Ubuntu Wiki

About Me

Computer history

I finally had the last straw with Vista. You know what I mean. I came over to Ubuntu on a friend's recommendation in 2008 with version 8.04, and have been an enthusiastic part of the community since then.

I had previously worked on Unix, although back in those ancient days it was command-line only. There was much in Linux that I found familiar, including the dreaded vi, so I took to the command line easily. I first started on computers even before the days of DOS, and have had the experience of working with many systems, including DEC, IBM, Hitachi, OS/2, Windows (of course), Apple, and more. My most fun days have been in solving crises, where confused people, not computers, were the problem, and where it ultimately took those same wonderful people, not computers, to solve the problem!

I found the community spirit in Ubuntu Forums to be quite unlike any other online forum that I'd experienced. (Fortunately, since then, I have found other forums with equally good spirit, albeit in subjects unrelated to computers.) Anyway, I got involved in Ubuntu. Until I became ill with a lifelong condition, I was an enthusiastic participant, helping where I could, and learning where I couldn't help. I was called on to volunteer to help the Ubuntu manual team, which lasted only briefly because it was around then when my illness became bad. I've come to appreciate the straightforward nature of AskUbuntu, although it doesn't have quite the same fun joviality as the forums. I have created a few Community how-to pages a couple of which (to my surprise and delight) have been used as a reference by other people and blogs, although the pages are somewhat dated now. I have also been involved with bug reporting and testing.

When other people have had trouble with Windows, I have gently suggested that they try Ubuntu "as an experiment". Several of them have stuck with Ubuntu for its simplicity and reliability, the most recent being one where Windows 7 forced a Windows 10 update on a machine that Microsoft itself had documented was incompatible with Windows 10 (go figure!). Don't get me wrong — I think that Windows 10 is a good product (the first good OS from MS in my personal opinion), but the community support just isn't the same as for Ubuntu. My children also prefer Ubuntu, except for my computer-expert son who prefers Arch, although all of them are perfectly capable in Windows.

I love the way that Ubuntu supports other distributions, either directly (e.g. Lubuntu) or indirectly (e.g. Mint). Personally, I prefer Ubuntu or, for older machines, Lubuntu.

I don't know why, but both encryption and virtualisation have always fascinated me. To my (old) mind, they seem mystical, almost magical! I choose VirtualBox for virtualization for no reason other than it's the only product that I know.

Next…

The Ubuntu Installer offers full-disk encryption, but it doesn't allow dual booting, hibernation, encrypted boot, and more. I recently managed to crack this — with huge help from too many sources to name them all, even though at least one of them used one of my how-to pages as a reference (ha ha), and from VirtualBox, without which I would have given up ages ago. I shall document this how-to on the Community pages soon, and then ask for testers to find what I might have missed.

Me

Although I have (actually, had) great computer skills, that's not my area of passion! For all my faults, I am a therapist of sorts, although my illness has prevented me from doing much with it, to my intense disappointment. I'm a family man, but a single parent now, living in a large village with a great community by the City of Dreaming Spires.

Testimonials

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Paddy is one of the forum's great guys. Knowledgeable, helpful, infinitely patient, courteous and of good cheer. A joy to be around—and he's been around for a long time. Ubuntu Membership is well deserved and long past his due. DuckHook