Linux or more correctly GNU/Linux has been one of my on/off passions from 1997—or thereabouts, anyway. I can’t even recall how many times I have tried to install Linux distros on different hardware, how many sleepless nights I’ve had, and how many hours of my life I’ve spent editing config files to make everything work—sounds frustrating, right?

In 2003 I decided to set up a website (http://promote-opensource.org), the aim of which was—yes, you guessed it—to promote free and open source software. The website may be long dead, but the passion for everything open source never left. A lot of things changed since then. One of them is that, unfortunately, I started using Linux less and less, eventually settling for a MacBook Pro that became my faithful companion for more than 5 years—yes, I’ve tried dual-booting it with Linux; that didn’t really work.

Approximately 4 months ago I bought a Dell Inspiron 13 5000 series. At first I used the default Windows 10 installation it came with, until I decided to give Ubuntu 16.10 a try. I wiped out my hard drive, installed Ubuntu, and (guess what) my indifferent little Dell came to life and would ran Ubuntu even better than it would Windows! I recently upgraded to Ubuntu 17.04 and all I can say is that I’m simply elated by how smoothly everything works!

If I were writing this post 10-15 years back, I would most probably be trying to give you lenghty advice and instructions on how to install Linux on your laptop—there was even a Linux on laptops website back then; I wonder if it’s still there. Today, I am more than happy to say that this is not the case. Why? Because everything works the way it’s supposed to!

Thank you, Dell and thank you, Ubuntu :)