I’m old. I have been around for 61 years now and feel it every day. I remember when computers were what were called “mainframes” running Unix or VMS operating systems. Then after college while I was in the Army in the 1980’s I purchased by first computer; and IBM PCjr with 128 K of ram a CGA card, and a single 360k floppy running IBM DOS 2.1. Later in 1988 I upgraded to a Zenith Z-150 with 640k ram, dual floppy drives, a 20 MB hard drive (second hand), and an EGA card running a NEC V20 chip and MS DOS 3.3 then later 6. In later years I went to a 386 SX/25 Packard Bell with Windows 3.1. This machine later was exchanged for a custom computer built for me by a buddy with a Cyrix 166 chip. The Cyrix became my first Linux computer.
I saw a review of this operating system called Linux in a computer magazine (I think it was Byte), which made me excited. I remember that I went into either CompUSA, or Businessland and saw a BOXED copy of this Linux called Mandrake. I think it was either Mandrake 7.0 or 7.1 and it was in 2000/2001. The box came with CDs, and books! I installed it, and wow, it was amazing. I never got CUPs running, never was able to really use it to connect my 56k modem to the internet, but it was AMAZING. It had multiple desktop environments and Window managers which YOU COULD CHOOSE! I was on AT&T Worldnet at the time and as is my usual practice I got on forums, researched, and tried to get familiar with Linux over Windows. I learned that there was this community out there that used Linux!!! I joined full of naive hopes and expectations to be warmly greeted and given a major chance to LEARN!
There were the uber cool Slackware guys who ruled the world because they could DO IT! Then there were the Red Hat guys who had a holy war against the Debian guys, and had a bit of an inferiority complex because the Debian guys had “APT”. The Debian people were arrogant self assured guys who knew that they were the “L33t H@x0rz” of the Linux world, because APT took care of dependencies (sort of). There were the SUSE guys, and then there were the Mandrake guys. All the others looked down on us because we were using a “kiddy distro”. I got on forums, and kept asking a question such as why do we have to deal with dependencies, why can we not have like Windows so that all the dependencies are packaged so that you load and go? I also asked why could we not have GUI tools to do what was done in the command line? I was excoriated, I have told that if I cannot hack it by finding and installing dependencies from the command line then I needed to leave, and never come back! I was not worthy to lick the dirty floors they walked upon! How dare I! I was called all sorts of names, told that I needed to get a life, etc, etc. then I was banned from two forums (neither still around). I was turned off my the sheer vitriol and elitism I had encountered. I was asking what I thought were good questions, and felt attacked like I have never been before. I have never seen a more toxic elitist community in all my days.
I re-formatted my hard drive, and knocked the dust of Linux from the heels of my shoes. I had been turned off and doubted that Linux was going to survive. I threw the Mandrake disk, books and box in the trash, and swore I was henceforth a Windows user, nay a Windows evangelist! By this time I had a wife, kids, a mortgage, bills, and life. Life got in the way of me doing much of anything other than installing the latest version of Windows and getting to play a little game every now and then. I would upgrade computers over the years, but I recalled my holy oath, Never more for Linux, WIndows FOREVER! But there was something that kept whispering to me, reminding me of that really neat Mandrake Linux experience. No! No! I’ll never go back! Well after much life happened, and I got to the point where I could afford to get more than one computer for me, I started having this vague feeling that there was something better than Windows 7. In late 2014 I decided to install this new thing called Ubuntu 16.04. I was expecting pain, pain and suffering.
