Closing Windows and Opening My Eyes – Part 1

Closing Windows and Opening My Eyes – Part 1

This is the first of a multi part blog post about my complete transition from Microsoft to the wonderful world of Linux and open source computing.

First, a little background...

For the last sixteen years I have been living in a Microsoft centric world. It started with Windows 3.1 and has spanned every version of the popular OS all the way up to Windows 7 on my Toshiba Satellite A665 Laptop. I became intrigued by Linux a few months back when I had a hard drive failure with that beloved laptop. Unfortunately, or rather, fortunately for me, Toshiba and their sub-par customer support required me to send the laptop in for service and wait 10 business days to get it back. I call shenanigans.

As usual when this kind of thing happens, my last backup was months old. I had since collected a large amount of work documents, hundreds of pictures from a recent road trip and was about a third of the way through ripping my DVD collection. Thinking back, I really should have seen it coming.

I absolutely did not want to be without a computer for 2 weeks and replacing a hard drive is well within my capabilities as an IT guy by trade. I made the decision to just shell out for a new hard drive and do the job myself (besides, I wanted to upgrade the drive since I bought it and this was as good an opportunity as any). I procured a replacement drive and using an old beater with some data recovery software I had laying around, got my data back.

Searching the house for my Windows 7 recovery discs and all of the documentation that came with my

laptop, I remembered that computers don't come with those any more. It was on a recovery partition on the hard disk which was now completely lifeless, so now I had to pay $25 for recovery media to be shipped from Toshiba and I wasn't happy. Fortunately, it would only take 5 days to get here, but this was still too long to be without. After a few expletives and beer or five to calm my frustration, I had an epiphany. UBUNTU!

I currently support a Linux based product at work which consists of the basic kernel and a few custom modules built for scanning of web and email traffic. So, I knew a little bit about the OS and its command line, how hard could this be? I have also in my travels needed to use Linux to retrieve lost computer passwords and files from a corrupt installation of Windows. Other than that, I was clueless to the true nature of this wonderful beast. After I received the recovery media, It took me weeks to reinstall Windows and I only did it because I needed it for work.

October came around and I had some spare cash and was in the market for a new desktop. I needed something that was going to last and had the juice to run a small virtual testing environment. I bought a moderately priced bare-bones PC kit from TigerDirect with a beefy set of specs and a pair of 22” LCD's, all for just under a $900. I didn't even think about buying a copy of Windows 7. As soon as I finished putting it together, I booted up the Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot Live CD and haven't looked back. I spent the first day or two customizing all of the settings and apps for the basic user experience I played around with the native Bit Torrent client, Transmission, and installed the Spotify for Linux Beta (awesome). I also played around with some media players and the like, customized the desktop, and attempted to fix the issue I had installing the drivers for my Rad eon 6770. Over the course of the next month I felt a renewed passion for computing. I wrote a post in November comparing Ubuntu 11.10 to Windows 7 and mistakenly said that it was not an operating system for the average home user just yet and needed to be improved upon further. I would like to take the opportunity to retract that portion of the post. I am now a firm believer that Linux is for everyone, though the learning curve is a little steep.

Since then, I have gone through Linux+ training courtesy of my employer and am gearing up to take the exams next week. I built a PLEX server, played around with RHEL5&6, CentOS, Debian and BackTrack, a flavor of Linux designed around penetration testing and security. I think it's safe to say that I'm hooked.

Coming up in Part 2, I'll take you through delights of having a media server that can stream music and movies to my Roku 2 XS, Android phone, and Samsung Galaxy Tab 7 Plus all without spending a dime.