It's Amazing and Comforting ...

... how easy it's become to move between operating systems, including when you've just blown your sh*t up and have to start from scratch. Back in, say, 2003, it was always tedious and sometimes terrifying (as I found when a boot sector virus kept eating Windows 98 and I spent a frantic 16 hours figuring out how to install and use Mandrake Linux).

A short time ago, I nuked ChromeOS Flex in favor of Lubuntu on my ATOPNUC Mini PC, and other than the various tweaks I always do to get the desktop looking/functioning the way I prefer, the transition was pretty simple. Since most of my stuff is done in the browser, and since I use Google Chrome, all I had to do was install Chrome and log into my Google account. Voila, all my stuff was there, except for my preferred text editor (Caret), which is a Chrome app, and those no longer work in Linux. I installed Geany, which is what I had used before leaving Linux for MacOS back in the day, and I was good to go.

I've been previewing/reviewing other Linux distributions. The other day I installed Zorin alongside Lubuntu based on some positive reviews I'd read. Frankly, it's not ready for prime time. So this morning, I decided to give Manjaro a try. I used the 32-bit version on the old Raspberry Pi 4B and liked it, but the 64-bit version had a freeze-up problem. I figured I'd come back and give it a try on my AMD CPU (the Pi is an ARM CPU).

So I downloaded the ISO, burned it to a USB, booted the USB, clicked "install," assigned it to the Zorin partition, and voila ... it had screwed up the GRUB file somehow such that NOTHING displayed on boot except:

> GRUB:

I only ever edit GRUB via GUI, had no idea what to do from scratch in a command line, etc.

Well, OK ... I ended up booting into the Manjaro USB and reinstalling it as the ONLY operating system.

And after a few minutes of setup (installing Chrome and Geany, logging into Google so it synced in all my extensions, etc.), I'm writing this post. All I have left to do is delete some apps I never use (looking at you, Firefox) and set up Dropbox to be fully back in business.

Or reinstall Lubuntu next to Manjaro so I still have that. Which I might do. But not right now.

Update, 7:45pm: Well, OK, right now. And not next to Manjaro, instead of Manjaro. Because after it downloaded all its updates and went to reboot, it just sat there churning. So after half an hour or so, I reinstalled Lubuntu and Lubuntu alone. So I'm right back where I was about three days ago. Which isn't a terrible place to be, but geez.