " maps F2 key to open previous buffer
:map <F3> :next        " maps F3 to open next buffer

" LINE INDENTING
set tabstop=4       " numbers of spaces for the tab character
set expandtab        " tabs are converted to spaces
set shiftwidth=4    " numbers of spaces to (auto)indent
set scrolloff=3     " keep 3 lines when scrolling

"ERROR BEEPS
set visualbell    t_vb     " turn off visual errors alert both the flash(v) and the beep(b)
set novisualbell    " turn off visual bell error alert

" SAVING
set nobackup        " do not keep a backup file
set autowrite        " automatically savews changes when quitting or switching buffers

" CREATE A BACKUP COPY, but not for vim itself
if has("vms")
set nobackup
else
set backup
endif

This list is not in any way inclusive.   The .vimrc file can get quite extensive, and there are many examples of .vimrc files on the Internet that are quite lengthy.  What most folks don't know is that there are plugins that can be configured with vim to do a whole lot more than basic editing.  Plugins are another topic which I'll cover in another post.   We can add plugins, change the cursor, color any aspect of the editor you would like including syntax coloring, but this list should get you started.  For more information see the actual vim documentation.

In order for any of your changes in .vimrc to take effect you will have to reopen your terminal window, or run "source .vimrc" at the command line.  Bear in mind, not all of the above setting may work as the different linux distros handle things slightly differently.  If a command is not available, vim will tell you when you source .vimrc.

Here's a graph based on the latest DistroWatch page hit rankings,

Page Hits for the Linux Distro Sites over the last 12 Months

The graph shows what happen to Ubuntu's ranking after the latest Ubuntu release 11.10, Oneiric Ocelot, on October 13th about a 30 days ago.  Mint is the new King of the Hill.

Ubuntu's new release got rid of a lot of the bugs in their first version of the Unity desktop, that should have improved their rankings.  However, with this release, they made users specifically load Gnome 2 through the package manager, if they didn't want Unity.  Thus with this release users were arm-twisted to stay with the Unity desktop.  In the first release, it was easy to switch back to Gnome.   The Ubuntu nose dive seems to be a consensus on what Ubuntu users think of the Unity desktop.

The other problem Ubuntu is struggling with, and the reason I moved to Mint, was bugs in the software.  I caught one that required me to reload the operating system.  It was an ideal time to try a new distro, and so I tried Mint.  Ubuntu use to be fairly clean, and probably, because of their emphasis on Unity desktop lately, there have been more problems with the software, and delays in fixing bugs.

From my perspective, for a number of years now, folks have been using Gnome 2, and have gotten use to their desktop layout. They could move around fairly quickly.  Unity may look simpler, but it requires more keystrokes or mouse clicks to get where you want to go.

Mint has become the last bastion for Gnome 2.  However, Gnome 2 itself has been grandfathered, and all new development is being done on Gnome 3.  Gnome 3, like Unity, requires a paradigm shift to get adjusted, so it also is not getting great reviews.   Since Gnome 2 is still the most popular desktop for Linux, Mint's decision to stay with Gnome 2 was handsomely rewarded with a 40% increase in downloads in a single month.

Within the next week or so, Mint is scheduled for a new release Mint 12, code name Lisa.  Mint, based on Ubuntu, has released a preview of the upcoming release.  Because Gnome 2 is now frozen, Mint has no choice but to adopt the Gnome 3 base, if they want to stay current, so they have decided to gradually move folks toward Gnome 3, while maintaining the Gnome 2 layout.

Mint is going to let the users decide which desktop they'd like to use with the ability to switch back and forth easily.  They developed something called MGSE, Mint Gnome Shell Extensions, which is a Gnome 2 desktop layer on top of the Gnome 3 interface.  They should be applauded for this move, no other distro has taken this approach.  MSGE gives you a bottom panel, application menu, window list, a task-centric desktop, and tray icons, like Gnome 2.  It is a blend of the two Gnomes favoring Gnome 2.  Here's a preview from their site.

