I would like to start by saying that I am a noob when it comes to linux or working with computers and operating systems. I however am willing to try almost anything which most of the time means me breaking it and having to figure out how to fix it, but that is the best way to learn. So with that said I started my path to using linux by doing probably one of the hardest things a complte noob could do and hancked a original xbox to rum XBMC and emulators for old school games. I did get that working after several weeks of screwing it up. My next task was to turn my Hp probook 4540s into a hanckintosh, that I have to say was so much easier than modding the xbox, but it may have had something to do with the experience gained from dealing with the issues with the xbox and learning how a file system worked.
I spent some time within Apples walled garden of computer, ipad and iphone. I then reliazed that a company which I had long admired for the simplistic and stable systems, had changed their business model from being one that looked after the customers and produced long lasting products to a model of trapping their customers and making them completely dependent on their products. So I was left with a decision to make, either become another cash cow for apple by staying locked into their system or look for something else. Unfortunately for me the only other option was to go back to windows and its constant updating and bluescreen crashes from every virus known to man.
After spending some time on the internet and suffing through the hundreds of youtube channels and videos I discovered linux. Linux sounded like the answer to all of my prayers... No virsus, no more notbeing able to use my computer because of a windows update, no more spying on me by microsoft, and it gave me another reason to subscribe to Nixi Pixel, at least that was the excuse I gave the girlfriend. Linux sounded like the perfect solution, it was a user friendly replacment for windows..... WRONG. While linux is user friendly is is only user friendly if you know what your doing and you understand the language. There is a huge learning curve that goes with linux, especially if all your experience is with Windows and Apple. Learning the linux vocablary can be a daunting task much less trying to figure out how the file system works, and both task are easier than than trying to figure out what flavor of linux to even use.
After spending some time on ther internet and jumping from forum to forum and trying to learn as much as I could about the Linux operating system and which would be the easiest for me to learn with, I decided between Mint and Ubuntu. So the first thing I learned was unlike what everyone says, Linux will not run on every machine. I decided instead of replacing Apple with linux on my every day machine that I depended on to get school work done, I decided to run linux on my older machine first. I found that Ubuntu likes to have more thatn 2gb of memory available. Now that does not mean that Ubuntu didn't boot, because it did, it just took for ever to do so and when opening any of the programs it took several minutes fot them to start up. So Ubuntu was a no go. Next up was Linux Mint. I installed Mint on my machine and it booted up fine and ran all of the programs without hesitation, so I was finally happy with that. I did look at it as a great accomplishment that I even had linux up and running, but the question now was what do I do with it.
I will finish up with this later. This blog will be a long term write up for me as I discuss my experiences and hopefully explain some of the ins and outs to learning linux from the view point of a complete noob.