Greetings and welcome to another thrilling episode of Veronica Explains!
I'm Veronica, and today I'd like to do an off-the-cuff episode about how I got started
with Linux, and I want to explore the very first distro I ever tried, which I believe
was Ubuntu Warty Warthog.
I should mention really quick - as I said - this is an off-the-cuff episode which in
my language means I didn't script it beforehand.
Wnd the reason I haven't scripted this episode beforehand is because I've been very busy!
I've been working on getting a virtualization server set up for my next big video that I'm
planning: virtualization, QEMU/KVM, and networking, which is going to be a very exciting episode.
At least I think it's exciting.
I've also been very hard at work on getting a web store set up for the channel!
If I have the website done by the time this video goes live, I'll put the link here.
And if I don't have the website done that'll be really funny.
OK, I shouldn't start everything with "OK"...
I got started with Linux back in 2005. At the time I was really into this little social
network that was popular with kids my age called "MySpace".
And there was some sort of plug-in - and I don't remember the specific details - that
let me reply with canned replies to people's messages. It only worked on this browser called
Firefox I don't know if you've heard of it...
I downloaded it on my computer at the time which was some sort of old eMachines; I don't
even remember what, the thing broke...
And I got Firefox set up and it was kind of amazing. I expected it to go a little bit
better than my experience with Internet Explorer at the time because I'd been a "Netscape Person",
as a lot of us were...
(Grandpa Simpson: "Which was the style at the time")
...suddenly I found myself enthralled with this browser that had this "free and open
source" license which was something... I wasn't sure what that meant but I knew I wanted to
know more.
So I started looking into it, I started digging into it and I discovered there are people
who make entire operating systems with a free and open source license.
The first one that I saw was called "Linux" and the most popular Linux at the time that
everybody was talking about was called "Ubuntu" and I didn't know anything about it but it
was really exciting...
So I downloaded it. I burned it to a cd which was a thing we did at the time...
I got it all set, I think I LightScribed the cd too with the Ubuntu logo because I was
a nerd.
I got it all set up and the thing was amazing!
I absolutely fell in love with Linux at that point. It was that classic GNOME desktop,
I think there was brown everywhere, and I just loved it.
And I ordered stickers, and I just fell for Linux and I really never looked back.
Then around 2007, I bought a Mac...
This Mac to be specific!
This is a 2007 MacBook - not the "pro" just the "MacBook". And this was my go-to computer
and I loved it.
I mean the thing felt hefty, had an amazing keyboard, all the i/o you could imagine at
the time... these things...
These early Intel Macs- you could install Linux on it with relative ease and that's
exactly what I did.
I ran this Intel Mac with Ubuntu on it for - jeez - through the unity years...
I think I was still using that Mac in 2014-2015. I mean that's a pretty good life span; that's
eight years and I ended up replacing it with an HP which... you know I promptly installed
Ubuntu on it...
...or Arch, um one of the two.
If you want to see another video where I do something cool with this MacBook leave a comment.
But for now let's check out Warty Warthog and see how it looks today.
So to get started with Warty Warthog you have to first find Warty Warthog.
Easy place to find that is old-releases.ubuntu.com. And let's go ahead and download it.
And then we're going to MD5sum that Warty Warthog ISO.
Now, I am doing the i386 because that's what I used on my first computer...
And I see it ends in "85eo"...
Let's just compare that...
OK let's compare these MD5sums...
It looks good!
Always check your MD5sums kids... or SHAsums now...
So here I am in virtual machine manager or virt-manager for short.
If you want to know more about virt-manager I did a video, and I'll put a card wherever
cards go.
So virt-manager is a fantastic graphical tool that you can use to manage your virtual machines.
In this case I'm going to start up a new virtual machine, and I know it's local install because
I already downloaded it.
We're going to browse to the downloads folder which I have right here...
And we're gonna choose that volume... It automatically picked that it's Ubuntu 4.10 which is nice.
Let's give it a little bit more let's give it 2048, that's probably close to what I had
when I maxed out that eMachines.
That's fine...
I have a feeling I'm going to want to customize this to make it a 32-bit so let's do that
before we actually install.
CPU, we do not want to copy the host...
QEMU32 that should be fine.
OK and then let's begin the installation let's see if that worked!
I love it. OK now I'm gonna see if I can change the settings in OBS so give me just one second...
[rock music plays]
Right, so now hopefully that's recording correctly let's go ahead and press enter... let's try
booting it!
Look at this! This is beautiful... I remember this...
See you'd think this looks bad as an installer, like "oh look at how old this looks"...
We gotta remember at the time I think Windows XP installed much the same way.
United States is me...
American English...
