.... apart from being all boring that is.   No excitement, much of ever any more.   No Microsoft Forced Update Tuesdays, no defrags, no antivirus fights and Trojan Worm attacks.  Boring.  Jest dull.   Have to wait 3-5 years before you need to fix or update anything, unless you really jest want to.

I used to get excited when Flash tried to update itself because Flash could be trusted to break ANYTHING, but now they have an app for that in Linux Firefox that fixes all them whacky Flash updates automatically.  So that's boring now too.


====================


My wife had her a real excitement though -- her 4 gig thumb drive got corrupted on a Win machine when she didn't shut it down correctly and it mashed, mangled and scrambled up her file names.  

This is a REALLY BIG DEAL for a teacher -- their entire life is on that thumb drive.  Some of them wear them on little lanyards around their necks with the drive sheltered in the warm protected spot so's they won't lose them.   Serious stuff, them thumb drives ....  gots their grade book on it too.

So, Windows 7 sez it can fix that sorta stuff -- wrong, it lied.  

(Bill Gates still lies, even after he is 100% retired and Steve Jobs is dead, Bill Gates still lies fer the fun of it)

Scrambled it even worse and about 1/5 of the files were declared "corrupted".   Bad got worse.  Files won't open, shite fire they ain't even there no more  ....

Panic attack time --- might have to take her to the hospital on a respirator with her little blue drive death-clutched in her shaking hands so they can pry her fingers open to get it out.    

Bad, bad -- she's almost crying now.    She has LOST HER STUFF .....

Got the drive away from her again (she really didn't want to let me hold it any more) plugged it into the Linux Mint box, the oldest old white HP box type computer that we own.   The one that all the drives had quit on, and the USBs wouldn't work half the time -- that old junk one.   The old outdated one we give to daddy to use because it has no other function so he can play with his strange Linux stuff on it.

Odd, the drives all seem to work now.   The broken blue stick lights up --- and his strange Linux stuff reads all the file names, even the ones with all the MS error codes symbols in them.   And his Open Office will still open them up and then re-save them with new file names and they actually work again.    

They is risen from the daid, alive again.    Don't even smell funny either, they jest work  .... a little boring mebbe, but that's OK.

What is INSIDE that old moldy white box?   It seems quick and agile and it certainly DOES stuff, but always in a boring sorta fashion.





Jest not exciting like that really good MS stuff is all the time.

I want to try linux, but I use Adobe's Creative Suite a lot, does Linux support Adobe? Adobe is an industry standard so it's hard to not use it, so I'm not sure if other software that's open source or what not would be acceptable

Last time I had Mint running on my machine was a solid four years ago.

I started my linux adventure with ubuntu 6.06 (now it is up to 11.10 or something crazy), tried my luck with kubuntu, crunchbang, OpenBSD, redhat, and half a dozen others.

For the average user with the average computer, linux is fantastic: it allows them to do everything they do, faster, for free (email, document writing, web surfing, etc). Once you get out of that range though, it gets kind of rough. Linux plays notoriously rough with multiple monitors and graphics heavy use, which isn't a problem unless you are playing recently released games.

Right now I run windows 7 x64 for three reasons: it works with two monitors, it works with my pci-ex SSD, and it plays all the recent games.

I used to dual boot, but I play too many video games now and am pressed for space on my SSD for that to be practical. I do miss the days of linux though. updated every single piece of software on your system with one little command.... alas, joy.

 
How to start with Linux

Download a ISO image of Linux Mint to your desktop, then use a CD burning software (I use Roxio)  to burn the ISO image onto a bootable CD that you stick in your primary optical drive and then you boot off of it.

Me, I always stick with the Mint LTS versions as they were cherry picked for stability and they are supported for 3-5 years now until you go to the next LTS version for the next 3-5 years.  

I find that I actually like stability and boring ....

Next, once you decide to install the software after you play with it a bit, only install it as a dual boot system (keep your old windows and all your old stuff) because nobody really goes over to Linux cold turkey all at once.   You can tell your boot loader which OS to boot first, it doesn't really matter much which you want to use mostly.   You can autoboot to Windows, it won't hurt my feelings.

What will happen is what always happens ....

Windows gets all forkled up with a trojan attack, or a virus, or a bot, or (heck you name it -- something new most likely) and you wind up using your Linux in the interim while the Windows anti-virus packages catch up with the new nasty.   And you go back to windows as soon as it is cleaned up and working again.

This happens 2-3 times until you get hit with a good one and your Windows won't fix without a total hard drive scrape job (system recovery from the boot prompt).  

???!!    ..... and you suddenly realize you don't want to fork up your Linux by doing that because most of your working stuff is over there now.

Your Linux Mint kept right on working right on through the worst the nasty attack boys could throw at you and it didn't even bobble once.  Your Linux Firefox has all your stuff on it and you got used to Open Office now to the point it doesn't really matter which one you use.

You find yourself liking the rapid boot times, fast response times, and the fact that the various Linux softwares can read corrupted windows files that windows can't even SEE the durn things any more, and fix them.

Why fork up something that works good for something that doesn't?

Now you have become an "at heart" Linux user .... heck, next time you may just let Linux take over the whole c: drive and simply quit trying to fix Windows each time it gets crapped up.

Retired people can make this swing over easier than working folks can, although Open Office can read it and save it all, there are some softwares (graphics and games) you use that only exist in Windows.

This may change with Win 8 as Win 8 will force a major software upgrade for all active softwares to be compatible with ARM chipsets.  Once this is done, the stuff may wind up being a lot more Linux compatible as well ....  (but not if Bill Gates can help it -- he has to keep you feeding his upgrade gravy train   )

 
Yup, Linux Mint is Ubuntu with a pretty, easy to live with front end and all the proprietary drivers that Ubuntu won't pre-install for you put into place and tuned to work good for you up front.  

And then, during the 3-5 years of LTS, when the myriad Ubuntu fan clubs finally figure out how to fix all them little surviving buggies, the Mint people always go fix Mint with the fixes and then push it out to everybody as auto updates (when Ubuntu lets you fix your own on your own sometimes).


Mint is Ubuntu made easy .....





Mint is the second most popular distro now days, ain't it amazing how many lazy people there are like me out there who simply don't want to fork wid it at all ....

I couldn't resist  

Oh I hate bile, and windump.  But I gotta use it.

But what a smart base turd, releasing a 'new' version every couple of years.  Making you pay for 'updates' every year.  And then complaining about piracy... hipocrates.

 
Well, to be sure I still work 40 hrs a week but it is at a night security officer's job on a college campus keeping all the kiddies safe,  so I have the luxury of telling Bile "goodbye" for my personal work station.

My wife however is a completely different animal -- she uses laptops and I have 2 spares stacked over in their carriers and she has one in use -- it dies, she drops it off and takes the next one.

At one time (conflicker worm (2nd version) I think) she had 2 out of the 3 down at one time and nothing I could find could clean them up.  When that happens, rape and scrape and reload all the software ....  



Compared to Bile's stuff. boring old Linux Mint sure tastes good to me !!!