I believe this to be true, the more you look the more you see. Since my third foray into Linux, I have been more dedicated and paid more attention to how it behaves. Today is going to be for those who don’t know much or are considering Linux, pretty much like me. If you are an old hat (or Redhat) then nothing I am going to say is revolutionary.

Let’s start at the beginning. Linux is an open source operating system. For that reason, there are many distributions or flavors if you will. So, I have tried Ubuntu and Mint as my distributions. They both branch off of Linux called Debian but then further fork into their own distinct operating systems. Think of it this way, the distribution has a bunch or other programs wrapped on top of the operating system. These are things like word processing, spreadsheets, email programs are all part of the distribution.

Part of the reason that this is important is because when you go to look for programs to install or support, you need to know what type of distribution you have. Different distributions will have different programs and even syntax on how to do it. I think that the Ubuntu/Mint is the dominant distribution so fortunately you can usually find something that works. But, there are literally almost infinite possibilities. Talk about confusing for a newbie.

Open Source means exactly what it says. Anyone with the technical chops could create their own version or distribution of Linux. I don’t know exactly how you get involved in Ubuntu, but somebody has some passion for some element which drives change. These could be error fixes or enhancements or even new features.

I think that we are all used to update notifications in the software in our lives. Now that I have been using Ubuntu daily, I am noticing a high number of updates. I would estimate that there is one every three or four days. In some ways, this is the beauty of Linux. We the user have a chance to say yes we want them or no we do not. I myself being just a casual user and not having any real reason not to do them, just say yes. Since it is not my primary computer, it feels like I log in daily to see if I have any updates to run.

It seems like everything Linux does fine. But, I am seeing a problem with firmware updates. I have one that won’t take because Microsoft forces a signature of the hardrive and the motherboard (even though I am not even running Windows). The supposed risk is that someone could physically login and defeat my security. I am not too worried about that since it is at my home. My current strategy will be to ignore it but it does annoy me that the warning pops up as a to do.

One thing that I think is neat is that with each version, the home page background changes. The lobster has now become a minotaur (and a maze) since I updated to 23.10. I guess one other caveat, if you stop frequently updating, you can get out of sync. This happened to me when I ignored the computer for a few months and then I couldn’t perform the incremental updates. It wasn’t until a major revision that I got back in sync.

End Your Programming Routine: Having to do all these things is the beauty and the pain of Linux. I have a lot of control and a lot of responsibility. I want to say that I have been pretty impressed what you can get for free and pretty light weight in its footprint. It is pretty cool that it can be booted from a USB stick and is really a full featured computer. If your are willing to do the work of learning and research, it definitely works.