My first attempt of playing with Linux was almost two decades ago. Back then, hard disk storage was 40MB at maximum. It was the time of Win 3.1 or its predecessors. The non-GUI installation interface of Linux was painstakingly geeky. My CRT monitor almost blew up my face due to the integer value wrongly input in the installation. The non-intuitive interface built a steep threshold stepping over which requires the user of solid perceptiveness in almost every way–hardware, kernel, shell, and file systems. The impression left of this first attempt? Almost got killed by an OS. Cool!
After around one decade and a half, the second attempt ensued. It’s a time when Red Hat was not Fedora. By dint of the hardware advancement and better GUI interface with intuitive package integration and management, the threshold was seriously lowered to such an extent that Linux’s solid and secure file structure and its powerful and versatile server build finally lent me access. Interestingly, the more one gets used to the OS, the less dependable on the GUI one becomes. Yet Linux’s multimedia support at this time was still poor, causing much pain to general users. It’s server administrators’ heaven, yet desktop users’ nightmare. Still geeky, lacking the intimacy a general user may find in the Win-doz.
Then a few days ago I had my old notebook installed with the new Debian-based Ubuntu. Pretty amazed at the overall performance. Not only does it boot faster, but the interface is more eye-catching, and its media de-coding almost jaw-dropping. Now it even supports plug’n'play. It’s hard to imagine how much the open source community has worked to get Linux evolved during the years I had no knowledge of.
My old notebook now has its second birth. Faster in running, more solid in structure , more efficient in operating, yet smaller in the OS storage size.
Very proud of being myself back, so many years after, to an old friend.
