LOL, I started out with DOS. Ran a dot matrix printer and I figured out how to get everything lined up on pre-printed invoices that you get from office supply as continuous with the holes in the edge and serrations to tear off one invoice, triple copy with white, pink and yellow copies. I had fun.
Linux has a different set of commands for the most part. (cp = copy) I’ve always used Thinkpads which tend to have good compatibility with Linux. Never used Linux pre-GUI and have always used Ubuntu distros.
I’ve got Kubuntu 20.04 LTS running on a Lenovo W530 Thinkpad and it just screams. Shut down time is less than 5 seconds and dual boot startup time is less than 15 seconds. Kubuntu has the Plasma desktop which has lots of bells and whistles and runs fast. Didn’t used to. It was buggy for years.
Always liked the off-lease business Thinkpads because I can get parts for them on ebay which is also where I buy the laptops. I’ve never owned a new PC. I figure any PC that gets leased by the hundreds of thousands to big businesses has to be built pretty well. Dell is another but I can download a manual for Thinkpads that tells me how to replace any part all the way down to the mobo.(without breaking any plastics)
I got it fixed using boot-repair burned to a thumbdrive.
Part of the problem is that Linux will spit out something like “Authentication needed...” and doesn’t tell you WHICH password it wants, user or root? Once I got that straightened out, I tried and tried and tried to burn an ISO image to DVD - no luck at all.
Anyways it’s now OK, Linux Mint on my main drive, a 240GB SSD unit and Windows XP on a second drive.
I still think XP is the best OS I’ve ever used on the PC.
Thanks for your help!