Linux

I switched in June 2021. I was a fan of libre software before the switch (I still am! Love me Krita, Kdenlive, LibreOffice, VS Code if you can count that...), and I saw that many people in that community, plus programming communities, use Linux. I heard that there were lightweight distros (my computer was fairly low-end), and a lot of customization options. I also wanted to try something new, so I ended up dual-booting W10 and Linux Mint, after trying LM in a virtual machine!

Now I have a new computer. It's dual-booting W11 and LM 21.1 Cinnamon. I rarely boot into the Windows partition.

Back in 2003 my sister needed a computer of her own to do schoolwork on. We couldn’t afford a new computer and the only other system we had in the house other then the laptop I had just bought was still running Windows 98 on a failing hard drive and the Windows install disk we had was borked.

I replaced the hard drive, started looking for options and found Ubuntu. And it made sense to me. Once I wrapped my head around the idea of the console, everything made sense in a way that Windows and DOS before that didn’t. And I had the freedom to modify anything I didn’t like, a freedom you don’t really have in Windows or Mac OS.

And it was fast! This ancient computer (AMD Athlon, 256 MB Ram, Ubuntu) was running circles around my new laptop (Pentium 4, 1 GB Ram, Windows XP).

I wound up switching my laptop from XP to Ubuntu and ran smack into why some people complain about linux being hard to use. Some of my brand new hardware just didn’t work in linux. WiFi, no go ever (proprietary firmware), audio, ditto. I liked Ubuntu well enough that I decided to work around the nonfunctional hardware with usb WiFi and a audio expansion card until the next update to Ubuntu when the built in audio just started working.

Windows 10 sounded like shit, and Windows 7 stopped being supported.

I had some experience with Linux, most things seemed to work and for the rest I decided that it wasn't worth the hassle of dealing with Microsoft.

About the reason for switching, it was something pretty small, actually:
Windows' UX getting increasingly worse for keyboard-centric usage (it slowly but surely got to my nerves e.e" ). Added with my HDD with Win10 dying after 6 years, being impulsive and loving to learn new things, I set to test new systems, in search for the ideal UX for my needs. Then, the Linux distros fitted like a glove, even more so with how customizable they could be, and they became my main systems (Mint currently). Still, ever since stopping using Windows as my main system family, I don't shy away from testing other systems. Even got the chance of testing Vista (surprisingly functional despite its infamy) and Macintosh 7 (I got very lucky in finding someone with such a computer).

And as mentioned before, a good part of Linux is being customizable. And surprisingly (from an outsider's perspective), you don't need to know coding most of the time! You just need to know how to do troubleshooting (which Linux programs more often than not facilitate by showing the error in detail). Also also, from an ADHD point of view, it is good for non-linear learning, since small things you learn in one activity can help immensely in other activities, potentially even helping with non-Linux systems.

But as a cautionary tale, not all things work on Linux, so it's always good to have a back up system or system installation ISO around. And given Linux's open nature, you either have companies working behind them, such as Canonical, Red Hat and Microsoft (this last one with their "Azure" server system), potentially deteriorating their systems for the sake of profit, or systems made from users to users, which then depend on the devs being interested in continuing development, so don't expect your favorite distro to be supported or viable forever, and be ready to make the jump to other distros if you need to.

Long time ago my dad bought a few netbooks and they came with Xandros pre-installed. It wasn't much of a choice to be honest (all my friends, school, every other PC was running Windows). And I never give it a chance because there was a desktop with Windows so I used that instead.

Times goes buy and the Xandros version was not going to keep up with my needs and I've switched to Ubuntu Remix (very cool at the time) and then I've got to experience Ubuntu 09.10 with Gnome. And that was a game changer for me (I learned a lot on how Linux works under the.hood) but I kept Windows machine just for gaming (until last year).

I switched because Windows 2000 was total garbage, and because Linux gave me actual programming tools. I was like a kid in a candy store. Suddenly I had all these amazing professional software packages, and scripting languages that weren't fucking garbage. I'm still WAY too good at DOS scripts. The number of years I wasted learning DOS. Fuck microsoft. I'm still a little mad.

I first dual-booted Linux back in 2008 because I'm a musician and at the time I was a broke highschooler trying to use Ubuntu Studio to record and mix songs without dropping $500 on a Pro Tools license. After that I'd generally always have a dual boot system because I like using Linux for its flexibility.

Back in December I switched to 100% Linux Mint on my main gaming PC because my Windows 10 install was starting to die in all kinds of ways and I was gonna have to reinstall, so I just formatted the partition and went all Linux.

I also self-host a bunch of little servers for various stuff on like 5 different little single-board-computers (Pi 4, M1 Mac Mini, etc), and they all run various flavors of Linux, mostly Debian and Ubuntu but also Asahi on the Mac.

In general I find it waaaay easier to maintain, update, repair, and modify. Package managers should be available for every OS by default, not as an ugly hack like on Windows or MacOS.

Foss software for everything that's a one click install got me. I'm surprised msft doesn't make Winget more visible

Download a linux distro iso file

Burn iso to usb using rufus

Restart computer with usb plugged in

Get into bios by pressing your system's specified key to get into bios while booting

Go to the boot settings

Select your usb

Linux should pop up after a minute with install menu

If you configure the settings right, you can have a dual boot setup with both windows and linux

After linux is installed you no longer need the usb

The easiest way to try linux is to install it from the Microsoft App Store — not joking, windows officially supports running Linux now. Here’s a random tutorial: https://adamtheautomator.com/windows-subsystem-for-linux/

Because it was mandated by our communist party!