My Linux Journey - 0

A little background

Before I re-post my adventures with Linux, I think I should say a bit more about my interest in computers so as to give further context. In part 1 I called myself a “normie” computer user before switching to Linux, but that is not exactly true. I guess that is a relative term, because compared to most PC users, I did have slightly-above average skills in computing. But certainly I was (and still am) not anywhere near the skills of a hacker or a developer/programmer. So I thought it would paint a better picture if I briefly describe my journey pre-Linux.

My first home computer was a 1998 Compaq Presario. I had used computers at school before, but it wasn’t that memorable of an experience. We students were restricted on what we could do with them. On the other hand, the day I went with my dad to buy the Presario was pretty eventful. When we unpacked the machine, the whole family gathered, and there followed “oohs” and “aahs” as we powered it on for the first time. It was a fun evening, but my interest waned in the next few days when I discovered that I couldn’t “do” much on the PC: as a kid your expectations sometimes are too high, I guess. We had no Internet (and no idea what it was either). So we were pretty much limited to the stock programs, i.e. word processing, MS-Paint, and a few games, like Solitaire.

Several months later, we finally got the Internet hooked up. Prior to this, I imagined the Internet to be something like the Encarta Encyclopedia, with lots of interactivity and audio and video. Alas, that was not the case: it was all static websites, mostly text, and boring search engines, like Altavista. Little by little, however, I started to find interesting things to do and read on the web. I was becoming a bit of a computer nerd.

Back in those early days of the web, creating webpages wasn’t that difficult, and almost anyone could do it. So at one point I taught myself some HTML and CSS and made a simple website for a short-lived family venture. In doing this, I raised my computer skills above those of my peers, even if only a little bit. Coding HTML by hand, by the way, taught me to eschew software that could automate the task but which produced “bloated” code. For instance, I knew that MS Word could generate webpages from Word files, but the resulting code was many times more complicated and ugly.

Another lesson I learned from webpage development is to separate content from presentation. This would later lead me to experiment with an alternative to MS Word and all other WYSIWYG word processors called the TeX typesetting system, which embraces the same philosophy. Tutorials on how to use (La)TeX were somewhat confusing, however. Often they would assume that you were using a “Unix-like” operating system, and I couldn’t make heads or tails of the instructions. What little I could do I did haphazardly. One big negative was that for anything besides English, you had to code the diacritics in a rather cumbersome way. (Spanish is my mother tongue.) Also, the default style and presentation were not that pleasant, at least to my eyes.

Brief stint with the Mac

Anyway, fast forward to 2007. I am a fledgling freelancer with a few extra bucks to buy a new computer. On the recommendation of an acquaintance, who sang the praises of Apple computers, I went with an iMac. And you know what? I discovered that Mac OS was Unix-like!

For this reason, I could now better understand LaTeX tutorials. What’s more, a new TeX engine not then available in Windows had just been introduced called XeTeX, which let you typeset foreign characters (in Unicode) without the need for special macros. With XeTeX I was able to produce documents in Latin and Ancient Greek (which I was learning on my own at the time). With the iMac also learned to automate certain tasks, such as processing images in batches, which I never thought was possible. I also started experimenting with alternatives to mainstream software, like Firefox, Opera, DjVu, and VLC. Overall, I felt pretty good with the iMac. It certainly gave me a tremendous boost in terms of what one can do with a computer besides the basics.

Sadly, all that came to a crashing end rather quick. One day in 2009, two years after purchasing the iMac, a thin black line appeared on my display, running from top to bottom on the left side. Oh how disappointed (and angry) I was when I saw it! It was very thin, though, and really did not prevent me from using the computer; it was just a very ugly cosmetic blemish. In the next few months, however, more lines would appear, until half my screen was no longer visible. By then I had acquired a separate monitor, and simply switched the display to that second monitor. Then one morning around 2011, I powered on the computer and it made a very strange, very sad noise before it could boot up… it had given up! Apple computers were not common in my area—I think there was only one Mac repair guy in the whole city. And unfortunately he wasn’t able to repair my iMac, and only managed to partially recover the data in the disk drive.

Thus ended my first (and last!) venture into the Mac world of computers. For me, at that age, barely beginning to earn a living, to have paid over a thousand bucks for what was supposed to be the “Cadillac” of computers, only to have it fail in just 4 years, the experience proved extremely bitter.

Back to Windows

Of course I went back to using Windows, although not the latest version. During my time with the iMac, two Windows operating systems had rolled out: Windows Vista (a complete failure), followed by Windows 7. I could have gone with Windows 7, except that I wanted to move away from desktop PCs and instead get a laptop for greater mobility. Proper laptops were at the time still expensive (for me, at least), so I ended up buying a netbook. Talk about a downgrade! Specifically, I bought an Asus Eee PC netbook… with Windows XP! Yes, the XP was still around, though nearing its end of life. I never got to experience Windows 7 as my daily operating system, which is why I have no nostalgia for it (and, in fact, dislike its look even to this day).

The netbook served me well (and it still runs today), but it was a very underpowered little device, and it limited me in what I could do in terms of computing. For instance, I believe this is the period when I started to move away from LaTeX and return to WYSIWYG editors, like Microsoft’s OneNote. It’s not that LaTeX could not be run on the netbook; it could and did. It’s that what I had learned to do with it on a Mac did not translate well to Windows.

After the netbook came an Asus laptop (a proper one this time) with Windows 8. This laptop, too, turned out to be a dud: after a few months of use, one of the monitor hinges snapped, and it went downhill from there. I soon gave it to my mother, so she could watch YouTube videos. The last thing I did with that laptop, which was actually earlier this year, was remove the hard disk as the machine was clearly in its last days.

After giving it away, I purchased a slim ultrabook (don’t remember what brand)… which died on me when I spilled beer on it by accident. Because the laptop was so slim, the damaged component could not be swapped. Luckily, the repair man offered me a new machine with similar features for a couple hundred bucks, in exchange for the damaged ultrabook. This new laptop was a 2017 Dell Latitude E7270. It is the one I still use to this day.

During this second period with Windows I don’t think I actually gained any new skills. It’s as if I hit a plateau. It is only shortly before switching to Linux that I started learning again. The catalyst for this was Vim. And this is where my Linux journey starts off.

(To be continued…)