I've been searching for a Unix instance to install over my Windows 11 Lenovo laptop like a smothering pillow, or maybe buy a cheap laptop and slather it with some Unix version or other. I found a website with comprehensive instructions on How to Choke Windows with Unix. Though pretty straight forward, they proved to be unworkable. I managed to get an ISO file of a CD image of a Unix operating system that I could use to format and stuff onto a thumb drive to boot my computer as Unix in the house that Jack built.
Wow. How Gilbert and Sulivanesque. I am the very model of a modern operating sys-tem. I’ll have to work on that.
Ohhh-Kayyy. Now what?
‘Now what’ was that I needed to use some file stuffing program that will mesmerize a thumb drive into thinking it is a CD image that I can then use to load Unix somewhere, the instructions for which are to be found at Internet page A. (Sharp inhale.)
Merrily off to Internet page A went I.
OK. Let’s see. Where are we now?
Internet page A mumbled some jumbo for a while and then suddenly remembered that I needed some talisman from Internet Page B to do what I wanted to do. Click here for some important information. I think Internet Page A was just sloughing me off to get rid of me.
Ummmmmm.
Internet page B, you got it, forwarded me to Internet page C and Internet page C sent me to Internet page A for further orders and punishment.
I was starting to feel Escheresque, or Kafkaesque. Or just plain Unixesque. It was all the same thing by this time.
So I mumbled and I grumbled and blew the house down, then went back to loathing Windows while enduring it like some Stockholm Syndrome detainee. Until some other atrocity surfaced.
Until Windows shit on me some more in other words.
After a particularly painful Windows update, where more 'enhancements' were visited upon us like the plagues of Egypt, Clippy Junior now started pestering me with 'Tips' to which I have to click 'Got it.' Or Windows would throw up some other puerile message that I was forced to read like Alex in A Clockwork Orange. Clippy wouldn't let me out of the chair until I click, 'Yes Mommy' to which Clippy Jr. presumably gives me a thumbs up. Or a Lolly.
And on my Android infestation of MS-Word, it pops up once in a while and asks for approbation, begging me with pleas of, "Are you enjoying Microsoft Word? Please tell me you are! I ever so want to please you. Please tell me you like me, Clarise. I may have to do something drastic if you don't. Why don't you like me?"
I usually just click 'Yes' to stop the lambs from screaming. This time I was fed up. I clicked 'No' in frustration.
Immediately up popped a little text box with a message of, "Why NOT? WHY don’t you like me? Sit here in a corner and think of what you have done! And then, TELL ME WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU? ME? WHAT DON"T YOU LIKE ABOUT ME? I WANT TO KNOW! I MUST KNOW! I WILL KNOW!"
Jesus H-
I snapped.
I wrote back, "Will you stop bothering me and let me write for Christ's sake?" I don't know if that satisfied Mommy, Dearest.
That was it, the click that broke the user's patience.
By sheer determination and a YouTube walk through, I finally got a bootable thumb drive stuck in a computer. Instead of a plumb, I pulled out a Unix image.
Yummy.
Eeeex-cept... I couldn't get it to boot.
For the love a-
I couldn't get my Lenovo laptop to give me the, 'Who do you want to boot from?" screen. I had a thumb drive with Linux in its bootable form loaded. I had what I thought were valid instructions on how to get said bootable disk to, you know, boot. I had it all! Or so I thought.
Let's see. What does it tell me? Take your Windows 11 machine-Check. Cold start or restart it-Check. Press F1... or F4, or F5, or F6, or F7, or maybe F12… Or Delete-Che. Huh? Delete?
Sure, why not? It might as well be a multiple choice question. Why don’t you just admit it. You have no idea...
Then, once I can see the list of bootable instances, I just have to tell it to boot from the external disk..., stick..., thingey. Check…, I guess.
What. It. Said.
After several hours I give up and decided to mow the lawn with my new lawn mower (Hey, it booted up. And ran even! Without any finagling! I didn’t even have to press F1.) Check!
Finally, I came back in and Got The Damned Thing Working! The trick was to press the Magic Masonic emblem-I mean, press the 'Fn' key THEN press F1 (or F2, or F3, or F-whatever.) Wonders and miracles! The damn thing worked!
The first time it went, 'Huh?' and booted up the normal, hated Windows 11 instance. I was beginning to think that my PC was possessed. Or at the very lease that it hates me. Get in line. Maybe I need an exorcist, not a boot disk? By this point I’ll try anything.
I tried again and, “Oh,” I said, thought, prayed. “The problem was just that I just hit the enter key, which just booted up the default instance, which was just Windows 11. Just OK.
“If at first you don’t succeed. Well, you know the drill…” I had to move the cursor down to ‘Boot from USB drive,’ and hit enter. And then...
...I love the smell of Mint booting up in the morning.
I got an instance of Linux Mint staring me in the face!
Now what?
Most of my computational life was on Big Iron Machines like the OS/390 IBM Mainframe running MVS or its latest incarnation. The last five years of my career at UConn was on an AIX mainframe (don’t call them mainframes!) Jeesh, OK. Not a Mainframe.
If it computes like a duck..., but..., whatever. It was IBM’s version of Unix on a… big… computer… (not a mainframe) with lots of processing power and virtual instance capability... You know. Like a-Definitely NOT a mainframe. Yes, we're all Hooked on Semantics. Those programmers with the nice, clean Unix boxes don’t like us with our smelly old mainframes. Computer geeks can be so tribal.
And Mint was touted as being like enough to Windows 11 that a mainframe duffus like myself, who just wants my PC to do stuff for me like word processing, spreadsheets, and surfing the Web without getting all cheeky, could feel comfortable with. Comfortable, but not thrown out a Window. Is that too much to ask?
Time will tell.
But for now, at least, there is nary a Clippy in sight.
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