A new post starting a new category one more time, and this time it’s much more special as it’s related to my very good friend James Morrison. I could be writing for ages what a great person he is and what a lovely family and friends he’s surrounded by, but he won’t feel very comfortable and that’s not the goal of today’s publishing 🙂

James and I have been chatting every single Sunday morning since beginning 2014 (there has been some exceptions but not that much) and, over the years, we’ve managed to improve our language skills: Spanish and English respectively.

You cannot imagine the kind of things we’ve organized to make the most of the sessions. We even played around with virtual worlds and came up with something like the following picture, which looks very weird but it was a lot of fun:

Time went by and we were busier and busier and, eventually, had to simplify our sessions and stop these “innovative techniques”. The only thing that didn’t change was our eagerness to be in touch and practice Spanish and English. Unfortunately, James’ laptop didn’t want to work from time to time and that impacted us to enjoy our full hour when that happened… finally, James gave up and ended up using a tablet.

Tablets are fine, but I’m sure James would love to have a working computer not only for our sessions, but to browse the Internet for Spanish resources, watch movies and TV series and, of course, work on his own blog called the fair-weather fan – a football journey round Scotland Spain and England. And today that’s going to change because it’s a special day for him for many reasons:

• It’s his birthday and he’s one year wiser! Happy birthday, my friend!
• My family and I have decided to send a laptop to him as a birthday present; it’s not a super fancy laptop, but it’s a special one so are we… more on this later.
• He’s a Linux user from now on and, according to the StatCounter site, he’s part of the 1.74% of people using a Linux Operating System for their computers (which includes both, desktops and laptops).

The only downside at this point is, given that I live in Spain and he lives in Scotland, what will happen if his laptop crashes and the only solution is a fresh installation? No problem, it’s all under control. The laptop has been shipped with a USB drive containing the installer and I’ve made a video with the whole process 🙂 do you remember the goal of this blog? that’s correct, remind myself things I’ve done in the past… the only difference this time is that another person will get benefit of it: my friend James.

Without further ado, the following video shows the installation process of Manjaro in a HP 255 G7 laptop:

Where will this end up? I don’t know, but I’m sure this will keep us busy and having fun for a “wee” while… happy birthday again, and enjoy your new life as a Linux user 🙂

Raúl