The Facts

So first off, I will give a little background. I am a fairly experienced Windows user. I have been using Windows since Windows 3.1 (and DOS on my parent's 286 before that). I have owned probably 20 or so computers in my life. Almost always using Windows.

I have dabbled for brief periods with Linux. I first learned of its existence back in the late 90s when a goofy nerd I worked with was using Red Hat. It all looked awfully complicated to me, and for no good reason (I thought at the time). I installed Ubuntu 6.X for a couple weeks quite a few years ago, but got bored or frustrated with a driver issue. I installed Xubuntu on a laptop 2 years ago, but never really used it and ended up re-installing Windows XP and selling the machine.

I recently aquired and old laptop for free. Its a Gateway MX6123 with a 1.5GHz Celeron M and 500MB or RAM. The display had no backlight and it was missing the left Shift key. I did a little research and saw that the driver board was more likely than the bulb itself to be the culprit for the display issue. I found a used driver board on Amazon for $4.99 including shipping. I installed it and sure enough the display lit up no problem. I ordered a Shift key from LaptopKey.com for another $6.50. Now I have a fully functional laptop for $11.50. I decided to splurge and order a couple 1GB sticks of ram, $17.50 for the pair, but they have not arrived yet. That will bring my total spent up to about $29.

I initially installed XP on my new machine, but realized pretty quickly that XP is old, boring, ugly and buggy. Microsoft finally dumped support for it, so updating is a little more irritating than it used to be. Windows 7 or 8 wouldnt work well on it even after I get my 2GB of RAM and I don't have copies of those OSs around anyway. Only one option left..

Hello Linux. I did a little looking around and decided Lubuntu was the distrobution for me and my hardware. Its been 2 weeks now. There have been some speedbumps, but I have to say overall, Linux has come a long way as far as usability for "normal" non-hackernerd users without compromizing the controlability that the hackernerd requires.