Mint 12 preview

For those that strictly want Gnome 2, Mint has forked Gnome 2 and made a version called MATE that runs along side Gnome 3 to give you the Gnome 2 desktop.  Bear in mind, that Gnome 2 and Gnome 3 are not compatible, you can't run both together unless you use the new MINT MATE application.  Also, Gnome 3 requires a 3d video card, Mint has taken care of those users without a card by making a Virtual 3d Acceleration module.  Gnome 3 still has some hardware problems, and the Virtual accelerator will alleviate this until drivers become available.

Not to be ignored is the new Fedora 16, Verne, after Jules Verne, released on November 8th.  There are several new components with this release.  They switched to GRUB 2 to improve boot time.  The default desktop is Gnome 3.2.1.   They included a nice, easy-to-use, new virtual keyboard for tablet users.  This version offers many bug fixes over the previous release.  Fedora has improved their log-in manager, and added easy access to Google Online Accounts.  The Fedora Linux kernal has also been updated.  You also have a choice to  download Fedora with the new KDE 4.7. desktop, if you prefer.

Fedora with Gnome 3.2.1

The popular distros are moving forward with new features and a multitude of bug fixes, making Linux distros a stable and better alternative to Windows.  The desktop wars will continue on, but instead of the traditional KDE versus Gnome, I guess, we'll have to include Unity in that mix, or maybe not.  I would think that if Canonical reception of the Unity desktop continues to be negative, even for new users, Canonical might want to consider a Gnome 3 release.

Here's the problem:

Directory Colors are hard to read

Here's a solution:

Changing the directory color to make it more readable

To change your directory colors, open up your .bashrc file with your vi editor and make the following entry.

LS_COLORS='di=0;35' ; export LS_COLORS

That's all there is to it.  Well not quite.

Your color choices in this case 0;35 is purple are:

Blue = 34
Green = 32
Light Green = 1;32
Cyan = 36
Red = 31
Purple = 35
Brown = 33
Yellow = 1;33
white = 1;37
Light Grey = 0;37
Black = 30
Dark Grey= 1;30

The first number is how light or dark you want the color to be, followed by a semicolon, and then the actual number of the color.

After you alter your .bashrc file, to put the changes in effect you will have to restart your shell.

If you want to change any other colors in the listing output, that is also customizable.  Read my article on "Changing your shell prompt"

And finally, if you want the commands in the .bashrc to run whenever you open a new shell, or first start up a shell.  You will need to put this line in your .bash_profile file:

if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then . ~/.bashrc; fi

The .bash_profile runs when you first open a shell.  This line says run my .bashrc file when you first load a shell.  See my article on "bash_profile or bashrc" for more details.

In closing I thought you'd like to see you how I set up my .bashrc file

My .bashrc file

As to my color choices, what you don't like purple, try cyan.   I change my colors around a lot, like my desktop, this is just my current color sensation.  Enjoy.

Unity Desktop

As my long time readers know, I moved over to the Linux Mint distro, because Mint runs the Gnome 2 interface that I have used for awhile. I wanted to escape the buggy Unity desktop of Ubuntu.  Mint is due out for a new release in a couple of weeks, however, after reading the much better reviews of the Unity desktop this time around, I am tempted to cut a DVD, and check it out for myself.  It seems like Ubuntu has tweaked the Unity desktop enough on this release to get rid of a lot of the previous bugs, and make it a much more pleasant experience.

Unity Desktop's new Dash in the latest release

What this means, though, is that Linux users are facing an array of desktop choices for their desktop experience. Three of these desktops are relatively new, bringing in snazzy 3d effects and improved interfaces, the new KDE 4.7 is out, Gnome3 has a new interface with improved graphics and 3d effects, from its original Gnome 2's 2d interface, and then there's Canonical's 3d Unity.

The difference between 2d and 3d is basically better graphics, and three dimensional effects, at the cost of performance, and perhaps needing a better video card. 3d makes it look more like the latest Windows desktop with transparency and widgets.

