My last few weeks have been defined by computer woes.  Even this morning, it took several tries and a software update to create this post.  You may know this feeling.

The recent round of woes began when I started exploring the possibilities of a divorce.  (Not from my lovely wife–that would be incredibly stupid.  How could I live without her?)  I’d like to part ways with MS and Windows.

Many of us were unhappy with MS dropping support for XP.  We went to Win 7 because of the reports about Win 8.  We were just over the hump in the learning curve when Win 10 was announced.  Some of you opted for the free upgrade.  And you went back after myriad problems.

I’ve decided not to go there.  There must be a better way.  Right?

Linux has been around for some time, but is there software available?  Yes, there are programs for most of our needs.

Linux comes in various “flavors.”  Son, Scott, was also looking into the same possibility.  We decided that Manjaro was the Linux version to use.  I looked into computers that I had at hand to use for a test bed.  Sylvia’s former (XP) computer had the hardware that would play well with the new OS.

Seven times, I tried to download the disk image for Manjaro.  Seven times, the download was corrupt.  While this was going on, the test computer died.  Aargh!

It was time for a day (or so) off.  That helped.

My former XP computer is newer than the recently departed test machine.  The processor has a 64-bit instruction set.  (It’s much faster)  Should have started here.

The 64-bit version of Manjaro, is now installed.  This is the “xfce” version, which means that the web browser, e-mail client, office suite and more were installed with the operating system.  It is working well.  I’ve just begun to test, however.

Is that victory that I sense?  Here’s hoping.