Hey, it was pretty neat, ok this is kind of nice, but I loathed Unity/Gnome as a desktop. But darn, things started working and it was not painful. WOW AMAZING! You go to the software center and download software AND ALL THE DEPENDENCIES WERE SATISIFIED!!! What I had asked for 15 years prior and was told would never happen in Linux, Command Line Forever, no wimpy dependency resolution! Played with Ubuntu for a bit, but it was never really what I wanted. Then I discovered Mint 17.3. Ever since that date I have had at least one computer that has nothing but Linux. I have been a Mint user since 2016. In 2016 as well I finally was able to do something I had always wanted to do, which is purchase a Macbook Pro. I had wanted one from the first time I had ever seen the original Mac back in 1985. Full disclosure, the Mac sits in the drawer of the desk and I use it at most a couple of times a year. I should never have wasted my money. Oh well a man needs toys, right…
Then I kept trying, using cast off laptops from the spouse-unit and the kids. I was having fun. I still kept my desktop for Windows (gaming/photoshop/iTunes). In 2019 I stopped using re-purposed HP laptops and purchased a System 76 Darter Pro, stuck 32gb of Ram in it, and a 500gb drive. Hated, and I mean Hated Pop OS Gnome. It just was not Mint. The more I played with Gnome, the more I loathed it. I have never used an Arch based distro, and was always intimidated by the concept of Arch since I am a VERY newbie user.
Installed Mint 18.3, and problems! No WiFi, no keyboard lights, lots of issues. Well I discovered that the Coreboot firmware just will not work well (if at all) with anything other than a 5.4+ Kernel. Installed Mint 19, updated the kernel to 5.4 and things worked better. Two trips back to System 76 to fix issues (their firmware bricked the system!), I finally got it back. I was going through a really rough patch in RL, so the Spouse-Unit and kids bought me a Lemur Pro from them.
Best.Laptop.I.Have.Owned.Ever.
I decided that the Darter Pro would become a testing machine. But I stayed with the Debian based distros again due to the intimidation factor of Arch and discovered Coreboot on this laptop will not allow any 4.xx series kernel distro to work. Also MX Linux will not work at all either. It really wants their own POP OS. I managed to get Manjaro 21.12 up and running in Cinnimon which is my preferred desktop environment. The Darter Pro with the Generation one coreboot firmware really, really wants a later kernel. I have 5.14 running now, and so far so good.
So either this weekend or next I am going to do battle and try and get Manjaro running on the Darter Pro. I refuse to have my Newbie self defeated! With both my daughters in college, and my wife and I getting close to retirement, I have also been the main tech support person for my house. Right now I support multiple Windows Laptops (the spouse-unit, oldest daughter (2 one a gaming laptop), youngest daughter (2 laptops- don’t ask…), two Windows desktop computers (both Ryzen), one Intel Nuc, one Macbook Pro (2015), and three System 76 Linux systems.
Why don’t you just put Linux on all the laptops and be done with it you ask? I shall tell you the tale of woe. The Spouse-Unit’s laptop went down once, and before I could get her a new one, she needed to use a laptop to do some things. I gave her my System 76 Darter Pro which had Mint installed, and she freaked. Her head travelled 360 degrees, she spoke in a spooky voice, her eyes bugged out, claws extended, and she just flat refused to have anything to do with “the weird operating system”.
My daughters had a similar response. The oldest told me; “Dad Linux is for geeks, and those odd kids in high school! You can’t do any real work with it, and it does not run Microsoft Office!”. My youngest was of a similar opinion, but she kept finding reasons to use my Lemur Pro, she was banned after I found donut sugar flakes on the keyboard. The wife refuses to understand technology, she wants it to just work like the stove or blender, she does not want to have to think about things. She wants to turn it on, and for things to work the way they always have worked. My 84 year old father uses Mint Linux, but he thinks he is using Windows XP which in his opinion is the last of the “good” windows versions. My brothers and I got him a laptop years ago, and it had Windows 7, and he refused to use it. He was still using XP on his desktop. So I made a deal with my brothers, I would get Mint on his system, and skin it to look like XP. We gave him the new laptop with “Windows XP” on it and he has been happy. We are going to replace it with another one this year, and I will once again put “Windows XP” on it.
So that has been my adventure in Linux and Daddy Tech Support. I look forward to learning Manjaro so that I can expand my Linux knowledge and giving me something to keep busy with when I retire next May.
2m at a bus stop???
