After I got my next laptop, I used it happily with Windows 8 installed. I had peace of mind for a while. That was until the "blue screen of death!".

After my OS had crashed, I said to myself, "this is it" and immediately began preparations for a Linux installation. The hard part this time was selecting a distro. After using Linux for a brief moment, I was well aware of the fact that numerous flavors existed.

After a long search on the internet, I eventually settled with Linux Mint (The distro I still use today). I liked the Cinnamon desktop. Coming from Windows, it felt very natural to me. I was also intrigued by the fact that it was built on top of Ubuntu and showed better memory usage capabilities. Back then, I was an Android developer. Suffice to say, Android studio wasn't happy with my current pc. So this was actually a plus for me.

I enjoyed Linux mint a lot, especially using it for software development. But one thing you would notice quickly when you start using Linux is the limited number of proprietary software that is available for it. Libre Office, I love you but you are just not MS Word. What followed next was a little hurdle with Wine and finally Oracle Virtual Box for running Windows workloads.

I had survived on the Linux desktop for quite some time without fully understanding most of the technology underneath it. Just flexing that Cinnamon GUI, pasting some command snippets from StackOverflow on the terminal.

The "cloud", another buzzword at the time. As a Microsoft Learn Student Ambassador, I was opportune to explore Azure, Microsoft's public cloud computing platform. It wasn't until I started spinning up VM's that I began to appreciate the real beauty of Linux and the terminal (When is the year of the Linux desktop coming?).

Problems when tweaking with Linux never finish. I wish I could say "I lived happily ever after" with my installation, but there were some notable events that transpired.

The python problem

When I was still new to python, I tried replacing the default python3 symlink on my system with another pointing to a newer version. I thought I was doing my system a favor, it turns out I wasn't. The first thing to go was my terminal. I restarted the system, but the OS wouldn't startup. I panicked! Then I remembered, "this is why I always keep a bootable live stick". After booting from my USB stick and gaining access to a terminal, it was just a matter of setting back the correct symlink.

Update catastrophe

Servers on the cloud are very useful. You get the ability to run compute workloads that you normally wouldn't be able to without the corresponding upfront cost. Sometimes you want more, say a remote desktop. I experimented with various remote desktop agents such as Chrome remote desktop and Windows virtual desktop. I was enthusiastic to try out the latest offering from AWS, AWS Workspaces (I got a $10 bill by the end of the month. I didn't know it was not covered by my cloud credit).

While trying to run the Workspace client on my Linux mint 18.3, I encountered an error that was associated with the current Gtk 3.18 installed, preventing the client app from launching. After some research, I felt a distro upgrade would be the simplest path to solving the problem as the next version, Linux mint 19 came with an updated Gtk 3.22.

I began the upgrade, but there was a disruption during the process, and my installation was left with a misconfigured display manager and desktop environment. You know that thing about "releasing" on Fridays, I suppose the same thing could be said for a distro upgrade at night. I burnt the midnight oil looking for a fix. I soon wrapped my head around the missing components, and what I needed to install. My pc was back to normal, and I could now use my Workspace client without any issues.

Fast forward to 2016, my first ever installation of a Linux distro. If you guessed Ubuntu, I'm not surprised. Going back to the myth, we did a "CS course" in my first year that covered the history of computers. The Unix operating system came up again. Only, I wasn't going to let it slide this time around.

At this time, I had damaged my PC and was working off my dad's own. He seldom used the laptop, so I decided to test out the OS on it. I did some Google search, which effectively led me from Unix to Linux to Ubuntu. I knew a little about running executables on windows and even installing a fresh Windows OS, but what I was about to do next, none of my "windowing" prepared me for it.

I had downloaded the OS disk image onto the PC. My first instinct was to look for a .exe file on the disk image that would let me start the installation right from Windows (I would later come to discover that something similar was attainable using The Wubi installer). It was a frustrating search, but then the community doesn't disappoint, bootable USB sticks to the rescue 🔥! But I didn't get there just yet. You know that thing that happens when you are reading a Wikipedia article, and then before you know it, you are 10-articles deep. The rabbit-hole went from boot sectors to "Hello world!" in Assembly language. I need my time back! 😭

Eventually, I set up the latest Ubuntu OS on the USB stick with the help of Rufus (a utility software used to format and create bootable USB flash drives) and plugged it into my computer. What I saw next came as a surprise. You can use the OS right from the USB stick 🤯 (live mode). I felt an air of relief. Remember, I was attempting this stunt on my dad's PC.

I had already seen screenshots of what the interface looked like online, so no surprises. My first impression of Ubuntu was that it appeared so unconventional (it's not like I had any other OS to draw reference from apart from Windows). It didn't have many apps, but the first things I looked for were a file manager, a browser (Firefox), and a media player. I wasn't much of a "power user" yet, but I got the hang of it. In Linus Torvald's own words

There are lots of Linux users who don't care how the kernel works but only want to use it. That is a tribute to how good Linux is.

I was still perplexed at the fact that the OS was running live from a USB stick, so of course, I opened Firefox to see if I could browse.

I ended up using Ubuntu from a stick for about a week. It was time to take bold steps. I began the installation procedure and discovered that I could even run Linux side by side with windows 🤯🤯 (Dual boot). More relief for my weak heart. I get to keep my dad's windows the way it is and still experiment with Linux. The installation was successful. I was now a full-fledged Linux user. Or was I? At least, I had broken the myth!