This story is part of my mental health journey to embrace things that
give me more peace, pleasure and less agitation.
As I continue my
painful recovery from surgery and float through the cybersphere, I
came across a post on one of my subreddits —
a Linux Mint forum. The post celebrated the first release of this
operating system on August 27, 2006.
Why
should this matter to me? Or to anyone else?
Well,
late in 2023, I decided that Microsoft had become too intrusive to
both my pocket book and my data.
The tech giant converted its office suite into a subscription-based
product while disabling and locking away access to former versions of
Office,
which had been fully paid
for making practically
industry-standard
Word, Outlook, Excel and other
programs useless.
The threat that the firm’s monopoly-coveting greed would extend to
renting the main operating system seemed real to me, specifically
because its PR flacks issued denials of the possibility. Then,
“security” updates to the Windows 10 system imposed defaults to
such things as OneDrive, where all your work was loaded into the
Microsoft cloud app or “copilot,” a supposed artificial
intelligence app. It was clear that my “personal” computer was
really just becoming Microsoft’s work station placed
in my home.
Then
with no rational justification, Microsoft’s new hardware
requirements for its Windows 11 operating system would vomit,
according to some estimates, about 240 million (yes, million) older
devices in landfills. I lack any civil words for condemning
Microsoft’s rape of the environment.
I
knew, from my introduction to personal computing in 1976, other
operating systems were available; and I knew from playing in
cyberspace in 2016 that
operating systems based on Unix and Linux were gaining ground and
becoming more user friendly. So, I went on a research spree and, in
November 2023, checked
into various Linux operating systems (called distros in Linux-speak).
The learning curve was
steep, complicated by the fact that some of my essential finance and
photography programs were not available for Linux systems; or, that
the Linux variants were simply not robust enough.
After
an agonizing trek through
research and testing in
December and part of January 2024, I decided that I wanted a “dual
boot” system. That is, I wanted the ability to start and/or boot my
powerful desktop computer into either Windows 10 or Linux Mint
Cinnamon. The latter Linux system’s desktop environment looked much
like Windows although it was completely different. That decision
made, I took apart my computer and following very helpful YouTube
videos, installed two solid state drives, or SSDs, and
then loaded Windows 10 on one and Linux Mint Cinnamon on the
other. I reattached all the drives and booted up. By the end of last
January, I had everything installed with both operating systems
available at my command. And,
the few Windows-only programs run on that SSD
while the majority of my “daily driver” applications are on my
Linux drive.
Remember
I said environmental rapist Microsoft is forcing those who want/need
to run Windows 11 to give up perfectly good devices, flooding
landfills with the poisons of Silicon Valley? Well, a major answer to
dodging the cost of new equipment is that the variety of Linux
distros let you choose one that will work on older machines because
even the most robust of Linux flavors are less bloated than
Microsoft’s operating systems.
My Linux Mint Cinnamon is lightening fast on a 2011 ASUS laptop that
slogged along on Windows 10.
There
is another benefit to using Linux and Linux-based applications. They
are known as “open source,” which means they are free; they are
supported by large communities
of developers who will take but
not require
contributions. So
my word processing, video editing and playback apps, other
office-programs, browsers and VPN are all free and run on Linux. I am
writing this on LibreWriter, which is part of my LibreOffice suite.
It’s not as robust as Word in some ways, but it’s easy to use
and, as I noted, free. Even better, none of the Linux applications
default to data sharing or have embedded spyware. Further, as many in
the Linux community will point out, these distros are remarkably
secure and almost totally immune to malware attacks.
Moving
from the major computing environments to Linux can be challenging. In
my moments of great frustration, and there were many, I reminded
myself I was also learning things and the
exercise was good for my
Hercule Poirot-type
“little gray cells.” Now I start my days in Mint condition,
visiting Microsoft once a day to handle finances. It gives me peace
to know I am less vulnerable to BigTech and am part of a community
with similar values to mine. If you, dear reader, wish to detach from
BigTech and greedy capitalism, take a look at Linux. Even if you
don’t convert, you will have learned there are more options for you
and your computer to enjoy.