KDE Desktop with Widgets

I wonder why more users don't start using Linux, instead of putting up with Microsoft's increasingly domineering approach in their Windows environment; see my recent articles on Microsoft annoyances. The problem that I believe has kept mass defections from Windows to Linux, is the problem it has always had, too many cooks in the kitchen, too many choices. What Microsoft and Apple are smart about, and who knows, they may have gained this knowledge by watching Linux's struggles for acceptance, is that they stick to one interface, and you don't get any other choices. As a new user, how would I know which Linux desktop to use?

Gnome 3 Desktop

Canonical is betting that newbie's to Linux will love Unity, so much so, that they don't give you the easy choice to go back to Gnome in this release. You can still use Gnome, but you have to load it yourself. At the risk of gross generalization, you're asking a relatively unsophisticated Window's user to know what desktop they want to use, and which Linux distro to pick from a list of 80 or so. A tall order for a newbie. The choices are overwhelming, just go to distrowatch.com to see what I mean. As a new user, I would not want to go through loading and playing with each desktop on a different distro to make up my mind.

If you step back, what this effectively does is make for a much clearer separation of Linux distros.  If you load Ubuntu, you get Unity. If you load Linux Mint, you get Gnome 2.  If you load Fedora, you get Gnome 3.  KDE is available from all three providers as a different distro.  So maybe this is a good thing.

In this environment, for a new user, the most popular wins. If a lot of people are using a distro, a new user feels safer going with the popular distro. At the moment, we're in a horse race between Ubuntu, Mint and Fedora in that order.

Gnome 2 Desktop

Just to make myself clear, and I'm tempted to say crystal, in thinking of Jack Nicholson in the 1992 movie, "A Few Good Men." I believe you get better performance, faster boot up, just as many polished applications, more security, less malware, less viruses, more stability, and far less annoyances, with Linux, regardless of which distro or desktop you use. Linux, at this point in time, hands down, is a much better operating system with sophisticated, free applications. Are you listening, Window's readers?

If you want to try Linux, I would have Ubuntu or Mint send you a cd, or cut your own, see my article on doing this.  Put the DVD in your DVD drive, and reboot your computer. You don't have to install Linux to try it out, and if you don't install it, it won't interfere with your Window's installation. Poke around the desktop, and you'll see you have everything you have in Windows, granted you may have to learn a slightly different interface, but you'd have to do that with Apple also. If you don 't like it, keep the DVD, and use it to restore corrupted Windows files sometime in the future. The Linux file system reads all your Windows files, that you may not be granted access to if your Windows system becomes corrupted, see me article on "Saving Your Windows Data with a Linux CD."

In the end, it doesn't really matter which distro or desktop you use, they all have the same functionality and the same operating system under the hood. All that changes is the interface on top. At least give it a look see, it may save you some money, and who knows, you may get to like it.

What I like to do is customize the output of the prompt, and change the color to make it stand out. Let's do that.

The prompt variable is one of many variables in the BASH shell. It's name is PS1, and you can change it simply by assigning it a new value. What were going to do is play a little, before we do the actual change. If you mess up, just re-start your shell, and you'll have the original prompt back.

First, let's see what the current PS1 variable looks like. At the shell prompt, type, not forgetting the $ in front, echo $PS1 and then return. You should get a long character string. This will make sense to you shortly.

Let's play, type, this time without the $, keeping the spaces between the colon.

PS1="This is my new Prompt : "

Hit the return a couple of times to see that indeed it is your new prompt. If you mess up and want to start over, just restart the shell. The spaces were picked up between the colon to give you a nicer prompt.

Now let's get to business. I like to have my my current user name (\u), which you may change occasionally in a session, and the current directory I'm in (\w) shown in my prompt. The space between the \u and \w gives you a space in your prompt. Let's do that, type;

PS1=" [\u \w] $ "

After a couple of returns we see our prompt has changed. The spaces we put in between the quotes mattered. "Dale" is my current user name. The tilde, ~ , represents my home directory, which in this case is, /home/Dale.

All other directories are shown as is. Let's change your directory, to show you this.

cd /

which takes you to the root directory, then

cd etc

Your prompt now changes to reflect your directory.

There are many options you can use to change your prompt other than \u or \w. Here's a few more.

