My Grouse with Microsoft Windows

Even though, I do not use Window at all, the catalyst for my migration to Linux was none other than Microsoft Monopoly.

1. I was new to Linux.

2. I made a leaflet for presentation for university non academic staff.

3. I found a bright guy who was in the minor staff.

4. I trained him for hardware stuff. 

 

The guy who occupied the official technical slot was an idiot.

5. Slide Numbers allowed for my presentation was deliberately limited.

6. A formal certificate was awarded.

7. This was long time ago.

8. One of the non technical (clerical and she was assigned to me) girl was allowed to attend on the request made by the chief technician. 

This guy is diseased.

I could not refuse.

9. She went to Canada within a month. 

She did not tell me that she was leaving. 

My grouse was she took the place which somebody else deserved.

She only typed a single letter (by this time I was doing my stuff myself, including my Thesis), for me in nearly five months.

10. I called her and said, she cannot put me as a referee for her work in Canada. 

I would give bad reference, in fact the real reference. 

 

After this incident nobody asked any reference from me.

 

Outside the University, I identified three and guided them in Linux.

Two (asked them not to come back) went abroad on their own accord and the third guy Indika, now holds an executive post in MobiTel.

That is a long preamble.

Coming to Microsoft, at about the same time, I met a young (tiny) guy in Kandy who was running a computer outlet in his home coveted to sales outlet. 

He used to go to Singapore and bring stuff which I used to buy at exorbitant price. None of them (Window based) are in working order now. 

I vandalized them for hardware parts.

1. He organized an exhibition in Kandy for schools so that he can dish out all shoddy Microsoft stuff.

2. He gave me an invitation.

3. He did not know, I was an Amateur Linux Guy. 

I asked him to reserve a stall for me with 3 computers. 

He said OK.

4. I went there on the opening day with a friend of mine. 

Invited a few others none came. 

There not coming save me a huge embarrassment. 

We could not get in until all the students were allowed. 

 

Thinking that I have stall inside, I did not bother.

5. We went in and there was no stall for me and the guy was hiding, unable to face me.

6. This was hosted in Queen's Hotel ballroom. 

This is were we had the last Medical Dance.

So I went with my friend for a beer (I never take the stuff in the morning only after working hours well past 4.30PM).

7. Then we saw a few, may be six, school children ordering beer. 

We chased them away. 

They were bribed by this guy. 

 

We got to know Rs.500,000/= was dished out by Microsoft to hold the exhibition.

8. Immediately, I posted a Web  Piece exposing this sordid affair.

9. I became a full time Linux Guy on that day.

10. The booklet revised became my first book on Linux on Amazon Books. 

It is available for purchase but there are more than five more books on Linux by me, there.

My next book "Linux Essentials" is ready for publication.

This piece is a pre-publication advertisement. 

 

I think I would insinuate this piece in that book.

 

My First Computer to Intel's NUC

My basic  NUC with WiFi and Bluetooth is cute.

My first computer was huge, heavy and was a  beast (a behemoth).

I cannot lift it BUT it's RAM is only 4MB.

 

It boots up with only a Floppy Drive and I cannot believe all my research work was done on it.

This may be the first research work done on a computer (earlier it was done on paper and a typewriter) in my Faculty.

The University did not have a computer.

I did the some pioneering work on the network of computers  (only 5 computers) having RAM of 16MB, computers discarded from America).

By the way network does not need lot of memory and the server did provide the workload. 

For my research work I used Windows 95 and Office.

 

The office with bad macros could not get my paper output for publication of the research thesis and the full print out (I bought a dot mat printer and later Cannon Large printer and still later a digital scanner from my pocket saving from UK). 

University had none.

They all are in working order except the dot max printer (which I threw, to the junk yard) and they are filling my bedroom. 

This piece is about my entry into Linux distributions. 

Since my paper out put of Microsoft Office was bad was bad I used Sun Solaris OpenOffice 1 for my research work. It removed all the Microsoft Macros and I got the paper layout of my research thesis in A4 papers amounting to about 180 pages.

Then I did some research and found Debian, Suse, Mandriva, XandrOS and Redhat Boot CDs and booted them on a 10 GB hard disk.

