For the past few days I’ve been struggling with one of the operating systems on my laptop. I have Windows but I really dislike it. Not just for the fact that Microsoft can and will share your personal information with whom they chose. (you actually agree to this in the set-up process) but I find it a bit clunky. It takes a while to load up and, in my experience, tends to slow down over time. I will have to wait and see with Windows 10 as I only upgraded to it a couple of months ago. According to Microsoft W10 is the final version and there will just be updates from now on.
I would love to have a Mac Book but like all Apple products, they are well out of my price range, so about a year ago I dabbled with Linux operating systems on my old laptop. It had become so slow running Windows 7 that it was barely usable and no amount of defraging and deleting surplus software improved it. So I tried Linux and was delighted with the result. There are hundreds of different Linux versions and after trying a couple I settled on Linux Mint linuxmint.com.
I found it clean looking and fast….. really fast, especially after the clunky slow-coach of Windows 7. Initially, I dual booted it so whenever I fired up my laptop I could choose whether to use Windows or Mint. Eventually I just used Linux all the time as it never slowed and was great for me. All software is free and most Microsoft programs have a free equivalent except for a couple which I use, hence the dual booting. Then, sadly, a couple of months ago my old laptop became unusable when some of the keys stopped working, particularly the space bar, which made it impossible and really frustrating to write anything. Like all things in life these moments never come along when there’s a surplus of funds but I can’t live without my computer so I bought a cheap laptop. It came with an upgrade to Windows 10 and as I didn’t like the pre-installed Windows 8.1 I upgraded. It is an improvement but I really missed my Mint.
After much reading and playing I managed to get past the Windows desire to not allow you to meddle with any computer that its installed on and dual booted it with Mint. So I now had the best of both worlds until today. Aaaaargh … for some reason I can’t load Mint and it’s amazing just how frustrating it is, not being to access my favourite OS but I’m working with the Mint community and I will sort it out. I won’t allow it to beat me, never do.
It’s just so frustrating when things don’t work as you want them to
My Write 