Reply to post: Making the switch to Linux is easier than some would have you believe...

Making the switch to Linux is easier than some would have you believe...

I switched to Linux over a year ago, mainly because MS were messing with my Windows 7 install with dodgy updates with unwanted stuff so I'd been running without updates for a while (this was before MS killed the 2020/2023 Win7/8 support end of life dates on new processors - Grrr...). Even worse with a friend's Win8.1 laptop I support, even with updates turned off it still kept itself fully patched and up to date! I'd been putting off trying anything else as Windows had been OK enough to make do with from Windows 3.11 to Windows 7, but I wasn't prepared to use 8 at the time, or 10 when that came out and was planning to stay with 7 until 2020 until MS broke the updates and their agreement to provide security updates until 2020.

So off to Linux, picked Mint (Mate version) as it seemed highly recommended and downloaded the live CD to boot from to check all my hardware worked - and it did work out of the box. I dual booted and kept a Win 7 install 'just in case'. Then I clicked install and not long later everything was done and it worked perfectly.

However, rather than just experiment or switch between using both OSes as I expected to be doing, I've actually only ended up booting into Windows 7 less than 1% of the time ever since (without buying the latest Football Manager with the in-game editor for Linux, Windows is currently only required to cheat at FM with my old version of FM!).

Largely because of the MS fans/employees on here saying how Linux won't run games and various other software, I had been expecting not to be able to do without Windows, but I found that to be completely misleading as pretty much everything I did before was still available, only working better than ever under Linux and faster with less hassle. THIS is what MS don't want people to discover! Common software like office software, media stuff, programming tools, creative stuff to make music or be artistic is all catered for, all free and usually better than Windows versions. As for games, it turns out that there is a Linux version of Steam, and the WINE software supplied with Linux even allows me to run the Windows version of Steam and the games that aren't yet available for Linux with a 100% success rate (so far).

Obviously, if you rely on specific type of software then you should check it or an equivalent is available before swapping, but if you have the same experience I had then you'll be wondering why you didn't abandon MS many years ago. Even better news is that now there is no telemetry, no crap user interface, no forced downloads, my computer works much faster than before, doesn't reboot all the time, etc. etc.