So I've decided to return to Linux. I've had an "on again, off again" love affair with the platform since the mid 90s. Back then you had to configure everything, networking was a nightmare, and chances are you had to create your own drivers for some of the hardware on your computer. Man, has Linux come a long way since then.
I picked up a gaming computer around 2021. It was mainly for processing video and trading crypto and not gaming. It came with Windows and I immediately installed a Linux partition. To my dismay, I just couldn't get my video editor to work good. So I mainly used Windows because most of the work I was doing at that time was based around video editing.
Almost 5 years later, I noticed the computer was starting to slow down a bit. I was already considering a switch to Linux. On top of that, I haven't been doing much video work. Then the other day, I was saving a "seed phrase" for a crypto wallet and I noticed it automatically was being saved to my One Drive. This is not good! Never put a seed phrase in the cloud.
What bothered me more than having the seed phrase saved to my One Drive was the fact that I kept on trying to remove OneDrive and no matter what I did, it kept coming back. Maybe I could ditch it for a day or two, then with the next update, Windows would load OneDrive again and automatically back up to the cloud :( This madness had to stop! I needed to take back control of my device! Enter Linux!
So I decided to return to my Linux partition. I booted up the computer to Linux. I opened up the terminal, typed in "sudo apt update" and Linux downloaded the latest updates for my machine and installed them.
The first thing I noticed was how fast the computer was again. It was like the day I bought it. No annoying AI prompts, no mandatory file backups to the cloud. I had resumed control of my device.
I think this is a big issue now. More and more, corporations like Microsoft force feed us AI, and cloud backups, without many ways to opt out. In the meantime, they share meta-data, sell it to the highest bidder, force software on us that we may not want or need. With Linux, those issues are gone.
So, I went with Ubuntu. It's what I already had installed on the machine. I originally started with Red Hat back in the 90s. Then I went with Fedora which is like Red Hat but designed more for the casual user rather than a commercial venture. Then I spent some time with OpenSuse. I almost always ran the KDE windows environment. I ended up going with Ubuntu down the road, due mainly to ease of use, and plenty of support. For the first time, I'm sticking with the Gnome Desktop.
I've tried Gnome a couple other times and always returned to KDE. KDE in my humble opinion is the closet thing you can get to a traditional Windows experience. With Gnome, the application launcher and desktop are a little different but intuitive and still easy to use. On top of that, KDE can be really resource intensive, just like Windows. Gnome is still a little lighter. For a really light version of a desktop there is the Cinnamon environment from Linux Mint. I think I used that on a Raspberry Pi once. If you're looking for a truly light desktop environment, Cinnamon is the lightest.
Ubuntu in my humble opinion makes Linux life incredibly easy. There isn't a lot of configuring with Ubuntu. Updates and support are plentiful. Multi media generally works right out of the box. It's just a painless way to experience Linux.
That's the downside of the freedom Linux gives you. Although you can make it do just about anything you'd want a computer to do with a little configuring and tinkering. It can however, be a bit fickle at times. Still, the trade off is worth it, if you don't want to get forced into the cloud and have AI take over your computer. 😝
One example of getting Linux to do what you want was an old laptop I turned into a DVR. With a little configuring I was able to plug my cable TV into an old video capture card and record movies directly from my TV. That took a lot of research, but in the end it was well worth it. It also left me with one hell of a DVD collection.
Gnome is growing on me this time around. Mainly because I'm tired of messing with desktops. It works, my computer is fast, and my software is working with the environment. So for the time being, I'm sticking with Gnome.
With this computer, I'm shocked at how fast everything runs again. Click on any program and it loads almost immediately. I'll probably have to screw around with my video editor a bit. Hopefully I can get that running right on Linux. For now, if I have to do any serious video editing, I can always return to my Windows partition.
The only other issue I had with Linux is the printing feature. Although Linux printing has come a long way, I'll stick with windows for that. When I have to ship orders for the resell business, I'll boot into Windows to print out the orders and shipping labels. Besides that, I'm really happy with the switch back to Linux.
Oh yeah, and lets not forget about software. Most everything on Linux is OpenSource and often free to use for non-commercial projects. You can also make a donation of your choice to the software companies you choose to support. That in my opinion is the best part. Software can get expensive and most of the Linux apps work just as good as their Windows and Mac counterparts. Libre Office is a great alternative to Microsoft Office.
My main computer right now is my gaming computer. My laptop is on it's last life. I'm pretty sure I'm going to shop for a Linux laptop the next time around. I don't do much gaming, and Linux generally covers most of my needs. With my laptop, I generally stick with email, social networking, blog posts, and some photo editing. I don't need a super powerful laptop.
Well, that's where I'm at right now with computing. Whatever happened to the Linux Mobile Phone projects? I'd love to get away from Android. I thought Ubuntu was working on Ubuntu phone. I wonder what happened? I'll have to research that and see what happened.
For now, I'm happily back to using my Linux desktop. It's incredible how a fresh Linux install can breath life back into an old computer. If you have an older machine laying around, and haven't tried out Linux before, I'd highly recommend giving it a try. At the very least, Linux is always a great way to get a couple more years out of an old and out dated computer!
Image credits: ChatGPT prompt "Tux installs Linux". Screenshot my desktop.