Ubuntu – How I Have Missed You…

Since I started working in Administrative Systems, I have been tasked with supporting a myriad of Windows-only applications. I assumed that it would be close to impossible to try and continue running any form of Linux on my work machines – especially with my boss popping in my office and telling me to pull up application X at any given second.

However, now I am tasked to work with Solaris about 90% of my day and I have to say that despite how great Putty can be – it just isn’t the best solution. Nothing beats a native terminal connection. Especially given that Windows doesn’t know jack about any filesystems other than its own. This makes editing files on the Solaris machine difficult and slow.

Slowly Linux started creeping back into my mind, and it made me homesick everytime I would go visit Scott and Chris over in VS (Well that problem took care of itself…). I have had much time to ponder how feasible a switchover would be (and what I would need to take care of as prerequisites) and I came up with a list of issues I would have to resolve first:

1. Where can I place files that would be common to both Windows and Linux?
2. How could I synchronize my email clients, and web browsers (history, bookmarks, passwords)?
3. How can I access Windows applications if there is no other alternative?

These issues required some research on my part, but I finally found the following solutions:

• ntfs-3g:  This particular piece of software is the read/write driver for NTFS partitions for Mac/Linux.  am counting on this to read/write data on the NTFS partition. It has matured so much recently that the latest version of Ubuntu can be installed inside the Windows NTFS partition. Condition #1 satistied – the files can stay where they are.
• Mozilla Thunderbird / Mozilla Firefox: The Mozilla corporation did something so clever I have to applaud them (*clap clap clap*) – they made all application data, as well as settings reside in a profile folder. On Windows, Firefox is located at “C:Documents and Settings<user>Application DataMozillaFirefoxProfiles<profile instance>”. In Linux, this is located at “/home/<user>/.mozilla/firefox/profiles/<profile instance>”. Mozilla Thunderbird is essentially the same. The applause is becase the settings are the same on any OS! I placed the folders on the Linux partition by symlinking them to the Windows partition. Condition #2 satisfied – Email and Web browsers are always in sync because it is the same instance.
• VMWare Server: No surprises here – this kind of software is a dime a dozen today. However VMWare offers a feature where with a bit of configuration the Operating System you can run can be the physical partition of your existing Windows partition. Pretty slick – that is after Windows throws a bitch fit that its configuration has been change and you absolutely positively must activate it again. The solution for that is to create a seperate hardware profile for Windows (a configuration that Windows made mandatory because of its bitch fits). Condition #3 satisfied – if I need Windows I can just flip over to Workspace 4 (I named it hell) and Windows is waiting for my input.