\u   the current user
\w   the current directory
\d   the date, like so: "Wed Dec 20"
\h   the hostname
\s   the name of the shell
\t   current time in 24 hour format
\T   current time in 12 hour format
\!   the history number of this command

There are a few more, but these are the main ones you'll want to consider. For a complete list see the BASH manual, under "6.9 Controlling the Prompt".

The last thing we'll do is change the color of the prompt. To do this we take the prompt we've created so far and surround it with the color tags, \e, like you do with HTML, you'll need an end tag. Type:

PS1="\e[1;32m [\u \w] $ \em"

If you mess up, hit your up arrow, fix your typos and try again.

I like a light green color which translates to 1;32m, note the semicolon between the numbers. The "m" ends the color. You should recognize the "[\u \w] $ ", then \em end color tag. You'll now find all your text, including the prompt has changed color. An effect you might want to keep.

We add one little start bracket, "[" at the end between the e and m, to change the color in just the prompt, like so:

PS1="\e[1;32m [\u \w] $ \e[m"

I know it looks crazy, but now just the prompt has color. What we wanted. On some systems \e will not work, if so, try \033 instead of \e as your color tag.

The colored prompt breaks the commands up nicely when your scanning back through history.

Now to the colors, the first number of the color, 1;32, is how light you want the color to be, a 0;32 is a darker green. If you prefer other colors here is the list:

Blue = 34
Green = 32
Light Green = 1;32
Cyan = 36
Red = 31
Purple = 35
Brown = 33
Yellow = 1;33
white = 1;37
Light Grey = 0;37
Black = 30
Dark Grey= 1;30

Not a huge color selection. You can get 256 colors. I'll let you do the homework on that one.

For you adventuresome types, there's much more you can do with color. You can color each element of the prompt differently.

PS1="\[e[1;32m[\u] \[e[1;32m[\w] $ \e[m"

You can make your prompt one color and the command output another by altering the last end tag like so:

PS1="\[e[1;32m][\u \w] $ \e[0;33m"

You now have green prompt, with yellow output. The only trouble with coloring the output, is you may not have your directories colored, which is something I like. You can check this by typing ls -al --color.

I picked this up after publishing this article.  If you want your command line to wrap around to a new line when it reaches the side of the terminal window, instead of staying on the same line and typing over the prompt, start the PS1 prompt, like so.

PS1="\[\[e[1;32m][\u \w] $ \e[0;33m"

Notice the addition of "\[" at the start of the assignment.

How do we make what you've just been playing with permanent? We put the PS1 string that you now have carefully crafted in your .bashrc file. And then either close your shell and restart it, or type:

source .bashrc

If this doesn't work, I strongly recommend you read my article on bash_profile or bashrc?.

We're also talking the BASH shell here, not the CSH or KSH, although they have similar files on start up.  A shell is a terminal window with a command line prompt that you see when you login to a Linux server.  It gives you a command line interface to the Linux operating system, as opposed to a desktop like you have in Windows.

So when do you use one or the other?

When you first login to a Linux shell, you want a way to run shell commands, set your PATH, and set environmental options for that paricular server session.  The .bash_profile file is run when your first open your terminal window, or any window, that requires you to login.

Actually, when you first login, the shell first looks for an /etc/profile file, and if it exists, the shell runs it first.  This is where you would put set up variables that would apply to all users.

Then, the shell looks for one of three files in order: ~/.bash_profile, then ~/.bash_login, and then ~/.profile.  It will only run the first one of the three files it finds.  Since the ~/.bash_profile is the first file looked for, after the shell looks for /etc profile, it is the file everyone uses for login scripts.

There is another file that runs when you open a new terminal window that doesn't require you to enter a user name and password, ~/.bashrc.  When would this be run?

If you are in a GNOME or KDE desktop and open a terminal window, you normally don't need to login to the terminal window, and therefore, ~/.bash_profile will not run, but ~/.bashrc will run. If you don't use a desktop, just the terminal window, and want to open another shell window with xterm, openvt, or GNU screen, for example.  If the new terminal window, or shell, doesn't require a login, then ~/.bash_profile will not run in the new window, but ~/.bashrc will.

