Beautify Your Computer with Linux

I have always wondered why more people don't use Linux on their computers. Window's viruses, adaware and spyware don't work on Linux, so they aren't an issue. For most software, there are actually more choices in Linux. And it's free, most of the time. So why don't more people use it?

Maybe it's due to that old school myth that Linux is all command line, hard to use, blah, blah, blah. Let's dispel that myth right now through this article.

Using a Puppy Linux livecd I wrote this entire article. I used a Windows computer, put in this cd, didn't install anything, started the computer, ran it all from the cd, wrote the article, then was finished, with no trace that Linux had ever been on this computer. I mention this to illustrate that you can try out Linux before you install it, no risk.

Linux is hard to use? Well, it can be, but Puppy Linux is amazingly simple. It found everything on this computer, drivers already included, flat screen monitor, 64bit processor, whatever. DVD drive, cd writer, external hard drive, Puppy found it without effort.

In order to set something up in Puppy, just right click anywhere on the desktop and you have a full featured menu. Or, if you just have to go by Window's format, you can go to the bottom left corner of the screen and click on the menu there and get the same menu.

From the menu you can surf on the internet, write articles, check out videos, listen to music, play some games, whatever. Just a few clicks.

But this article is more about how easy it is to let Linux look like you want it to.

With Windows (especially with XP) you usually needed to buy software to change the look of your desktop. Either that or you had to do some investigating and figure out how to set up some of the free software on your system that could make Windows look like you wanted it to.

Vista is a little different in that Windows has finally taken eye-candy into account when setting up their operating system. Unfortunately, Vista relies too much on computer power to get the job done.

Linux doesn't, especially Puppy Linux. The entire Puppy Linux operating system runs completely from computer memory. In layman's terms, that simply means it is very light and fast. This leaves room for your computer's power to be used elsewhere.

Windows integrates the desktop into the operating system. What does that matter? Well, in Linux, the operating system is independent. If the desktop, or X screen, crashes in Windows, your computer crashes. In Linux, if X crashes, not really a big problem.

This also allows Linux to have multiple choices of types of X desktops. There are many to pick from in Linux, each with slightly different look and feel, ranging from KDE (a very Windows-ish look) to Fluxbox (very streamlined, simplified desktop). It should be mentioned that each of these window managers is a different project, each coming from its own group of people working on them.

In the case of the latest version of Puppy Linux (4.0, the one that I'm using to write this) the X window manager is something called JWM. That's "Joe's Window Manager," believe it or not. Puppy Linux users also frequently prefer ICEwm as one of their choices (they can of course use ANY of the other window managers that I've mentioned above if they choose to) because ICE is also very configurable, light and fast.

With a few clicks of the mouse, a very little bit of internet searching for JWM themes, I threw together some different desktop screenshots for this article. Again, this is to illustrate how amazingly easy it is to make Linux in general, and Puppy in particular, look like whatever you want. I'm not really going to get into the specifics about how to do this because it is extremely intuitive with Puppy. Right click, JWM theme manager, pick what you want, you are good, for the most part. Almost any other specifics can be found at their incredible forum, found here.

Try out Puppy Linux for a free, fast, great looking desktop. What have you got to lose?