apocryphalmess
@apocryphalmess

So with Microsoft not only making Windows shittier and more intrusive as time goes on ("Microsoft Creates Dedicated Keyboard Key for Copilot AI" etc), but also attempting to force people to upgrade their perfectly functional hardware next year ("Windows 10 support to cease in 2025, posing risk of 240 million PCs as e-waste"), a lot of otherwise non-technical people are looking into alternatives. And Macs are expensive, and have their own forced upgrade cycle as well.

And Linux is free! It'll run on your older PC hardware and nobody can force you to upgrade! There's nothing spying on you or trying to make you use "AI" nonsense! Surely that's appealing? Right?

Well, no. For most people, the very word "Linux" suggests the stereotypical neckbearded computer nerd, the guy who runs an alternative operating system because he thinks he's above other computer users, who uses nothing but a command prompt and posts to Usenet via a VT420 terminal from his couch. It suggests people for whom their PCs are a lifestyle and not a tool.

And those people do exist. But the real reasons that most Linux users made that choice are more understandable: they want to have full (or at least more) control over how their computer works, they want to enhance their information privacy in a world where that's becoming more and more difficult, they want to be able to customize their work/play environment, and they want to avoid generating more e-waste just because some C-level exec wants a larger bonus next year. And those motivations are becoming relevant to more and more people as the other options are getting worse and worse.

I'm not an evangelist for Linux. I have Windows, Mac, and Linux systems at home. But I want people to have the information they need to make informed choices, even if those choices are different from mine. And honestly, speaking as somebody who supported Linux systems professionally until recently, it's difficult for a non-technical user to even consider Linux as an option because there's so little in the way of material that explains what those choices really mean.

So I want to talk about what Linux actually is and what you should know before thinking about it as an option. Windows 10 is going end-of-life in late 2025, and last-minute decisions are always frustrating and scary, so if this is something you want to consider, now's a good time to start. And if Linux doesn't work for you, either because it sounds too annoying to even try, or because you tried it and didn't like it, that's absolutely fine. You get to make those choices.

A very long effortpost lies behind the cut:


obspogon
@obspogon

this can recommend a linux distro for you based on some questions. it's how i decided on a linux mint laptop.


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in reply to @apocryphalmess's post:

It [Ubuntu] also really wants you to use their choice of desktop environment (which is GNOME, see below) and isn't going to work as well if you want to use something else

I've had good luck with Ubuntu's flavors in the past.

Now, trying to change the default DE in whatever version of Ubuntu you run is for sure a bad idea, and also just introducing the idea of "well also some distros are available with multiple DEs" is getting a bit into the weeds for an introduction post. But if for whatever reason you really want to use Ubuntu, but don't want to GNOME, they have an option for that. I ran Xubuntu for many years, my only issues were Ubuntu specific rather than Xubuntu specific.

Hey, I just wanted to say thanks for this post, I know it probably took a while to to make. A handful of years ago I put Ubuntu on an old laptop just for funsies, and while I had fun tinkering around with things, it never went much deeper than that. Fast forward to the present, where I've been mulling over making the jump for a while now but never had much motivation to do so... until all the recent Microsoft news REALLY started pushing me over the edge.

in reply to @obspogon's post: