Linux has come a long way since Uni.
I last worked with Linux ages ago and now need to run a couple of tests with Mono on a Linux box. I'm not counting a couple of Cygwin incidents during my working days at “Vrije Universiteit”, as that's not Linux, that's actually sort of cheating. :-)
So, to brush up my skills I took it upon myself to finally try Ubuntu Linux. I downloaded 9.10 and apparently they are now naming the versions. This version is labelled "Karmic Koala" which seems too much of a coincidence (I live Down Under for a couple of years)
Anyway: Downloaded the ISO, fired up a fresh Virtual PC, mounted the CD and choose Install from the boot menu. Waited for 30 min and Happy Days! The machine comes up with a nice brownish background and starts asking about time zones, keyboard layout, etc. I punch in all the details, give a username and password and all done!
It works fantastic. I must say that Linux has come a long way as an OS. It’s slick, no driver nonsense, all goodness.
I’m now setting up file sharing, which means installing and running Samba if I remember correctly and that did give me some grief. Apparently if you choose DHCP, that doesn’t include the default gateway settings, so you need to set that yourself through the console:
route add default gw 10.0.0.138
But if you try that, you’ll get an error stating that you do not have the permissions. You need to be Root to do that, which your not. Even though you are in the admin group by default, that is not the same as root. The root password btw is set to a Hash at installation and the idea is that the root account should not be used at all. You could, if you really wanted do that by setting the password to a known one, but as it’s against guidelines, let’s not.
Instead, we need to raise our own level of authority to the root level with the following command:
sudo -i
Ubuntu does that a lot btw. You’ll get a dialog, very familiar from Vista or Win7, asking you to punch in the password to raise the level. In this case, as we are running it in a console, we need to do it with a command.
Anyway: Now we have internet access, lets run the updates. Holy crap! 158 updates!! That will take me all night!!
Pfew, this is Linux land and not Bill domain. An update is in average 0.5 MB, so running the updater takes as long as for me to type this blog! J
Hopefully, I can now set up file sharing and do the POC with Mono. Exciting stuff!