Of Crashes, Comebacks & Curious Clicks

Why Linux feels like raising a toddler, and other stories from my week.

Jul 06, 2025

A weekly newsletter: I cover occasional musings, what I’ve been reading, watching, and listening to, plus 10 quiz questions; sent every Sunday at noon.

Last week’s edition is here.

In this edition:

The Linux crash
What I’ve been watching and listening
10 Quiz Questions

Hello!

I have realised one thing about writing for me – it usually comes to me when I am deviated from my normal routine. It could be because of a travel plan, a weekend outing, a new experience, or this week’s incident.

I have never really dealt with a baby or a pet, but I think my experience comes close to this bit of what life can potentially offer. My sleep was disturbed, I forgot about my mealtimes, couldn’t exercise, kept asking for help wherever possible, and also couldn’t get my work done properly.

Inspired by the series Silicon Valley and my old laptop, I decided to say F U to Windows and install Linux. It worked fine after my second install, and the next day I saw an option to update some packages. Boom! System crashed due to an old Nvidia driver in my laptop. Also boom! I could not log in to one work-related site which I needed to visit urgently.

Thanks to a colleague and his wife who diagnosed and managed to solve the issue, spending 30 minutes on a Google Meet call. After this was solved, I felt confident that yes, I’m facing issues and there’s a learning curve but the system still wouldn’t start due to the Nvidia driver. 1.5 days were spent working on it. We realised that the system would work, but I’d have to be on an older version of Linux.

You see, the current internet is ruled by giants who sell our data, which is not nice. There are plenty of videos out there that show how, with each keystroke and action, Google and Microsoft track you. And it is everywhere. The result is that we get nice and user-friendly products that are used by billions across the globe but at the cost of our own data.

There’s also the point of planned obsolescence. I had upgraded my laptop in 2020 with an SSD (from an HDD), and the speed was amazing. Now, after all these years without adding any heavy software and handling it with care it started slowing down. I especially experienced it after this year’s Windows updates. All of this forces us to buy a new device, and the new one also goes through the same cycle.

Now, I can purchase a new device, no biggie. But I don’t think I’ll do anything more on it than what I’m doing on my current device, for which I have more than enough hardware to support the tasks.

I realised that the fear of a system crash would prevent me from exploring Linux further, and I’d have to constantly search online forums or ask friends for help - something I cannot afford to do on a busy day.

Due to this, I installed Windows 10. It again took me a couple of hours to actually set it up properly and disable all the unnecessary tasks and tracking. I switched back to Windows, which is working fast enough but I don’t have regrets, as I did try to work things out on Linux.

I hope you get the baby/pet analogy now – I was happy when I installed Linux, kept loving it even though it caused me trouble and sleepless nights, and the next moment I try to play with it, it poops on my hands :P This is what kept me busy the first half of this week. Hopefully, my next machine will be on Linux and I’ll be able to work well on it. Everything surely comes with a trade-off.

Watching - Haraamkhor

An interesting movie starring Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Shweta Tripathi. A disturbing theme and plot, along with some indie vibes.

Listening - Buckethead

Currently I’m listening to a bunch of artists the way you try out outfits while shopping. Mainly because it usually takes a couple of days to complete one artist’s discography with discipline, album by album.

All this while, I also need to check out what friends recommend, what my mood feels like, or what the algorithm throws at me.

I highly recommend listening to Padmansana and Soothsayer, here’s another equally cool version of Soothsayer. Although I haven’t heard all of his songs yet, these two are great, and I’ll get to the rest soon.

Quiz Questions

You may comment with your answers on the Substack post or reply via email. Answers will be shared next week.

See last week’s answers here.

Priced at Rs. 3 lakhs per kilogram, identify this spice extracted from its flowers.
Which Indian capital city, laid out in a grid pattern with 30 sectors, was planned by H.K. Mewada and Prakash M. Apte - both of whom had earlier worked with Le Corbusier on the Chandigarh city planning project?
As part of monitoring the country's economy, the RBI also tracks certain essential commodities to keep their prices in check. One such set is referred to as POT or TOP, widely consumed across India. What does this acronym stand for?
This Mini Mark lookalike was modified using which vintage Indian car as its base?
Known for his speed, winged sandals, and the caduceus staff, which Greek god embodied a dual identity as both the divine messenger and a clever trickster?
Which Olympic symbol from 2024 are we referring to, whose design combines three powerful icons: a gold medal, the Olympic flame, and the face of Marianne, the personification of the French Republic?
Bronchiolitis obliterans is a serious lung condition that damages the small airways and air sacs, called alveoli, of the lungs. Studies have shown that chemicals inhaled during vaping can cause this disease. Its more commonly known name comes from a food item — due to its shape resembling alveoli and because the disease was first identified at a factory producing this item, where workers were exposed to a chemical that simulates butter flavour. It is called _______ lungs, fill in the blank.
A Reddit comment reads, “QA, DevOps, Security, and SRE people around the world collectively having heart attacks reading that.” What recent term, popular in tech news over the last few months, refers to the use of AI tools to generate and refine code from natural language prompts?
What significant event took place on August 2, 1776, at the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia?
Created across 24 albums by Belgian artist Georges Remi (1907–1983), the series begins with Land of the Soviets in 1930 and ends with Alph-Art, an unfinished album. Who is its main character?