Remember the 2000s when linux tried its best to enter the home computing scene? If not, just get some beers and let me tell you another story.

As is it nowadays, you’ll find linux in a smartphone, industrial systems, all sorts of servers and maybe some people on their desktops and laptops that want to nerd it out. I remember back in the day when linux companies tried their best to make home users switch from Windows or Mac.

At some point, a company emerged that tried to battle it out with Microsoft, it was called Linspire. Many of might not know this now defunct os, you could google it up and find that it was initially released as Lindows. Bam! That was a major trigger for you know who and lawsuits soon followed. I remember first seeing this distro in magazines, yeah back in the day there was MyLinux, for all your nerdy needs. Linspire was awesome, looked awesome. Well, we had Windows 2000 and XP at that time and Linspire looked something like Vista/7. The desktop environment was tuned to much that it looked out of this world and it wasn’t a resource hog.

Linspire looked great, ran great, it even had a thing called CNR, which stands for Click-n-Run. This little things made installing software a breeze. This was kind of a web based software center-ish type of thing. Sources were compiled similarly to a .deb or .rpm file. The important thing was that it had a cool interface, something like the App Store today on Macs, nothing like that piece of shit Ubuntu Software Centre. Another plus was the awesome driver support, I never imagined such a great plug and play support on a linux os at that time.

Well, what went wrong? Despite the lawsuit with Microsoft, it had another major flaw, money moolah. This distro came with a price, an actual price. You heard me, pay for it if you wanted something other than a Live CD. You could go pass this issue by using the little sibling of Linspire, named accordingly, Freespire. It had almost all the featured drivers and desktop gadgets. Yeah, so much for that…

Some time later another similar os with a similar business model emerged, Xandros. Same stuff, different prices for different versions of it. Later Xandros aquired Linspire and guess which project got cannibalized?

About at the same time Canonical started shoving free cds up eveybodys ass with their Debian based Ubuntu operating system and its derivatives. They made quite a huge effort in pushing linux to the masses with Kubuntu which had a more Windows like feel to it and with Edubuntu which tried implementing cost free software solutions for the educational sector. The 3^rd one actually had a major success. Huge sums of money were poured into the marketing of linux worldwide and it did have an effect. When most people google something on linux they usually end up on Ubuntu related content. Did it hold on? No it didn’t. It increased the home user market share, but not a lot.

So let’s get back to that out of the box bullshit. Back in the day drivers were a major issue, legacy hardware was a no-no. Of course there was a helpful community that could help you, but then you couldn’t talk about out of the box. I’m not saying Windows didn’t have the same issues, but hardware manufacturers didn’t actually care about the linux community so working open-source drivers were a gift from god if you could get your hands on some.

The first major issue I encounter while trying to implement linux for home users was the ability to run the majority of Windows compatible games. Nobody wanted a “Windows” that couldn’t run games.

Fast forward a couple of years and emulators actually became a thing, like CrossOver. Things started to get some ground but not much. Fast forward to today and you’ll really see how the market share on home computers really is like. Ever since Microsoft offered Windows 10 as a free upgrade everything changed. Think about this for a second, any home user could download and install an original Windows 10 .iso from the Microsoft website with no need of an actual activation, key or other bullshit. You get some features disabled, it does kind of violate the EULA, but it’s free. It’s not like the black guys in suits will show up at your door. It’s fucking free, it runs everything you need, it’s Windows. Point and case.

From an office perspective, linux has come a long way. Productivity at it’s finest, you got all you need, but you you want something more then I’m sorry, the princess is in another castle. My first choice for an out of the box experience is surprisingly not Ubuntu as most might think, it’s actually openSuse. Stability, a dash of corporate, a funky chameleon logo and you’ve got yourself a working linux os out of the box, a small one, but still a box.

So can linux fight the desktop war with Microsoft? No, there was never such a thing! Can you just turn the key and gas it with linux? No, too much of a hassle. You could compile your own distro for mass deployment and bundle it with all the software you can think about and all the drivers you need. Yeah, that might work. And don’t give me that “Steam games work on linux” crap, that’s not an argument pro linux.

You could go for the old switcheroo and trick some users using a desktop environment that is close or even a clone of the visuals of Windows, for example Kylin. Nuff said!

Tis the year 2000, it’s summer and also Friday. To put it into context, i’m 10 years old and sharing my dad’s computer with my sister, who’s in high school. My dad bought this particular computer because the old one was from the stone age and he need it for work, my sister for the school projects and then there’s me, hehe. Some paint, some small texts, but mostly gaming.

I really did have a hard time trying to get my turn to use the computer, but when i did i was the happiest kid alive. I had a strict curfew regarding my computer usage, but i made the best with what little time i had.

Remember the year 2000? Everybody was running on x86, computer cases were mostly white and the rich and famous ran Windows 2000 and had 80 gig hard drives and at least 256 megs of ram. At the writing of this article the computers i’m talking about might sound like this hardware is from last century, but those were the days, and i miss those days.

My dad worked in construction so he used the computer to make building estimates and so forth. He was actually one of the few to actually own and actually use a computer in construction on a day by day basis. He had lots of text and 3d files, building plans, years of work, all stored on one hard drive of just 20 gigs. Remember this part, i’ll get to it later in the story.

So getting back to the story, it’s Friday and my mom just woke me up and told me that my cousin just arrived into town and is spending the weekend. My cousin, who was a med student at the time, always had cool hardware, the newest games. He was like that cool guy in school that you would look to from the other side of the street and say “whoooaaa..”. So…i couldn’t miss this opportunity, packed some clothes and asked my dad to take me to my aunts house.

