Jim Guckin

  When I first tried getting into Linux almost 10 years ago, I found that is was hard to learn from the world of Windows that I had grown up learning.  If I haven’t mentioned in the past, I have a horrible memory which makes remembering new commands in a OS I didn’t use often, almost possible.  I tried for almost a year.  At the time, many people had suggested using Fedora and Redhat, that they’d be the easier choices to learn.

After many frustrating nights, just trying to get all my drivers working and figuring out the new commands and such, like most newbies I just gave up. The nerd in me wanted that Linux cred and every couple of years I would  mount the Linux learning Quest and try once again to get Linux on my systems.  Each time, I ended up getting frustrated and blowing away the system in order than I could just go back to my old safe windows.

This month, I took some new advice and attempted once again to learn the Linux beast.  I asked a friend, who used Linux, what flavor would best for me to try, and was pointed at Ubuntu.  Living in the world of Virtual Computers, I loaded my VirtalBox software and loaded it up and started playing with it.  I’m sure true Linux purist, would scoff at this flavor because of it’s ease of use.

Ubuntu is now slowly creeping it’s way into my daily use, as installing programs is easier and it found most of my drivers on several machines I tested it on.  It has come a far way from the command line intensive predecessors and though still more complex than your average windows system, has become easier to use.

Now what does all this have to do with a tech blog?  Well for years, there has been been many awesome network diagnostic tools that I’ve been without because I just didn’t want to get into the complicated world of linux.