I'm not sure why, but...
Last week I had the itch to get back into Linux. I've always been a Windows kid (macOS and iPhones can rot), but obviously as someone who appreciates open source code and the complexities of economies and development: Linux has always been there in the background... taunting me.
Everyone uses Linux
While simultaneously no one uses Linux. It's quite the paradox. Most of the software that people use exists on Windows. Things like Excel and Outlook and Powerpoint and Photoshop and a bunch of random corporate products no one has ever heard of (SAP/etc). Windows is very much geared toward corporations. It's actually sad how long the entire healthcare industry was using Windows XP.
Which is obviously insane because Windows is already the most insecure and most widely used operating system. How is it appropriate that the entire healthcare system was using a completely outdated OS for matters that are not only confidential, but potentially needed to save lives? It's wild.
So how is everyone using Linux?
They use it in the background. You know what operating system you can't run for a month straight without having to restart the damn thing? Windows. Linux is not only more secure, but also more stable and sustainable. This is why most nodes/servers will run Linux in the background. The users of Linux never even know they're using Linux when they visit their favorite website or whatever.
The first time I was ever exposed to Linux was Counter Strike
I'm not a big fan of first-person shooters, but I got into Counter Strike because it was a Half-Life mod and Half-Life was ubiquitous and one of the most popular games at the time. Counter-Strike is such a classic that it is played even to this day with very little changes made over the decades. Now that's staying power.
So how was I exposed to it?
Well when I was checking server lists to see which server I should connect to, a little penguin would often pop up under the column denoting which operating system the server was running on. I did not recognize this operating system. What was it?
The Windows icon was easily recognizable.
It was 4 windows. Not hard to spot. Even though I never liked Apple, the brand is unmistakable. It is an apple after all. But I quickly learned from playing Counterstrike that the servers running on the Penguin operating system were always the best. They always had the least lag and best pings. They never crashed. They even seemed to have better cheat detection (maybe not). Who is this penguin and why is no one talking about him?
Looked it up just now and the Penguin's name is apparently Tux. Surprising I could have gone this long without knowing that. Every day an opportunity to learn more useless information :D
In any case the reason why I write this post is that I recently finally wiped Windows off my garbage Best Buy laptop and installed Linux, and it was and is glorious.
JUST LOOK AT IT!
A marvel! No shit-ass Best Buy bloatware taking up all my resources. Not even a single icon on the Desktop. CLEAN SLATE! A weight had been lifted off my shoulders, but it was a bit of a journey to reach this glorious moment.
How does one go about it?
Well, CD and DVD ROMs don't exist anymore in the mainstream. Wasn't that an awkward transition? Fun times. It used to be that your computer would boot from the CD ROM at startup. So if you had a CD with an operating system installed on it all you had to do was pop it in and restart your computer. If all went according to plan your computer would boot from the CD and you could install the operating system (or make important changes to the current one).
Today there is an extra step.
Actually it might be a couple of extra steps considering the bullshit that I had to deal with on this install. First of all, this is an ASUS laptop from Best Buy from a couple years back. I think I paid like $260 for it... and even that was a ripoff. It's got a 1 GZ Celeron processor in it and only 60GB of hard drive space (how?) with 4 GB of RAM (ew).
I found out how when I opened up the thing and saw that the hard drive basically looked like some dinky flash-memory module or perhaps it was hidden directly on the motherboard. This was actually the first time I had unscrewed a laptop and actually looked under the hood. Not a big fan of laptops. I never use them, as my chronic shoulder injury can't handle that awkward posture.
The reason I opened it up is that I was thinking about upgrading the abysmal hard drive with a super cheap solid state. I figured it would make the thing a lot faster, but my witness partners convinced me probably not worth upgrading with 1 GZ processor and 4 GB RAM. That was a fair assessment, but it also gave me a great excuse to install Linux, as Linux is free and open source.
However, again... it wasn't that easy.
I've always hated Best Buy, and the only reason I bought this laptop from them is because I was going on vacation and I just needed literally any device to write blog posts on the road. Been using it ever since for that purpose. Almost every time I go to turn it on the battery is 100% drained because I left it in sleep mode for 4 months straight. I'll be damned if I'm going to wait 5 minutes for this thing to boot up into Windows again.
The ISO file
ISO files are images from back in the CD/DVD days. An image was like a ripped copy of exactly what the CD/DVD looked like. If you had software that could create virtual drives like Daemon tools you could create a fake DVD player directly on your computer and run it from the virtual device.
So I downloaded the Linux Mint Cinnamon from https://www.linuxmint.com/ and it came in this standard ISO format. The website advised me to burn the image to a flash drive using this program called Etcher. This made sense to me because of all my experience downloading ripped video games from Pirate Bay and using Daemon Tools to run them over a decade ago. These days I actually buy video games I want to play because I'm not poor AF anymore. Also it's just not smart being involved with crypto and using a Windows machine to play ripped video games. Terrible idea even.
