I had this huge mental block which was insisting that Linux Was Hard. I didn't want to give it the chance and try it because I was settled. Sure, Windows wasn't perfect, but I knew the kludges and workarounds to make it do the things I wanted it to do. I would tweak it, add new programs, but I stayed within my comfort zone.
Well, I can't say for sure exactly what it was that made this time different, but the computer died again.** Among my efforts to rescue my data, I decided that a Live CD was my best option. So, using my backup computer, which I normally don't bother with because it's old and slow, I downloaded and burned myself a copy of Ubuntu 9.1 Karmic Koala. Again, as I said, I'm not sure what made this time different, but mid-backup I decided I'd had it with Windows.
Long story short, I'm now running a complete Linux machine. Initially, I had thought I would settle for dabbling my toes with a dual-boot, and then I just went for broke. At this point, I have internet functionality, document functionality, and that's mostly it. I'm trying right now to make it play music and video, but that's neither here nor there.
The biggest difference I'm finding for my own experience is that things aren't handed to me on a silver platter. I have to struggle to figure out how to install things, and apparently even "install" isn't the appropriate word. I spent part of my time online at work today delving into figuring out the theory behind what a "multiverse repository" was and what it did for me. (Think I understood it. It's about girls, right?)
So, why does this matter, you might ask? Why should you care what's on my computer? Because of the greater change it can represent. Surely you noticed the surface metaphor, that first-layer, where my Operating System could be traded for anything in my life which I got too comfortable with?
Well, it's not just hollow metaphor. I spend most of my life on computers. When I'm not at work, or working on things from home, I interact more with and through my computer than I do in person. It is the lens through which I interact, and, although I had gotten comfortable with Windows and didn't want to leave it, that's only one of the lessons here.
Because I interact with the world through this machine, how I interact with the machine affects how I interact with the world. If I assume this is a fairly closed box, or at least one I can beat mostly into submission, something I point at the internet and say, "sic!" then I assume things work without a large amount of effort. But we all know there's no free lunch. Just because I didn't put the effort into making it work, doesn't mean there wasn't effort, and if I go about my life either not acknowledging that or not understanding what that means, I am a lesser man for it. Even more, if I dislike the way I interact, or that some small part of my interaction, and I bitch and moan about how non-transparent it is, such as with Windows networking, while not understanding what I'm complaining about, is a fairly major sin in my book.
So, I'm learning. Bit by bit and piece by piece, I'm figuring out why my computer does what it does.
There are other lessons here, too. Beyond breaking old habits and forming new ones, beyond understanding the world around me. But those are lessons for another day.
*Despite the fact that I associate each and every usage of the word "millennium" with Han Solo, this was still not enough to redeem Windows ME.
**In point of fact, it decided that one of the Login tasks was to execute a Logout. There was no way to change this without logging in, so there was absolutely no way to fix it from within the system.
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