The common practice is to put your shell scripts in the ~/.bashrc file, and then call the ~/.bashrc file when ~/.bash_profile runs during the login.

How do we set this up?

The recommended script in the BASH manual to put in your ~/.bash_profile file that starts the ~/.bashrc file is;

if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then . ~/.bashrc; fi

This can be put at the beginning or the end of the .bash_profile file.

When you login, the .bash_profile file is run, which then points to and runs the .bashrc file where all your environmental set ups and aliases should reside.

By the way, there is a file run when the login shell exits at the close of a session, ~/.bash_logout, if you'd like to close things up.

I've written about the Unity Desktop and the Natty Narwhal release in previous articles. Basically, I felt, the first Unity Desktop release was not ready for prime time, and that Canonical maybe should have waited maybe one more release to bring out Unity. Hindsight is always 20-20.

The Unity Desktop

Canonical did leave the user the opportunity to switch to the Gnome desktop, which they called Ubuntu Classic.  There they tripped up again, by also introducing the new Gnome 3 desktop.  In order to run the new Gnome 3 Desktop, you needed a 3d graphic card, and a 3d video driver for that card.

The combination of a new Unity Desktop, which required previous users to learn, and like, a new way to get around their computer, and if they didn't like Unity, switching back to the Gnome Desktop with Ubuntu Classic, and finding either bugs in Gnome 3, or that Gnome 3 would not work on their computer,  could have driven users to a new distro.

Ubuntu by a wide margin has been the most popular Linux distro now since 2005. That's six long years in software development, and quite an accomplishment. Would Natty Narwhal's changed front end cause Ubuntu to lose its position as the most used Linux Distro?

There's a web site dedicated to the Linux Distros called DistroWatch which monitors the various distros and their popularity.   We can go back to 2005, year by year, and see that Ubuntu has maintained its lead as the most popular distro.  So far this year, if you measure the last six months, Ubuntu is still in the lead with Linux Mint coming on strong. If you look at the last three months, remember Natty Narwhal was release just over two months ago, we find Ubuntu and Mint dead even.

However, in the last 30 days, Mint has taken the lead.  In the last 7 days, Ubuntu has taken the lead back.  In the meantime, a dark horse, the PCLinuxOS distro,  has gone from 7th, to 4th, to 3rd in the three month, one month, and seven day time frame.  We are in the middle of a distro war and it appears that Ubuntu has stubbed its toe with Natty Narwhal.

Linux Mint

I've written an article on installing Linux Mint. I moved to it when I got fed up with Unity, and my Gnome Desktop crashed. Linux Mint has been running fine with the Gnome 2 desktop. I do find it not quite as crisp as Ubuntu, and their package manager is not quite as good as Ubuntu in interface design, but I would not go back to Ubuntu in its current state.

I would go back and try Ubuntu again, provided they had a Gnome release, like their KDE release. Their current Unity Desktop is too much of a change in how I work to use. Quite frankly, despite all the icons and the Dash, I find it takes more mouse clicks to get to where I want to go.  I like the way Gnome Do works for bringing up applications, which you can't run with Unity without modification.

Canonical thought their Unity Desktop would appeal to Windows, non-developers, certainly a much bigger audience then the current Linux user base. They may have misjudged the size of the Windows users willing to switch, and the loyalty of their previous users.

What's interesting is the rise of PCLinuxOS. This distro was made for ease of use, ease of installation, and to bring Linux to PC Window's users.  It is user friendly, and has many graphic and sound card support built-in. It is loaded with applications. It's getting very good reviews, which is obvious from its sudden surge.

PCLinuxOS

Canonical wanted to gather more Windows users with it's release of Natty Narwhal. It has competition on the left from Linux Mint for its former Gnome users. It has competition on the right from PCLinuxOS for the Window's users it wanted to capture. In the middle sits Ubuntu with a Unity Desktop that is a pain to work with, and is not that close to how the Windows Desktop functions.

Right now, were in a war. It will be interesting to see how this shakes out, and to see if Canonical can recapture, and keep, its throne with its October release of Ubuntu.