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I waited for almost a week, begging on hands and knees to get my beloved laptop back from my kids. Well, not really, but it really was a week that I waited to get it from them. Afterwards, the Grub Menu was missing. The laptop would only go straight to Windows 10.
The Grub Menu is that menu you see on a dual boot that gives you the choice of running, for instance, Ubuntu or Windows 10. It was missing.
I was upset thinking my children had done something to mess up my laptop. I always say, though, that before you ask someone, you should Google. I found it was not an uncommon problem with dual-booting between Linux and Windows. At the end of the article there is an example.
With the Grub menu missing, I booted from a flash drive with Ubuntu 17.10. As soon as I got to the desktop, Software Update told me there were updates available and asked me if I wanted to do the update. I did the update and restarted the computer.
Unlike with Windows, I didn't need to restart the computer because of the update. I suspected the Grub Menu would be fixed by the update, so I wanted to see if it had been restored.
Upon booting, there was the Grub Menu. A Windows update messed up my laptop (partially) and an Ubuntu update fixed it.
People will say that Linux can't do everything Windows can do, then, instead of listing those things, eg. graphics manipulations, playing games, etc, they will list Skyrim, Photoshop. These are ‘programs’ you can run in Windows – not what you can ‘do’ on Windows that you can't do on Linux. You can play games on Windows, you can play games on Linux. You can do graphics manipulation on Windows, you can do graphics manipulation on Linux. You can play music on Windows, You can play music on Linux.
Saying Windows can do things that Linux can't and then quoting specific apps is a poor argument. Every platform or OS has OS-specific programs, programs available for only that OS. I can't run some of the Star Wars apps available on my wife's iPad on my Android tablet, because they are not available for Android. So I guess, using that logic, I could say “iOS can do things that Windows can't.– Windows can't play Star Wars…..(fill in the blank) for IOS”. When I had an iBook running OS X, it had different, OS X only, APPS, that did the same things as Windows only APPS. Some better, some worse. But they did the same thing. Don't say Linux can't run Photoshop – say Linux can't do Graphics manipulation. That's a true argument. But Linux can do graphics manipulation, etc, etc. Just not the same apps, which is true with every platform/OS.
You can either choose an Operating System for the quality of the Operating System, or you can choose it for what programs are available, or you can try to find a balance between the two. For me, Linux, and specifically Ubuntu, gives me the best performance of any Operating System, and it’s stable and secure. I chose it for its quality, not what programs were available. Yet there is an incredible set of programs available. It's just that some programs are not the same ones available in Windows.
People, usually ignorant about modern Linux, discredit Linux, and claim Windows is superior. Even if they look at modern Linux, they may have a bag full of complaints and criticism about Linux. It doesn't look as good as……. Fill in the blank. The games are not as good as…… I have even heard of Linux being criticized for the price. Free. How can it be any good if it's free?
Let's explore that. Windows has always cost money until Microsoft gave it away for a short period. Yet Windows has deserved criticism for many reasons: Lack of stability, BSODs (Blue Screen Of Death), and many others. If Windows was a series of cars, Microsoft would be out of business for all the warranty repairs they had to do. No one would put up with a car that stalled randomly. Unless they got it for free.
That brings us back to free. Linus Torvalds did the work of creating the first version of Linux which he released to the world for free. Since then, programmers all over the world have been working to improve Linux and then releasing their work for free. People create different versions of Linux we call distro's, such as Ubuntu, Ubuntu Mate, Linux Mint, and release it for free.
If someone gives me something for free, I'm not very critical of it. It's free. They worked hard on it and gave it away for free. In fact modern Linux doesn't have much to be critical of, at least not any more than MacOS or Windows, and it's free.
Linux is free. Windows costs money. Yet modern Linux performs at least as well as modern Windows – if not better, and it's free.
So if you are considering Linux, or you are using Linux and you see Mac or Windows users making such intellectual remarks as “Linux sucks!”, don't be discouraged about using Linux. Remember it's free. All Operating Systems have flaws, but Linux is at least equal to Windows and MacOS, and it's free.
Did I mention that it's free?