I'm finally Powered By Linux
I think I have made it to Linux. It's now my desktop of choice 99.9% of the time.
I've experimented in Linux for centuries! In the early days there was always something major holding me back from getting serious with our penguin friend.
It was often a driver problem -- unable to recognise my display, sound card, external drive, etc. Things have moved on. More clever people have contributed to Linux, and I guess tech has got simpler; all inclusive and more standard.
Fast forward to the last few years and I have been enthusiastically trying to adopt it as my home operating system of choice. The issue is that Linux comes in more flavours than the selection at an ice-cream parlour. Generalising a little, I think it's fair to say almost all come from a few base sets of code, and people add the bells and whistles to make it stand-out from the crowd, or do some specialised tasks.
What I settled on?
I've worked through many of the flavours. Sometimes spending moments on their website, and on other occasions doing an install. I quickly learned that I could spin up virtual machines to experiment, rather than trash or partition my live desktop computer.
Much reading, listening, and evaluating later I decided to stick with Ubuntu. I like the feeling of being quite close to the core, and I'm not too interested in a Disney layer added over the top with sparkly bits.
I then installed Ubuntu on an old MacBook Pro I had. It might be 10 years old, but it's a great machine. It's just a shame that the hooligans at Apple decided to exclude older hardware from running later operating systems. I totally wiped MacOS and installed Ubuntu. There were a few coughs and splutters along the way and it didn't find my wireless hardware. I thought, "hell, here we go again!". Some searching via my desktop computer and I found the fix. I downloaded some drivers and applied them. Not as simple as you might think as the laptop was not online! I got there, with some friction.
While working with this hiccup, other people were singing the praises of Linux Mint. I figured I might as well have a look as I had a bare Ubuntu laptop and had not installed anything extra yet.
Linux Mint just got on with the job. No hiccups. It found my built-in camera, microphone, WiFi, etc. It even recognised the magic required to backlight the keyboard on the mac, and adjust it too.
In the end, I've settled on Linux Mint and have been running it on my Desktop and Laptop for about a year.
Dual-booting
I kept my Windows 11 partition on the desktop PC — I need to jump back to Windows for some work-related stuff. Mostly for Teams for meetings, as there is no native app for Linux (why?). Grrr.
However, over the last couple of months I have decided to stay in Linux and use the web-version of Teams. It actually works just as well. I've not hit any problems. The camera and my bluetooth headset work perfectly; I can share my screen/window/tab when presenting; chat works. All good.
Teams still consumes lots of processor juice when you're in a call -- have you noticed how your cooling fan sounds like an aircraft preparing for take-off? What is that all about? Lazy, inefficient, coding I guess. If I use zoom, or other video calling apps, I don't feel like I am about to be blown off my desk.
Virtual Windows
Sometimes I do need to run a windows app -- Excel mostly. I tried Wine (windows emulator) but I honestly got lost trying to make it work. Far too fiddly. I also tried Bottles. Same idea. Doesn't really work.
I now have Windows 11 running as a Virtual PC, using VirtualBox, inside Linux. On the rare occasion I need to do a Windows thing, I spin it up. It's generally one Excel sheet I need to work on. It's got some awkward scripting in it so I can't run it via Libre Office, or alternatives.
I'm Officially Linux
I therefore now consider myself as a Linux user. The desktop and laptop run without issue. I can get native apps or web-apps for almost everything.
