SoftwareWars

Overview

First Sentences

Given the technology that's already available, we should have cars that drive us around, in absolute safety, while we lounge in the back and sip champagne. All we need is a video camera on the roof, plugged into a PC, right? We have all the necessary hardware, and have had it for years, but don't yet have robot-driven cars because we don't have the software. This book explains how we can build better software and all get our own high-tech chauffeur.

Trying Linux

There are several ways to go about this:

Boot to a Linux "Live CD" which runs Linux off the CD-ROM.

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

This downloads an ISO file. If you need an ISO burner, try this: http://isorecorder.alexfeinman.com/isorecorder.htm

Burn the ISO file to a CD, and then boot your computer from your CD and see what happens!

It will take 10-15 minutes to boot, so be patient, but you can play with it and see how it handles your hardware, etc.

This is a great way to get your feet wet, but I recommend you setup dual boot, or just backup your data and start using Linux full-time! You won't go back!

Inside a virtual machine

Install VirtualBox binaries [1]

Download Ubuntu [2]

Create a Virtual Machine inside VirtualBox (1 gig RAM, 10 Gig partition is plenty. Allocating all space up front is faster because if your virtual partition gets fragmented, it will run slowly.)

Mount the ISO file to the virtual machine

Boot Virtual machine.

Go through setup process

Dual boot

If you have at least 10 gigs free on a hard drive, you can resize your partition, install Ubuntu, and have it setup dual boot. On startup, it will ask you if you want to run Windows or Linux.

Wipe the disk!

I used to dual boot, but I never run Windows anymore because I have no need -- and Linux is already much better than when I first started using it.

Discussion

I thought about setting up some discussion mechanisms, but I don't know if there is enough interest so I didn't bother. If you have ideas on what else I should put on this page, please contact me.

Translation

Here is a test document to time how long it will take to translate, and give an idea of some wording: File:TranslationTest2.odt

These are the languages that are lined up for translation right now: French, Spanish, Mandarin, Russian