Before I get into my ramblings on why I am writing this, I wanted to first lay out my reasons for doing so. I feel I owe whoever reads this the advantage of knowing the possible boredom that could overcome them with each word. My goal is to publish my journey with computers. If you are interested in learning along with me, please feel free to follow, contribute, or discuss anything you want! By no means do I think I can learn everything myself. I'm doing this more for a place to put my thoughts, document what I learn, and maybe establish a little community to grow with.
I have what I would consider a slightly above-average knowledge of computers and networking and up until about 4 months ago I was completely comfortable with that. I have owned several desktops and laptops over the past 20 years and all ran some version of Windows. With one laptop reaching the end of it's useful life I needed another. Since I am now working in the IT industry I figured I would spoil myself and get something a little more capable than the (cheap) computers I have previously purchased. My needs have never extended beyond that of a web browser and word processor. I do not play games or music, I don't edit videos or pictures, and I don't program (yet).
So I made a minor leap and bought a nicer laptop with decent memory and more storage than I think I will ever need. I even bought a 2-in-1 so it folds into a tablet. I was excited to bring it home and plug it in and have it WORK!! Running Windows 10 on my previous laptop was really starting to become a labor intensive task and I had more than likely downloaded several malicious programs over the course of it's lifetime.
So I brought it home, ripped it out of the box, plugged it in and booted it up. I was so anxious to see this thing have lightning speed and awesome graphics. But it was slow to start and continuously sounded like it was working harder than it should. Trying not to overreact, I looked up anything I could think that might account for the instant lag I saw in my brand new, shiny laptop.
The only answer I found was that this thing was doing installation updates. I get it. Build the computer, install the software, and then it sits on a shelf somewhere for a while before finally making it to the store where I purchased it. So I waited it out...
A week into my brand new laptop I was still seeing the same issues. The lack of expected performance wasn't a deal breaker for me because it still outperformed my other machines. It ate at me that I still felt something wasn't quite right. There was still an absolute distrust with my laptop and it finally came to a head when, in the middle of a project for school, I got the dreaded blue screen of death.
As angry as I was, and annoyed at redoing the small fraction of work that wasn't auto saved, I stuck with it. “I'll rebuild the operating system if the newest updates don't provide better performance” I thought. Well, I was wrong. Performance continued to decline slowly and the BSD became a rather common occurrence. I stuck it out until I graduated school which was only a few months, but after that the laptop was turned off and sat on my desk collecting dust. The frustration of running that computer was more of a burden than the convenience it was supposed to provide. So I figured I would just use it as needed and deal with having a crappy computer. Or so I thought.
Just a couple of months ago I started becoming “restless” about my laptop. I wanted it to work and it annoyed me that it didn't. My options were limited to that of a basic user. I wasn't quite sure how to rebuild my computer and start fresh hoping that fixes the issue. Paying someone to fix it was out of the question as was a new laptop. I became determined to figure something out to save my sanity. I couldn't let a thousand dollar item just sit and collect dust. I knew there had to be potential in there and I had to figure out how to get to it.
So I started to read about an operating system a friend of mine told me about nearly 10 years ago called Ubuntu. I had heard of Linux and knew that Ubuntu was similar (remember, I am totally new at this point) and started to become more and more interested in it.
My excitement started to grow the more I read. I wanted to try it and learn about it but I was scared. How can I get it without deleting Windows? What do I do if I don't like it? What happens if I lose everything!?!?!? I didn't know how to proceed but I did know that I couldn't stop reading more and more into it. And so I continued my obsession with finding a solution and that solution began with something I stumbled upon which became, what I consider, my first real lesson for myself with computers; dual-boot.