My geekery will get me in trouble one of these days.
I was playing on my new dual-core piece of Android goodness, the HTC EVO 4G LTE, which replaced my first foray into Android, the original HTC EVO 4G. As y’all know, I had ruminated publicly about going to iOS, and opted to stay with Android, but had been quite satisfied with the OG EVO till the EVO LTE dropped.
As most people acquainted with my tech side know, I consider it a personal affront (yes, to myself) to have a stock Android device for more than a few minutes. So, I promptly jumped on XDA Forums to get some SU info as soon as the device hit my hands.
Root time!
XDA
XDA is a smartphone modder’s paradise. If you are into tricking out your phone on the software side, XDA is your fixer. There is no legit hacking community quite like it. I consider myself fairly competent when it comes to technical stuff, and nothing humbles me more than reading threads there for a few minutes. Some of the people there are incoherent in their brilliance. For custom ROMs, themes, legit applications, tutorials, and advice, there is no better place on the web. Those boys and girls are so sharp, I generally need people to help me parse all the intelligent stuff. I usually use the good folks at Android Forums to break it down for mere mortals like me.
So, I needed to root to get security-off and reach mythical super user status. Of course, HTC made rooting this device a bit harder by tweaking the bootloader. While getting security-off was not really needed to get custom things done, I still wanted it. At this point, early on in the device’s lifespan, there are not too many ways to get this done, so I picked the most common, via a program called Lazy Panda. It was initially released to be used on Linux Distros via terminal commands. A Windows variant was soon released by the developer, but just about everyone with Linux machines reported first-time success. Plus, the Windows method looked to be a bit more complex; an old device driver could mess up the process and cause device soft bricking.
At the root, Android is a mobile OS with Linux pedigree. One set of root instructions detailed a seemingly infallible way to run the program via Ubuntu. I started reading and was hooked. I decided to try doing this in Linux, a desktop OS I had never seen, much less used.
Enter: Ubuntu
I learned how to load Ubuntu via Live CD. Playing around, I was entranced with the usable simplicity of Linux. I liked the interface and I found it to be quite intuitive. The most fun, weirdly enough, was invoking terminal and running raw commands. Using commands given to me by a forumite I trust, I was able to get the Panda bamboo and achieve security-off status in no time.
But now, I cannot stop thinking of Linux. I see the calming purple of Ubuntu when I sleep. I am humbled by the way people gaze upon me now, and bask in the self-created light of OS superiority. I slip the word Ubuntu into conversations now (“Hey sweetheart, can you look up this website? In Ubuntu, please. How do you do that on a Windows machine? I am so glad you asked…”).
All in all, Android OS drew me in to a whole new world. My next machine will be Ubuntu, and I’ll enjoy it till I figure out that a lot of my favorite programs don’t have Ubuntu ports.
Till then, I am in love.
Have you experienced Ubuntu?
Kevin says
Ubuntu is a phenomenal Linux distro. It’s Debian roots help a lot. In my experience with Linux, it’s phenomenal for beginners, but once you progress and no longer have to have a GUI (that’s far more impressive than running Ubuntu with Gnome), there are other distros that are much more powerful…especially when you start running production Linux servers. Ubuntu is my last choice when it comes to that. 🙂
…that said, welcome to the other side. 😉
Tre Lawrence says
Kevin: thanks for the pointers. So far, the love is still strong. Are you able to use a Linux machine as your daily driver?
Kevin says
Nope…I work in a Windows environment, and my Linux boxes are CLI only. I keep an SSH window open at all times though 🙂
Eric J says
Yeah Ubuntu was my main OS for two years!
Alex says
Coming on six years of using Linux! Still in love, even through the rough times. I’m currently using Xubuntu (a spin off of Ubuntu using the XFCE desktop, so it’s a little faster than the standard Ubuntu). As Kevin said, welcome. 😀
Tre Lawrence says
Thank you, thank you… still in the honeymoon phase!