 

That is my Linux beginning without a GURU but with lot of books. 

I still have those Boot CDS but the computer is dead.

 

Multiple distributions in one PC with only 4MB Video RAM and 128RAM.

I never looked back on Microsoft  again after my research work was accepted by the University.

Original hard disk was only 2GB.

I revived the computer and stuck a 80 GB hard disk and I would try to install Debian on it today (only one CD) and others need at least 3 CDs for installation.

Windows had about 40 odd floppies.

 

Migration from HDD (Parallel) to  serial SATA was a long journey and I love the NUC with 8GB RAM and 320 SATA inside and another 320GB on an external case.

In my NUC, I have Mint (Ubuntu replacement), Debian, Emmabantus and Ubuntu installed and they are running smoothly on 18 Watts out put and without noise.

 

Currently it has 4 instances of Debian ONLY. 

Endless OS is on my OLD ACER Laptop.

What a turn around in my life with Linux.

 

Beauty of Linux is Linux run on any old hardware and new hardware, too.

I tend to do this just before Christmas BUT I did it by 3rd of October, 2023.

 

I have three month holiday from Linux.

Why I hate Microsoft and Bill Gate

Windows is a shoddy operating system and resource hungry where my first computer with 2 MB RAM could not handle Win 95 but I used Debian 6 with over 6CDs could do a better job then.
Later I migrated to Redhat since there were many books written from Redhat 7 onward.

Then of course, Caldera, Debian and Mandriva and still later Knoppix took me to New Heights in Linux.

About Mr. Bill Gate I have nothing personal to say and his divorce probably is good for both.

Hanging onto a breaking relationship is nerve racking to any human being.

I hope both do some productive work on their own volition.

My grouse with him is his ploy with manufacturers to insinuate OEM hardware with  BOGUS MEFI (it was named Unified Framework but I used M for Microsoft here for his personal use) or framework interface was an atrocious business plan to stifle Linux users.

I do not have to take permission from Bill Gate to use open source Linux in my laptop initially installed with Microsoft Windows.

It does not let me use legacy BIOS and still have a UEFI script hidden in the memory or within the hardware architecture of the OEM portion.

Simple method to overcome this ploy is to stick a SD of at least 32 GB and install the boot loader there.

UEFI won't let you use legacy GRUB to boot multiple Linux distributions.

I have now tried Linux ESP partition to bypass UEFI blocking mechanism.

If OEM guys says no boot medium even after having installed a Linux.distribution, this is what you have to do.

1. Download BSD TRUE OS DVD, Debian DVD 1 and Genome Partition (GPT) iso CD.

2. Install TRUE OS and it virtually takes over the Disk Drive of your laptop.

3. Unfortunately it does not let you boot any other distribution.

4. Boot GPT partition disk.
Delete the tank partition of BSD leaving only the ESP partition which the TRUE OS had created.

Then.partition the disk.with Ex4 or Btrfs partitions.

5. Mount Debian DVD and install.

You.have the option of using the unused part of the hard disk but remember to.mount ESP partition (but do not format the  ESP lest partition.details are erased).

There is a very simple solution, if the Microsoft Media is not bootable.

1. Buy a mounted SATA disk and attach it to the Laptop.
One terabyte is cheap now.
I sometime go.to.Singapore and do my usual shopping and see offers for about a week and by all.the stuff one third the price in Ceylon.
Now Coronavirus has put a stop to it.

Coming back to the external SATA disk one partitions it, they way one likes it.

Ultimately install a Linux distribution to boot from.while attached to the laptop.

The GRUG boot loader will detect the distributions unbootable from the laptop and boot them via the external disk.

One can use a SD card or USB but installing  a distribution in a tightly packed USB is slow and may break down in the middle  of the installation.

That problem one does not encounter with a one terabyte external disk.

I have used my innovative methods to erase OEM blocking ploy with BSD and then to install Debian thereafter.

Unfortunately even Ubuntu gives up and succumb to UEFI ploy and it destroyed my booting options.

Only BSD does erase everything and install ESP partition.

Not even Debian can handle it.