Why Linux?

(The post title here is kind of a double entendre, get it? I'm explaining why I chose the thing, while it took me a while to do so, and I'm asking it why it's doing this to me, like "Why, Linux?")

I've always had this 'thing', you see: whenever somebody pesters me about something, even if I know it's 'better', or at least want to try it out, I avoid doing so with all my might, until they stop pestering me.

And back until a short while ago, Linux used to be a thing that some people were so enthusiastic about, and they had just discovered this brave new world, that they kept going on and on and on about it, and comparing it to other OSs, and all that. Which, of course, got to me.

Now, enough time has passed that pretty much whoever was going to bother, even with Ubuntu - the 'easy', 'dumbed down' distro - out there for a few years, that everyone, pretty much, and their brother, has Linux.

So, here I come in. I downloaded and installed Ubuntu, back at the Jaunty Jackalope (9.04) stage, as a second-booting OS, along with Windows 7. And, you know, other than managing to install my printer and sound card drivers for some reason, I was using it, loving it, getting used to it enough that it was now my primary booting OS, with me using win7 only to print something that needed printing and to talk on Skype if I really, really wanted to, enough to reboot for it.

For some reason, I've been forced back to win7 now, though, because... one (otherwise) fine day, Ubuntu 10.04, which I'd now upgraded to and used for a few days (but there was no jackalope here, just a reportedly lucid lynx, and the bunny-with-horns was my friend by now!), decided not to be able to connect to my WiFi, just barely detecting that it's there, but having no viable reception of it to allow it to connect.

My problem here, you see, other than the fact that any Linux distro relies so desperately on Internet access (which I otherwise love it for, being the 'team' OS that it is), is that I've lost loads of the savvy people that I used to hang out with a lot as a student etc, and I have nobody at the tip of my palm to ask about things.

And, yes, I've used the Ubuntu forums, finding them more than helpful there, with loads of people immediately trying to help as best they can with my problem. The thing is, however, that they're not here, and although I tried to explain this as best I could there, that's nowhere the same as... well, having a geeky guy come over to your place and fidget with the thing enough to find out what's wrong - and fix it for you.

So, here I am now, posting from my... (wait for it, I'm becoming one of them now!) Win-blows, and having no idea what to do, all alone in this place that feels like a damp and empty place compared to the otherwise community-oriented and supported place that my Linux is...

(oh, it has more music in that world too, they even have a separate Last.fm app which you don't have to launch your browser for - and they're soon putting up a Linux version of Steam, I hear/read, so when gaming is no longer an issue, and since I've solved my Photoshop and Premiere issues with different apps there - I'm using GIMP now! - I was hoping to move there for good...)

Oh, and I recommend that you read this post listening to a song from my teenage years which I was singing to myself (well, the refrain, that talks about doing what they told me), because of the fact that  I did it, after all, but it sux that it took me so long.