Some talk about the weather, family stuff and a few hours later my cousin took my to his room. I still remember looking at that CRT monitor, full of sticky notes powering on and showing the operating system booting. He said that he’ll leave me here, i have the icons on the desktop, food is on the table and the bed is ready for when i’ll be too tired. WOW! A dream, a real dream, that’s what it was.

The weekend was almost over, it’s Sunday. He had to go, he lived in another city and he had to pack his computer. I was fine with it, hell, i just spent the whole weekend playing games, what was i to say? Hehe While he was packing i saw some cds on the table and started to browse them. They where pirated copies of course. A few cd’s caught my attention, they had the same writing on them but different numbers. It said Red Hat Linux, cd1, cd 2…and so forth. I was like, “hmmm, i didn’t see this game installed, what is it?“. I eventually got the cds from my cousin, i was so happy, he tried explaining some “stuff” to me but i didn’t care. I eventually found out why he continued to laugh, even after i got the discs in my possession.

Fast forward some months, i eventually found myself at home, my parents where away and my big sister was looking after me. She was busy with studying in her room and i saw an opportunity. I splinter celled my way and started the computer. With the discs in the drive nothing was happening, i kept on swapping them, but still nothing. I got angry and manually restarted the computer using the button from the computer case. At some point i tried again with the first cd but still nothing was happening on the desktop. Of course i restarted the computer, again. While all hope was lost, i looked up and saw that something was happening, colors, writing, a bar was loading. I was amazed while looking at that CRT monitor, that black background, all that text appearing and going up and disappearing, i felt like i was in some hacker movie. The computer started booting from the cd.

I eventually ended up clicking and choosing stuff that i could understand and of course i also tried every combination possible of clicks in order to advance. After some next, next, click, finish i waited for that last bar to load and get to 100%. I restarted the computer again, manually, but that windows logo never came, and at that moment, he knew, he fucked up!

That game, that sounded so awesome was something else. It was not a game, it was like windows, it was an operating system. To be fair, i knew that next next finish lead to an installation, but it turned out that the text i didn’t understand while clicking actually meant something.

As you’ve might have guessed, i erased everything, my sisters school stuff and all of my dad’s projects. Cool, huh?

The computer was fixed at some point that summer, and guess who didn’t have access to it? Yeah, it was a lame summer. The good thing is that i eventually ended buying books that summer, yeah, i was still curious about that thing that was like windows, but not windows. Yeah, i actually became quite a computer bookworm after that incident. The picture was becoming so much clear!

I finally understood why my cousin kept laughing that day…

Around once a week a use my Ubuntu VM, for fun, for tests and mostly for research. Every time i get the change i fire but that terminal and it’s like “shit just got serious”. At this exact moment, while i’m writing this post i am reinstalling a new virtual machine for personal use so i’d like to show some of things i do with my Ubuntu.

First of all, you should try to remove all the things you don’t need and by that i mean the apps that are installed that you will never use, you’ll never even click on them. This might safe up some space, not a lot, but it’s something. I usually remove the games that come pre-installed with Ubuntu. I really don’t have the time or feel the need to play Minesweeper or Solitaire. For that i have Steam and other alternative platforms.

Like any other operating system these days, Ubuntu comes with a software center that delivers all kinds of software with the simple click of a button. Say…it’s like the App store on any Apple computer or on your smartphone. Back in the day i used to browse forums and websites to get .deb or .rpm files for an easier installation, sometimes i used Synaptic, but mostly all my 3rd party software had to be compiled, fun times…

My next step is to remember what other software i need, that isn’t already installed. Again, just browsing the the software center. After that, i usually like to change pre-installed apps with my personal favorites. I’m not saying that Ubuntu comes with bad software, i just got used to some apps, for example my favorite music player is Clementine. So, i’m not saying Rhythimbox is not good, i just like the orange logo of a slice of fruit better. Meh…..go figure.

Asa power user i need a lot of 3rd party apps, some free and others that cost money. I try to get away with using free and open-source alternatives as much as i can. Yeah, but sometimes i still need my Adobe apps. I usually emulate Windows software and they always work like a charm.

Games? Yeah, there are games, last game i played was Witcher 3 and it ran so smooth. I did it more as a “just to prove a point” kinda’ thing. You gotta’ love them Micro$oft and Apple fanboys.

So why Ubuntu? Kind of hard to say because it’s based on Debian, another awesome distro. Maybe their motto, the way they conduct business, maybe the community around it, who knows. It’s got that thing, that “je ne sais quoi”. One thing that’s funny is the naming of each version of animals, hella’ cool.

To all of those that might say that linux isn’t a stable operating system or that it lacks features, hardware support, i’d like to remind them of what happened in 2010. In that year something magical happened, out of nowhere an operating system was launched and it was righteously called “the perfect 10”, and indeed it was. Ubuntu 10.10 was launched in 10.10.10 and it ruled, trust me, i used it on hundreds of systems until support ended and they switched from Gnome as a desktop environment to Unity. Ohh, 10.04, you were my love…

I’m almost at the end of this of this article, which will be written in parts, as this little tale i’ve spoken of so far is just episode one. It was fun writing this little piece here, with one eye at my Ubuntu desktop in my right, configuring this new installation, like i’ve done each time, kinda’ like retracing my steps, sort of speak. Either way, consider this article as a nod to Ubuntu and what is represents. Cheers, see you next time for more linux tales!