I’m a command-line kinda computer user.  Always felt that the point-and-click interface was rather like taking a shower in a raincoat, and got in the way of efficiently getting work done.  I stuck with DOS up till very recent times, precisely because you could Get Things Done with it.   Alas, my favorite word processor (Word 5.0 for DOS) ended up with severe Y2K issues, and CompuServe went to a brain-dead system that wouldn’t allow for automated access any more.  So the best of the best DOS software wasn’t enough any more and I had to start using Windows.

Bleah.

It’s odd, then, that I didn’t take to Linux sooner than I did.  It has a wonderfully efficient command-line interface in addition to its GUI overlay, and the commands themselves are logical once you learn the language.   It’s my kinda stuff.  But Linux is the tenth operating system I’ve learned and I guess I thought my poor old brain would leak if I tried it.  So I didn’t experiment with it at all until very recently.

My daughter kindly gave me her HP Pavilion laptop when she got a newer one, and finally I got annoyed enough at Windows XP Home (on that computer–won’t sully another one with XP of any variety) that it dawned on me that it would be a good time to work with Linux a bit more.  We’d put Ubuntu on the server, and I’d fiddled with that a bit, so I installed that on the HP dual-booted with XP.

But it was slooooooooooooooooooow.  I don’t really know why, either, since the laptop is in no way underpowered.  And I wasn’t thrilled with the burnt-orange color scheme, either, to be honest.  So when I saw a mention of Xubuntu on the Lifehacker site, I decided to give that a try instead.

I like it, so far.  It seems to run faster, the blue color scheme is better (yeah, I know, I could have changed the other one but I didn’t) and the sheer joy of logical software with a whole universe of free apps is still very much apparent.  I could definitely get to like this stuff.

Unfortunately I can’t dump XP completely because there are some apps that won’t play nice with Windows 2000 (yes, I’m looking at YOU, Amazon music downloader) but I can assign XP to as small a partition as I think I can get away with, and have the laptop boot into Xubuntu.  Thus, I will learn more.  I will be the Queen of the Command Line once again!
photo credit: coxy

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