Of course, I would have liked to tell you how I painlessly and willingly switched to lUbuntu. But unfortunately, my case was quite different. But more on that later — let me start with a bit of history.
I first learned about Linux back in 1998 or 1999. I was still in school when my older brother brought home a couple of Linux discs (I believe it was Linux Mandrake). He split the hard drive that had Windows 98 into two parts and installed the OS. At the time, I was mostly interested in games, but I was still curious to see what a new OS looked like.
Years went by, I entered university and studied. Hardware evolved, and OSes and software evolved with it (or maybe vice versa). For some reason, I kept thinking about Linux, and I wanted to use it as my main OS. I even remember writing “Switched to Linux” in my New Year’s goals every year. But I never managed to do it. The reason was simple — habits, attachment to daily applications, and lack of knowledge on how to properly configure the OS.
At that time, I chose a newer distribution — Mandriva Linux with the KDE interface, hoping it would at least slightly resemble my beloved Windows XP. I installed it — used it for a week — deleted it. That happened several times. Then I decided to take a smarter approach: to transition gradually. Alongside Microsoft Office, I installed OpenOffice, GIMP, and a few other programs and tried using them. I got used to OpenOffice, but GIMP was difficult. So again, I installed Linux, worked for a week or three — and deleted it. Sad, I wanted to switch, but I couldn’t. Eventually I gave up and forgot about it.
Years passed. I was still using the same old PC I had back in university. I really worked on it — but it was unbearable! It lagged terribly. I remember page reloads took about 5 seconds. At the same time, I had Opera, Eclipse, Total Commander, AIMP, ICQ, Denwer, and a few more small programs running. So I decided to install Linux lUbuntu (as the most lightweight option) on my laptop and work on it instead. If something didn’t work, I could go back to WinXP. It worked! That setup lasted for 8–12 months. I found the necessary drivers and configured everything. Eventually, I realized I was ready to move over 100%.
The migration was difficult. I was planning to install lUbuntu on an old desktop PC. And because of outdated hardware, installation was very problematic — the video card driver refused to work. But after downloading a distro with a “simple” installer interface, I finally made the leap.
It happened — lUbuntu was installed (and XP stayed on the laptop just in case :)). Unfortunately, I didn’t realize my desktop was so old that even Linux lagged on it. After working for about two months, I switched them: laptop — lUbuntu, desktop — WinXP. I also had to buy a switch to connect one monitor to both machines.
A year or year and a half later, I bought a new PC that could easily run Windows 8 — but I still chose to install lUbuntu, because I didn’t need beauty or effects. What matters to me is performance, stability, and convenience. And this OS has all of that. Bugs too, unfortunately.