So I made the flash drive with Linux Mint ISO on it.
Now all I had to do was restart my computer with the flash drive plugged in and my computer would boot from the drive and I could finally rid myself of the disease that is Best Buy bloatware. Or so I thought.
Spoiler alert:
I fucking hate Best Buy. I've never had a good experience with Best Buy. My girlfriend thinks Best Buy is great and told me to just buy this laptop from them and everything would be all good. I was tricked into thinking that maybe times have changed. They have not changed. Fuck Best Buy. Fuck um to death.
Because when you buy a Windows machine from a place like Best Buy: they can and will install an antivirus that constantly uses 100% of your CPU... there's just a million pieces of bloatware and spyware they put on their computers and it's so incredibly obnoxious and downright offensive and insulting.
Of course this was made x100 times worse for the fact that the hard drive is 60 GB and was basically 70% full by the time I even bought the thing. Seriously how did they even find a 60 GB drive? It's actually enraging. I bought a 128 GB USB 3.0 flash drive on the cheap in 2016. This laptop isn't even that old. I rage every time I think about it. No matter. Those days are behind me.
The story continues
So I had a feeling it wasn't going to be as easy as just plugging in the flash drive and rebooting the computer. First of all Windows has a nasty habit of hijacking the drive and trying to prevent itself from being deleted. Add bullshit Best Buy bloatware on top of that and it's almost guaranteed you have to do some minor tech backflips to install Linux.
In this case I restarted and Windows refused to boot into the drive. I was not shocked. This was to be expected. What was annoying is that when I tried to look up how to enter the bios I got conflicting information. First thing Google said was try F8 or ESC. I tried both, nothing happened. Then another site said try F2. Nothing happened. Oh and by the way each time this happens I have to wait like 5 minutes for my dogshit Windows bloatware to load up just so I can shut it down.
One of the times I rebooted it was like Windows knew I was trying to load an operating system and it started asking me the questions it asked when I first got the thing (like my Microsoft password) which made me pretty uncomfortable like I was being hacked and phished. I'm not joking when I say that you aren't allowed to use a computer from Best Buy unless you immediately KYC yourself to use your own hardware. Again. Fuck Best Buy. I can't really emphasize that point enough.
So then finally one of these websites tells me to enter the bios by holding down F2 BEFORE I even hit the power-on button and just hold it the entire time. This actually worked. I've never experienced entering the bios in such a convoluted manner. Asus really outdid themselves with this one. I think my brain is going to automatically start referring to that brand as Anus from now on. If the shoe fits...
This is a Linux meme from back in the day that I've always remembered. Linux is powerful, but it can turn on you at anytime. Sometimes there is zero recourse and even the most experienced of techno junkies will get stuck and have no idea how to fix the problem.
So I finally get into the BIOS
But oops... the flash drive wasn't connected when I entered the BIOS, so the BIOS didn't have access to it. Connecting it after the fact did nothing... so I booted into Windows AGAIN and restarted it AGAIN, this time with the flash drive in... and it actually finally fucking worked. What a journey. I booted into the flash drive and Linux awaited me.
Linux is such a notoriously badass operating system that YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE TO INSTALL IT IN ORDER TO USE IT.
That's right fam. See that icon of a CD (that doesn't exist anymore because the tech is dead) that says Install Linux Mint? Linux will boot itself up directly from the USB flash drive and you can run it directly from there. It's insane when compared to something like Windows or MAC.
Speaking of dead tech that simply won't die...
How hilarious is it that the very icon that denotes saving a file is a second generation floppy-disk? Talk about dead tech! And we thought CDs were old. The memory lives on! Pun not intended but welcomed.
It's also worth mentioning here that this type of functionality makes hacking physical devices with Linux insanely easy to do. If you could get access to someone's Windows laptop or desktop without them knowing about it all you have to do is plug in a Linux flash drive into their computer and boot from it. Linux will hijack their machine and you can simply download all their files and walk away.
What are the chances that anyone you know actually encrypts their files? This is especially important information to crypto users because imagine if you're being lazy and storing private keys on an unencrypted text file? Anyone you know could just be like beep boop beep my crypto now dummy. They don't need your silly little OS password to access your machine, in case you were thinking otherwise.
There's even a Linux distribution that is specifically designed for hacking and testing network security and things like that. It's called Linux Kali. I've never fucked around with it but a lot of devs on Hive have I guarantee you that.
It's also possible to install Windows and Linux at the same time on the same machine. If you want to do this: beware. ALWAYS INSTALL WINDOWS FIRST. ALWAYS ALWAYS. I learned this the hard way. Because again, Windows will hijack your machine and deny you access to your Linux distribution. So you have to install Linux second (make sure to leave room on your partition) it will hijack Windows right back and everything will work great. I basically had to install Linux twice on my machine back in the day because of this and I was very annoyed about it.