This is going much faster than mine did back then.
I think Ubuntu is a fine name.
Yup, just do the entire disk.
It didn't ask me a lot of questions... it's kind of nice.
Jeez this is fast.
Oh first stage of the installation is complete.
Oh that's fun... OK I'm gonna have to remove the installation media. Well see normally
I would have done that with a cd.
Kernel 2.6.8... I love this.
"Welcome to your new Ubuntu system!"
"This program will now walk you through the process of setting up your newly installed
system."
What is my time zone... I'm going to say central because it's true.
Enter full name... Veronica!
Do I want to download software from the Internet?
Let's do it. Let's see if it breaks.
It's going kind of slow...
OK for the X window system...
Yeah vesa's probably fine...
I mean so far it looks really good... Often when I'm installing Ubuntu, it's the Ubuntu
Server installer and this isn't much different.
It has fewer options but it isn't much of a different situation than it used to be...
You know what - I should go grab my Bop-It!
Obligatory Bop-It time.
"twist it"
"pull it"
"twist it"
"bop it"
"twist it"
"bop it"
"twist it"
"owww"
1920x1440 is a strange choice... I don't want to do that...
You know what, let's stick with 1024x768 because that's definitely what I was using back then.
"bop it"
"pull it"
"twist it"
Just a little bit of Bop-It time, don't mind me.
OK it says I may now log in.
See if it works...
Oh I missed this.
OK let's see if I can resize the display real quick.
(singing) "It's Ubuntu Warty Warthog"
I think this is 4.10 yep it's 4.10.
(strange exhaultation sound)
I wonder if the sound will work.
It's so brown, I love how brown it is.
Oh it's so pretty, uh oh my goodness I love it so much.
OK I have a soft spot for GNOME 2, I'm not gonna lie.
I did a video where I talked about Ubuntu MATE, it was a live video, it's fun.
Cards...
I just, I love this layout. You know honestly if somebody figured out a way to work tiling
into MATE I might never leave.
OK we've now installed Ubuntu Warty Warthog, but what can we do with it? Let's take a look.
We've got some applications, including an archive manager. It's useful...
Character Map... I wonder what fonts this thing shipped with?
This ships with a good amount of fonts. I remember being really confused because I didn't
see Arial.
I remember wondering "how will websites work if it doesn't have Arial" and "Times" and,
you know obviously websites worked OK.
Games: it's got Solitaire, Ataxx, Blackjack, Five or More, Four-in-a-row, FreeCell...
"GNO-Tetris" (stammers) "ganometrics?"... it's the Tetris clone!
This is much snappier than it was on my computer...
There's no audio though... I wonder if I can get sound working. Let's see...
I remember it had a a reasonable nibbles.
OK we gotta figure out the sound.
Nope, it's not happy with me.
OK I think I need to figure out the sound in the virtual machine.
So did it have a sound device?
I'd like to be able to hear some of these sweet desktop sounds.
Oh geez, I just saw a thing about runlevels and had a flashback.
I should have done a full and complete shutdown.
Yeah I don't hear anything.
Sound maybe?
That was sound OK I think we're in business I'm gonna turn it up.
God these sounds...
(horrible, loud, distorted computer sounds)
That wasn't expected.
Um, what happened? That was weird.
Yeah, let's try opening up Nibbles again.
Enable sounds, there we go.
It doesn't look like it worked.
I mean, hardware wasn't... wasn't as easy as it is now.
Let's see how the Internet's working...
"Welcome to Ubuntu Linux 4.10, the Warty Warthog release"
"Ubuntu will always be free of charge and there is no extra fee for the enterprise edition"
It's like a dig at somebody...
"Firefox and UbuntuLinux.org cannot communicate securely because they have no common encryption
algorithms"
I have a feeling we're going to run into ssl issues.
Why is "select all" "alt-a"?
I don't think it was like that before. If it was I found a way to fix it.
I'm guessing this does not work.
Nope, we're gonna run into that ssl issue.
I am reasonably certain modern web is not gonna function.
Not at least without some extra work, that I don't want to do right now because I just
don't.
It comes with a floppy formatter...
Would you look at all this brown.
Let's see what other games were there...
It's got AisleRot, AisleRot hasn't changed hardly at all.
Ooh, it's exciting!
Themes! Let's see what themes we had available...
There is the "Human" theme, which I like... still think this is pretty.
This was apparently the GNOME default theme... You know, the change is pretty snappy.
I don't remember it changing this quick.
"This theme does not suggest any particular font or background" that's nice of them.
Let's look at Evolution. I mean Evolution's not gonna do anything but...
...see if it lets me do this.
Server type: none.
