Goodbye Microsoft Windows – Hello Linux Mint

Ian Hutson

Bilious Gates and a large number of his minions are dead (to me). Fed up to my brass nipples with my laptop working harder for MicroSoft &Co than it works for me, I have taken the plunge. Strictly speaking (that’s like Strictly Come Dancing) the plunge into Linux Mint Cinnamon.

There was a slight discomnobulation when upon installation everything decided that my keyboard was of the Dvorak layout instead of Qwertyuiop, but with the help of Mr Biggenthwacker we overcame that.

A lot of other things had to change too of course, and I am now using different photo-editing software than hitherto, MS Word has gone, to be replaced completely by LIbreOffice Suite, and – being on a geek operating system – I may now only use the system when wearing sandals, baggy-arsed skinny-jeans, a scraggy chin-beard and t-shirts bearing guffaw-inducing slogans about saving the planet and other such bollocks.

TBH (I must also use the new non-punctuated acrononnynonnymims) – TBH – to get out of Bilious Gates’ s/w clutches I’d have swum the English Channel on National Raw-Sewage Dump Day (that’s every day these days in England), and I can’t even swim.

I placed myself in a (v.small) puddle of decent interwebnettings signal and nigh-on seven gigglebytes of download later, there we were. Never forget; wherever you go, there you are.

There have been side-effects of course.

It’s turned all of my photographs – and my water – green.

At the moment I can boot up in Linux or I can boot up in MicroSh*te, and I’ll leave it that way until I’ve scrambled up the vertical learning-curve. Once I am happy that I am less unhappy with Linux than with Windoze and ol’ Bilious’s efforts to force us all into Windoze 11 then I’ll light a bonfire and get rid altogether. Let’s face it; the improvement wouldn’t have to be “spectacular” to please – although if this beast is as splendid as they say then it may well be.

Which reminds me, I haven’t yet sorted out a VPN, and I need that in order to set my online location to Mexico so that I can circumvent the Nazi-esque censorshit of the Westminster “government” and read a news website that I’ve read each morning – in conjunction with a wide range of others – for the past ten years. RT.com – Russia Today. Plucks a quill from Igor, the balding budgie’s over-plucked backside, dips it in thick onion gravy and adds get VPN arranged to list of jobs to do.

The damnable winds are back this week although in reduced form; gustings of forty of the Earth miles per houribode. That’s quite enough to put me off any and all current opportunities for going Full Suez and we won’t be going far until they abate.

WIthin four hours of arriving at these moorings we were noted and Das Documented, not I think by an official C&RT rozzer, but by some local busybody out walking his hound and stopping at each boat name/number to tap same into his rinky-dinky little “smart” mobile telephone. What it are to be loved. I wouldn’t put it past Canal Company Ltd HQ to take Busybody’s word as gospel.

Seriously, sometimes it’s akin to living in one of the gloopier and more shadowy recesses of Mr George Orwell’s upper brain-gland. The number-taking gentleman very probably puts military weapons-grade starch in his underwear (and a sachet of extra horse-hair), and doubtless irons his socks. There are an immense number of damaged people on the loose these days (approximately eight thousand million, and rising – and while I am excluding myself from that number I am including you for reasons that you don’t want me to go into here).

So there we have it, we’ve changed our operating system, we’ve cruised on a few miles (I’m on a mission and I’ve got a cunning little plan to amuse myself with), and we’ve been busybodied – and now we’re hunkering down waiting for weather (and consistent winds) more conducive to at least semi-dignified canal boatery for the single-hander.

I’m not in any rush.

Chin-chin, chaps.

IGH – old geek learning new tricks, sans sandals and neck-beard – and now sans the worst excesses of Bilious Gates et al.

20 Comments

  1. I keep trying to reply to your reply, but as soon as I tap reply, it flashes up, then says ‘error. You must type a comment! Yes, I’m trying to.
    Anyway. My husband has Windows 10 (as do I). A few months ago, Windows did an update. Shortly after, my husband found many of his files had gone missing. He couldn’t do a restore, either. On searching the net, he found it had happened to an awful lot of people after this particular update. No way to get his files back. Fortunately, he had hard copies of some of them, and those he didn’t have weren’t so important.
    I was fine, but have stopped automatic updates, and everything I do is backed up to an external drive, and several clouds.

    Like

  2. Well done for dumping Billious. (Ironically, my autocorrect just changed this into Billions!) I wish I had the courage. Microsoft and Apple I hate. They have too much power. I was given an iPad some years ago. When it was no longer viable, not being able to do upgrades any more, making many apps unworkable, I dumped it and bought an android.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. There are many reasons why I despise Microsoft, one among these being the software’s propensity for killing off hardware long before its time. All laptops I’ve had before this one have died of software complications rather than technical or mechanical old age, although the symptoms are carefully cultured to have us all believe otherwise. I must search now for something even more “left field” and geeky and non-mainstream than Linux, and prepare to move to that!

