I finally did it ! With a little help from someone else, I installed Linux on one of my PC's.
The distro I chose is Ubuntu, mainly because it appears to be the most user friendly and best supported for Linux beginners like me.
Image by Ariel Estrada from Pixabay
Linux Installation
I'm aware that there's a learning process with any new operating system. I've been using Windows since the days of 3.11 (yeah, I'm that old....), and it's been a case of re-learning increasingly complex and crappy versions every three or four years.
What stopped me installing Linux totally on my own was simply that Windows 10 took over my PC, ensuring that it treated booting to Wndows as a priority even if another medium was available. It took the help of somoene else to be able to get into the BIOS and force it to boot from the USB stick with the pre-prepared Linux copy.
Once that was done, installing Ubuntu was a very straightforward matter of working through setup screens guessing which was the right answer to various questions.
I also signed up for a Ubuntu One account in order to get free updates and support.
Initial Installations
I've decided that the way I will best learn Linux is to try to work through all the things I do day-to-day on Windows, but try to do it in Ubuntu. It'll happen over a period of time, and I'm not rushing it, but by the end of the process I'll hopefully know whether I can exist online without Microsoft and Google looking over my shoulder making notes.
I can then decide whether to convert my other PC's to Linux and run my business using it. I wonder if there's a safe way to view YouTube without infecting my PC with all kinds of spyware ?
The first thing I tried to download was the Brave browser. It installed fine (it's on the list of apps in Ubuntu), but I did discover a non-Linux problem. In order to get the BAT rewards for Brave Ads, you have to link your Uphold account. But Uphold now insist on downloading thair App to my mobile phone. Fuck off, don't want that crap on my phone, I'm trying to reduce the data trail I'm eleaving behind me. So I've turned Brave ads off for now.
Installing Hive & Keychain
Next up was to install Hive. First step was to install Hive Keychain. For some reason this didn't want to install from their website in Brave and I couldn't find it in the list of extensions (but that might just be me being tired....). So I went back to Firefox, the default browser installed in Ubuntu. Imagine my shock and anger... it turns out Google is the default search engine in Firefox. Grrr. So I switched to DuckDuckGo.
Then I went to extensions, found and installed Keyhain. Manually typing my Hive keys was a pain n the posterior ! Lesson learned; I could have installed an email client in Ubuntu to make it easier to exchange information between two otherwise unlinked PC's, but on the other hand emailing keys creates all kinds of security risk.
Once that was done, I did a round-robin of my favourite Hive front ends. Each has it's upsides, and I tend to use each for slightly different tasks. I'm very pleased to say that each one behaved impeccably. Ecency lets me curate, PeakD claims rewards perfectly (confirming I typed my keys in correctly !), and I'm now typing a post in TheBBHproject.
Conclusion
It's all about setting things up right ! With browser settings tweaked and a few utilities setup, getting Hive up and running in Linux was a doddle, and everything seems to behave. But I have definitely learned to watch out for sneaky pre-installs from the globalist corporations.
All I need to do now is find a better keyboard, the one I'm using has definitely seen better days !
Posted using The BBH Project