Long story long
I finally booted into the BIOS, which in turn booted into the flash drive, which in turn booted Linux Mint, which in turn allowed me to install it and overwrite all the Best Buy bullshit. After everything was said and done I took a shitty bloated laptop that was using 100% of it's drive space (60 GB), and cut that down to 15 GB for Linux Mint.
SUCCESS!
And then I rebooted the computer and got an error saying my shim signature was invalid... whatever the fuck that means! So the Internet told me to disable secure booting, which sounds like a bad idea but I didn't give a shit at this point. Got back into the bios turned off secure boot and it worked.
However, I wasn't done.
In fact, this was the part I was dreading. Because trying to do simple things on Linux (like play video games) can be an absolute fucking nightmare. This was the entire reason I waited so long to do this in the first place.
In addition to using this laptop to write blog posts on the road, I was also using it to play a couple of Jackbox.tv games. Figuring out how to install Steam and get the Jackbox games working might not be a trivial process, and I was not looking forward to it.
Confirm that the multiverse Ubuntu repository is enabled:
$ sudo add-apt-repository multiverse
$ sudo apt update.
I opened the command line and it worked. Most things in Linux seem to be done from the DOS-like command line. This terminal is a life-saver, but it is certainly daunting for anyone used to the whole point and click experience. For the most part Linux doesn't just let you run executables (.exe) files because they are insecure. Viruses are very rare on Linux because it is both more secure and computer noobs aren't using it. Why create a virus for an operating system that can't be exploited easily and isn't even used by the masses directly?
What is SUDO?
I actually looked this up the other day because I forgot exactly what it stands for. It means "superuser do" and is basically needed to do anything important on Linux. It also requires you to type in your password which can be annoying if you have a long password. Whatever though, this is Linux; beggars can't be choosers.
Install Steam package:
$ sudo apt install steam
This worked as well.
It seemed to throw a lot of errors/warnings which seems to happen a lot in Linux and I have no idea if the error/warning matters or not. Such is Linux.
So how do I turn this thing on?
How do I open Steam once installed?
I still haven't found the icon yet.
Okay I just found it but back then I had not.
$ steam
LoL yep
if you want to run Steam on Linux you literally just open the terminal and type "steam". How crazy is that? Linux is wild.
I was actually floored that all of these commands worked on the first try with zero troubleshooting. That has not been my experience with Linux, but also the last time I used Linux was probably 2016 or earlier. A lot of open source development has been done across the board. Even greedy ass corporations like Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon are all heading in this direction more and more. The computing world is becoming more interoperable and modular, and that's an amazing thing.
So after I got Steam installed it turned out the Jackbox games were also fully compatible with Linux (which has also not been my experience in the past for pretty much any other games I wanted to play). Although this was not totally unexpected because Jackbox games basically boot up from the jackbox.tv website using your phone. Steam has done a great job in making things Linux compatible. Noice. At least one of the products pronounced 'steam' isn't a pile of shit.
After everything was said and done I downloaded the 3 Jackbox games and I still have 30 GB of memory left. This means Windows 10 had more than 30GB of bloat that I was able to eliminate. Also the OS boots up in 30 seconds instead of 5 minutes. Pretty nice. Everything worked and the only annoying part was Windows trying to prevent me from accessing the bios and booting from the flash drive image.
One thing left to do.
I allowed Linux to name my computer which turned out to be a tiny mistake. The name it picked was like 20 characters long and it just annoyed me seeing "edicted@blahblahblahblahblahblahblah $" on the terminal screen. So I vowed that I would figure out how to change the computer name.
The first advice I got was to simply type "$ hostname newname" which ended up not working on this version of Linux. So I had to go into operating system file using "$vi /etc/hostname". If you know anything about vi text editor, you know that it's kind of a nightmare. There like a hundred random commands you have to lookup if you haven't memorized them and everything is done from the keyboard. I was getting PTSD flashbacks to my college days. But this file was only one line so I deleted that line with the DD command... then I entered "insert mode" by pushing 'I', I changed the name and had to save an exit using "ZZ".
That didn't work
The file was read-only. Tried to see what I did wrong and eventually figured out that once again I forgot to write SUDO before entering vi. Finally got there when I typed "$sudo vi /etc/hostname" and was finally able to save. Of course that didn't work either and the computer's name didn't change until I rebooted the OS. Even accomplishing something small and stupid like this in Linux can feel like climbing a mountain. I did it, fam. I did the thing. Kind of a waste of time but that's Linux BB!
Conclusion
Linux is badass and I should use it more. Open source tech is going to takeover. All of us here in cryptoland know this to be true. It's only a matter of time before open-source transparency is more profitable than closed-source bloatware.
Now that I no longer have an unhealthy gaming addiction and I no longer need an OS that can run games like WOW and LOL, a transition to Linux for me seems more possible than ever. It's a very exciting prospect considering just how badass it is and how much experience/stability I can gain by finally jumping into the deep end with the big boys. No more water-wings!
Good times.