      Liked by 1 person

    1. Jebus H – can you imagine C&RT in a war? Stop your tank anywhere for too long and the Commander would get an email – ‘Have you forgotten to fight? C&RT expects each man to advance at least twenty miles per battle…’

      Liked by 2 people

    1. I thought so. To boldly go where no geek has gone before (well, only a few million), to meet new operating systems and make friends with them. I done boldly went. 😉

      Liked by 1 person

  5. Have you considered that the number-taking gentleman is just reliving his train spotting forays of the past suitably adjusted for advancing years and the dearth of spottable multi wheeled combustion engines for the logging of, just a thought.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. It’s quite possible, although he wasn’t wearing the uniform Anorak coat, which would have been a clue to his motives and modus. I shall poke him with a small barge-pole next time he walks past, and interrogate same.

      Nota bene; use of barge-poles for poking purposes during interrogations is sanctioned by the Red Cross and legal under the terms of the Geneva Convention when applied by trained personnel in combat zones.

      😉

      Liked by 2 people

  6. My goodness. You are far braver than I. I will only curse the hole in my computer known mysteriously as Operating System. Choosing a different form of OS hell seems… fraught. And with my luck would certainly brick my lap top. Not that Windows hasn’t bricked up several of my previous laptops so my logic is not sound. But my fear of leaving the autocracy of windows is greater than logic in any case.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. The deciding factor that pushed me and my three-wheeled wicker bathchair over the edge and into the Sea of Adventure was Bill Gates waking up my laptop in the middle of the night – while it was fully (“fully” as far as I knew!) powered off – to do some downloads for his Windows 11 nonsense! I only discovered that criminal act through a combination of insomnia and noting that the laptop battery was half-used when it had been fully charged… That’s unforgivable and also – for me – dangerous, since I cover the laptop up at night like drapes over a budgie cage to help stop the ingress of coal stove dust (in winter this is very, very dusty).

      Doubtless Linux will have much to dislike, but at least it’s a different set of robber barons! Fingers crossed… 😉

      Liked by 2 people

  7. Just made a Cardinal sin if you will excuse the pun. The guy with the little brown and white dog is a CRT rozzer so mark it as you’ve spotted today in your captains log.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Haven’t seen Nathan for a long while – doggo and I are on ear-tickle terms; this was a local with a couple of labretrievers or some such. He came back later in the day but the boats had neither moved nor changed so there was no stopping or noting… I’ll test him out on his morning walk today, with the fresh boats. That makes me as nebbe as he is! Still, tis difficult to not see from my desk, it’s not as though I am going out of my way… 😉

      All swelligant (as much as may be) with you chaps?

      Like

  8. Re the Busybody, Do you think there may be a few – if not many Boat spotters around similar to Train Spotters? as Douglas Adams so succinctly put it “they’re Mostly Harmless”.
    Also one of your pictures shows your pointy end looking a tad low in the water.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I have (suffer from? enjoy?) a measure of both conditions. Each boat is different and how it’s used provides extra variety – but I draw the line at noting down the numbers! Last time I played at that game was with cars while living on the Isle of Lewis in the middle of nowhere – gave the phrase ‘I’ve got one’ a whole new meaning…

      The pointy end’s fine, it’s just the camera angle (and perhaps a near-full tank of water and eight bags of dinosaur remains)… 😉

      Like

      1. I thought as much. My pointy end is slightly higher at present. This is due to no water in the tank, and a full diesel tank at the blunt end. It’ll be much higher come the end of the month, I’m blacking my bottom.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Got the Cardinal’s done as an early Christmas present for him. He’s one of those boats that floats with gunwales fairly level in the water, with only a small upturn at the bow. I’m always amazed at the weight that I can load in coal and water without much obvious effect. 😉 Happy Blacking!

          Like

  9. Oh well done!
    I have to wait until my office is no longer inhabited by an extremely demanding orphan lamb and have a cunnning plan to download linux onto a very old laptop inherited from mother, see if I bugger it up and if I can solve it on that i’ll go for the newer laptop.
    As to the busybody, the late plague brought plenty of them out of the woodwork…

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Tis indeed a tad wrack-nerving when installing the new beastie but the instructions given seemed comprehensive and accurate. It’s been a long, long time since I meddled with software – and longer still since my heart was in it – and even then it was nice old-fashioned mainframe technology!

      As you say, these past few years brought out vast numbers of busybodies, providing (for me, at least) an object lesson in the mechanics of sad human history. ;-(

      Liked by 1 person

Comments are closed.