Point and Click Linux by Robin 'roblimo' Miller

Michael J. Jordan, Linux Online Staff

November 25, 2004

As someone who's used Linux since 1997, I can attest to the fact that Linux gets easier and easier to install and use every day. This, of course, is only logical. Luckily, there are many talented and dedicated developers out there. The fact that anyone, regardless of his or her knowledge of computers, can sit down and have a Linux desktop running in 5 minutes, as this Robin Miller's book promises - and delivers, is all thanks to them. I personally believe that Linux reached 'easy' mode about 2 years ago, despite what the many squeamish tech pundits may say. But until I got a hold of Miller's book, I didn't realize how easy it is.

At the beginning of 2000, when I signed on to handle most of Linux.org's email traffic, a large percentage of messages dealt with how to install Linux. Most of these emails came from people who were really interested in getting our favorite OS running, but found the whole process somewhat daunting. PCs were still a major investment - and that's just talking about the hardware. Most of these wisdom seekers had also invested a great deal of time in creating files under Windows. They had created spreadsheets, Word documents and other files and they didn't want them going to byte heaven in the process of trying out this alien OS represented by a fat little penguin. If we had only had Live-CD distros as easy to use as MEPIS, included with the book, we'd have "sold" a lot more Linux in those days. But I'm sure we'll make up for lost time with the help of Miller's book and the MEPIS CD attached to the back cover.

Robin Miller, known to us in the Linux world as 'roblimo' (he ran a limo business at one time) has found fame, and I assume some fortune, as the editor-in-chief of the group of websites that include Linux.com (our for-profit counterpart, I guess you'd say) and Slashdot (which defies description). His articles at Newsforge, another site in that group, are well known for their commonsense insights into the world of Linux and open source software use and always provide an enjoyable and informative read. He's provided us with the same in his book: Point and Click Linux.

Roblimo starts out comparing Linux to brown eggs. Why eggs? - you may ask. Well, in his usual commonsense way, he points out that the variety of eggs sold out there has been dwindling over the years. Essentially, most people eat white eggs produced by one type of hen. And we're slowly getting to the point where there will be only one type of hen that lays white eggs. Well, it's the same situation in the software industry where, if it weren't for Linux, pretty soon there would be only one bad egg (and you know to whom I am referring). You may be thinking that Linux can't do what that other well-known OS can do. Let's put it this way: can you tell the difference between a brown egg and a white egg after it's fried? Of course not. In chapter one, Miller says that you're going to to be able to do everything with Linux that you can with that other OS. Like the two eggs, once they're on your plate, you won't care what color the shell is.

The book is all about teaching you how to use a Linux desktop system productively. To help with the teaching, there is also a DVD included with the book with three instructional videos hosted by Roblimo himself. To base the book around a distribution like MEPIS was a good idea. You can run this as a live CD and if you like it, you can install it and have it permanently. Even if you don't want to install MEPIS, running it as a live-cd is amazingly productive. In fact, the disk is spinning in my daughter's PC and I am using it to write this review with OpenOffice. I set up network support for my home network in literally 30 seconds and I am saving my work to my PC in my office via the 'fish' protocol in the Konqueror file manager. I am also listening to an on-line classical music station and I am logged into my IM account and running an IRC client. I occasionally send a message to the other Linux.org staff members in other parts of the world. I even used the popular VoIP application Skype to talk with my mom, who's on another continent. Just for fun, I watched a little bit of a video in AVI format stored on my webserver, pulling it across my LAN with a nice Video/DVD player called Xine. And I did all this without even installing one little file or touching the hard disk on this machine.

If you really want to get productive, then you can just as easily install it and have everything on a more permanent basis. This is what the book deals with for the most part, from chapter 4 on. This chapter walks you through the actual install, whether it be on a machine with Windows on it or sans Windows and just MEPIS. Chapter 5 starts us off by explaining how to set up a dial-up connection. If you're on broadband like so many of us, you've probably already set up your router and you can move on to the chapters on using Mozilla to surf around. Unfortunately the MEPIS CD with the book doesn't come with the new Mozilla-based browser Firefox, but there are some advantages to having Mozilla instead - namely the email client and the web page editor included with it. Miller devotes specific chapters to these tools.

When we get to chapter 11, we'll find our productivity increasing. From this chapter up to chapter 15 we'll learn how to use the OpenOffice suite. This product, the open source version of Sun Microsystem's Star Office will allow you to create documents, spread sheets and "Power Point" style presentations that can all be opened by your Microsoft Office-using friends and colleagues.

Since MEPIS' graphic user interface is based around the popular KDE (K Desktop Environment), chapters 17 through 19 deal with some of the more widely used programs, like Kopete, a program for chatting via IM, Yahoo messenger, IRC and other protocols and K3B, a utility for CD/DVD burning.

For the graphics savvy, chapters 20 and 21 deal with the GIMP, a popular open source image manipulation program a la 'Photoshop' and Digikam, an application to interface with your digital camera and manage your photos. Unfortunately, the 5 pages on the GIMP are only enough to tell you what it does and there are no examples of how to manipulate images in any meaningful way. There are two more chapters in the second section of the book on games and other various programs including multimedia applications and some other office utilities like a program called Scribus for professional quality desktop publishing.

Section three, which starts with chapter 24 deals with maintaining your installed MEPIS system. Since MEPIS is based on the venerable Debian GNU/Linux, the best way to keep your system up to date is by using Debian's 'apt' system. Miller goes through what you need to know about using KPackage, a front-end to 'apt'. Chapter 25 talks about using software to run programs designed for Microsoft Windows. The programs talked about here are commercial software and there is no mention of WINE, a free utility for running Windows program under Linux. The omission, though, is likely due to the fact that the task of getting WINE configured is a bit beyond the capabilities of the book's target audience. Chapter 26 deals with tweaking the look and feel of your system and also talks about some security issues to be aware of. Chapter 27 is guest-written by Joe Barr, who writes alongside Miller at Newsforge. This is the almost obligatory chapter on using the command line, which no Linux book would be complete without. Despite what some say, it's a good idea to talk a little about the command line. My earlier mention of playing an AVI video file over the network had to be accomplished with the help of the command line, for example, so even though extremely user friendly Linux distributions like MEPIS don't rely on it, it comes in handy nevertheless. The book ends with some information on what the Linux community is and how it came about because once you pick up this book and use MEPIS, you are now a welcome part of the community.

There's a small red dot on the back cover that says: 'The perfect gift for that Linux beginner in your life!', and with the holiday season upon us, I whole-heartedly agree. Having a version of Linux that gets you started so easily and a book that explains the basic concepts so well, I recommend putting Roblimo's Point and Click Linux under as many trees as you can. You'll be spreading a whole lot of good cheer to the virus-weary people around you.

Michael J. Jordan is the webmaster of Linux Online. He can be reached at Michael.Jordan**AT**linux.org