Ah. You know, Evolution hasn't changed much.
This is still pretty much what it looks like, which is good.
I mean, you want that consistency in something like email.
I mean, Outlook; if you think about how Outlook has changed since 2004...
Evolution stayed pretty consistent, which is nice.
Leave a comment if you want me to do a video on Evolution, because it's definitely one
of my favorite Linux email clients.
Let's see what version - 2.0... oh this was before they had single window mode.
Oh boy, um, you got the multiple windows...
The text editor pops out- OK.
And now here's where you change it. Yeah this isn't a lot of room...
G.I.M.P. has come a long way since then- oh I grabbed the wrong layer.
It had a feature for Palm OS devices... I never had a Palm Pilot back then... I wonder
how that turned out.
What I used to use, was RockBox on my iPod, which was extremely helpful.
Ooh, Synaptic!
Email- there was Thunderbird, that was an option. Maybe I have to...
Let's see if I can pull up a terminal... oh I can't pull it up that way!
I'm used to Pop!_OS with the fancy "super-t" to open up the terminal.
All right, let's dig into a terminal... ah it's very bright.
OK sudo apt something... oh, it didn't have apt, it had apt-get. Shoot.
Nope. (Veronica scat singing in the background)
Yeah, I wonder if they've taken the old repos offline.
(more singing)
We've got to talk about OpenOffice... I used OpenOffice.org for everything in college.
I used it for papers. I used it for budgeting. I used it for charts and graphs, and databases,
and pretty much anything you could use Microsoft Office for.
I did it in LibreOffice.
This was, for the most part, in the days before Google Docs, so this is what we had. And honestly
it was pretty sweet.
I still use LibreOffice today, and I try to stay away from Google Docs whenever possible
because that's just who I am as a person.
Ah, this takes me back.
It very much reminds me of Microsoft Works, which was the text editor I used on my Aptiva
growing up.
Let's make this a header... oh that's not an option let's make it really big.
This is so nerdy. You know, one thing I don't miss is that I don't have to do anything with
NDISWrapper.
I remember getting so lost on NDISWrapper with my MacBook, there was some kind of issue
with the Wi-Fi driver working correctly. Which, as a college student, was kind of a big deal.
Getting NDISWrapper going on my MacBook was a challenge. I did it, and it worked once
I got it working, but holy cow, was that ever just a nightmare...
...and I'm so glad we don't have to deal with that anymore in Linux.
Well, one thing I think we're seeing is, you know, there's honestly just not much you can
do with Ubuntu Warty anymore. But, it was all there, and honestly Linux has only grown
since 2004-2005.
It's only gotten better... what used to be a really manual process of editing and manipulation
and tweaking things has just become so much easier to work with...
If you think about how different it is from then-versus-now, in terms of how we get software.
Before, we had tools like Synaptic, which I like. I like this tool, don't get me wrong.
But it's not exactly the most user-friendly thing in the world, is it?
It's no Pop Shop. It's no GNOME Software Center. It's no Plasma Discover.
This was what we had, or it was the command line. And we took it, it was fine, but it's
so much better now.
Yeah, if this is your opinion on what Linux looks like... you need to check out a more
modern distro.
You know, it's funny. I started this video thinking I was going to look back on this
and say it hasn't changed much, but you know honestly, it really has.
It was good, but honestly Linux has gotten so much better. That's what I'm seeing here
as I'm- as I'm playing with this for the first time in years.
There was just so much that used to be difficult about working with a system like this. The
package manager, which I've already talked about...
You know, beyond that, just setting up devices and working with drivers, and figuring out
stuff...
I mean it has honestly become so much better than it used to be.
I think this is one of the best things about Linux, is that you know, as I'm kind of reminded
here, Linux has been good for a really long time.
But it's only getting better as we go.
Our games have gotten better that are shipped with it. Our graphics software can do so much
more than it used to.
Our desktop publishing tools are so much more thorough than they used to be, back in 2004-2005.
We have gotten so much better at communicating with end users about making the Linux desktop
discoverable and easy to use, and that's incredible.
It just really is. How much progress we've made since then.
I love seeing this, but to be honest, I love seeing what we've done since, a lot more.
You know, what I'm struck with is that since 2005, Linux on the desktop has gotten so much
better than it used to be. And I don't know why that would surprise me.
I mean Linux is awesome, and so are you.
(punk music count-in 1-2-3-4)
Hi again, all! I'd like to thank our sponsor: you!
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If you'd like to help me make more nerdy content, you can join up at patreon.com/veronicaexplains.
I am so grateful to you for watching this episode, and if you have any ideas for topics
you'd like me to cover in a future episode, please leave me a comment.
Thank you so much!