New to Linux and this forum - My first post
Greetings and Salutations. This is my first post on this site - to introduce myself and activate advanced functionality.
I am a long time computer aficionado. I worked on Navigation Computers in the US Navy (just keep ze hands in ze pockets and vatch das blinkenLights). I built my first computer in 1981 - it was a kit described in Byte Magazine Circuit Cellar (Steve Ciarcia). Wow, I just entered the WayBaak machine. I have traditionally been a fan of Microsoft products. I have dabbled in Linux occasionally (usually cygwin), and have always liked the command line capabilities. I have never actually fully immersed myself in the Linux World before.
I am ready to make the switch. I want to be able to control my computers more than I am allowed using traditional OS's. I have been thinking about making the switch to Linux for several years, and have been slowly researching the options and choices.
My first effort will be to convert one of my Windows Machines over to a Linux Media Server. This box was originally built to be a Windows Media Center machine - if you have followed WMC you will know that Microsoft abandoned WMC users a while back. Apps like Plex and KODI are much better solutions anyway. I have chosen ArchLinux with KVM to be the OS for this box, with servers running in VMs. I may change to a different solution after I play with this for a while. I will be setting up a RAID in this box - the motherboard has onboard RAID, but I want a solution that will allow me to migrate to another motherboard in the future, so using the onboard RAID is a non-starter.
My second effort will be to convert my Daily PC into a Linux Box. I have not decided yet which distro to use there, but I am liking Linux Mint so far. I have been running Linux Mint in a VirtualBox VM for a while and am liking it. Again, my choice of distro may change.
Finally, let me say I feel like Microsoft is no longer my friend. Since the release of Win10, and due to their abandonment of WMC, I feel like they are no longer concerned with my experience using their products.
I have to use Windows at work, and eventually they will force me over to Win10, but I am holding out as long as I can. By the time I have to make the switch at work I want all the idiosyncrasies to be solved.
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