I don't like evangelists and don't want to be one, but like everyone else, when I find something that seems like A Good Thing, it seems reasonable to tell others. After using Windows for about two decades, I made the move to Linux about a year ago, and I now regard it as A Good Thing. This is my story of how that happened and a few things I learned while it was happening.
Cutting to the chase for those few wanting my advice on whether they themselves should make the switch: It depends. The transition will not be effortless, but, depending on what you spend most of your computer time doing, the effort can be trivial. If all you do is surf the web and exchange emails, your learning curve will be minimal and, in my judgment, well worth it. I'll get into more detail in due course.
I knew next to nothing about personal computers, not even the meaning of "operating system," when I got my first one in 1990, a Tandy HX-1000. It came with some floppy disks, two of which were labeled "MS-DOS" and "GW-BASIC" or something similar. I knew about BASIC. I had no idea what MS-DOS was for, and the manuals that came with the computer were not a lot of help, but in due course I taught myself what I needed to know to make the machine do a few things I wanted it to do. In those days, what I thought I mostly wanted to do, besides some writing, was learn programming.
Windows was still new in those days, and as I became proficient in DOS I decided that Windows was for technophobes. By the late 90s, though, I noticed that software developers were phasing out DOS versions of their programs, so it was time to make the switch. I started with a used copy of Windows 3.1 that I found for a cheap price at a flea market. By this time it had become clear to me that serious programming wasn't in my future. Not that I couldn't do it, but going beyond the basics was going to require an investment in time that I preferred not to make.
Once I got the hang of it, I really liked Windows. I skipped Windows 95 but moved on to Windows 98 when it came out. I liked it lots better than 3.1, and I went through just about every version of Windows after that, usually because every time I got a new computer it would have the next version already installed. Except for that first Tandy, I don't think I've ever bought myself a new computer, only used or refurbished.
I was vaguely aware all this time of an alternative operating system called Linux. That was about all I knew about it: It was an alternative to Windows and Mac, and it was called Linux. Maybe I also knew it was free, but I don't recall for certain. What I'm sure I don't remember hearing was any reason to think I would prefer it Windows. Until, that is, shortly after I finished getting my second college degree in late 2012. In a forum that I was active in, the Windows folks would occasionally spar with the Mac folks, and during one such discussion a couple of Linux users chimed in to tout the superiority of their system, offering some arguments that looked good to me. In particular, they assured everyone that Linux was far superior in its resistance to malware. For me, the kicker was when they mentioned that a current version of Linux called Ubuntu was available for download to a DVD and could be installed with a dual-boot option. And, for an indefinite trial period, one could just boot from the DVD and use the system without doing anything at all to one's hard drive. Boot without the DVD, and you'd be back in Windows as if nothing had happened. And I thought: Yes, I want to try that. I'm a technophile. I like to play with new gadgets.
Making a bootable DVD was more complicated than I expected, but I eventually figured the process out. I put the disk in the drive, booted the computer, and there was Linux Ubuntu, ready for me to take it for a test drive. I took the disk out, booted again, and I was back in Windows. Disk in, reboot, and there was Ubuntu. So, I played with it for a few days.
One thing I had to check out was the available software. There was plenty, but for some of the programs I was using, there was no good Linux substitute, so I couldn't go Linux-only. I needed Windows to be available on occasion. That meant trying the dual boot. Well, I had plenty of space on my hard drive, so I figured, no problem if I made sure I had a good backup of all my data.
Big problem, it turned out. After the installation, my computer would not boot at all from the hard drive, only from the DVD. For the next couple of days I borrowed my wife's laptop to maintain my online presence while googling for a solution. It turned out the Linux installer had damaged a file in the hard drive's boot sector. Fortunately, there was a fairly easy fix, and I soon had my Windows back to normal. Once that was done, I decided I could wait indefinitely before trying Linux again.
Some two to four years went by, and I chanced to acquire a spare computer that I was using while at work. I got the idea that I could put Linux on the work computer and leave Windows on my home computer for the times when I had to run one of my Windows programs. I wasn't sure I could divide my workflow that way, but it seemed worth a try. No more dual boot—I did a clean install, and everything was up and running. I then discovered almost immediately that there was a Linux program, called WINE, that would let one run many Windows programs on a Linux system. Emphasis on "many." Maybe that would solve my major problem.
It didn't. The Windows programs I wanted most to run were among those that ran poorly or not at all in WINE. I had another problem as well. My work site was on the fringe of a Wi-Fi network that I was using to get online. The connection was good enough for my Windows system, but Linux, for some reason, could not maintain a reliable connection. Some more googling revealed that this was a common Linux bug for which no one had yet found a good fix. That was that for my second Linux trial. I reinstalled Windows and said once more, "Maybe someday."
Someday came early last year. I was no longer taking the spare computer to work. I had set it up in my garage workshop thinking I might use it there once in a while. Instead it mostly just gathered dust, and besides, I had recently gotten both a smartphone and a tablet computer. If I had to use a computer while I was working in my shop, either of them would do fine. I don't know why it took so long, but it finally dawned on me that I could have the best of both OS worlds. I could have two computers in my home office, one for Linux and the other for Windows.
The third time was a charm. By this time, the Linux community had produced a newer version of Ubuntu called Mint, and it was tailor-made for Linux newbies transitioning from Windows. Ubuntu was OK, even for newbies, but Mint was great.
I watched lots and lots of YouTube videos aimed at new Linux users, and one of my early discoveries was an alternative to dual booting called a virtual machine. There are several such programs, one of more popular being called VirtualBox. The basic idea is you can run one OS, the guest, within another OS, the host. I tried it out. The setup was not entirely intuitive, but after some more googling I got it to work like I needed it to. When I must run one of my Windows-only programs, I can fire up VirtualBox and run Windows without having to shut Linux down.
Linux has a well-deserved reputation as a for-geeks-only OS, but it's getting over that. It still helps a bunch to be a geek, but with careful research even a computer moron can make it work these days. If you have a computer-savvy friend or relative to assist you, you can turn your computer into a Linux machine in just an hour or so, and you should not need their help any more after that.
I learned essentially everything I know about Linux on YouTube. There must be thousands of videos tutoring people about Linux, and unfortunately most of them will totally confuse newcomers. Some don't, though. Three of the channels that I like most are called ExplainingComputers, Chris Titus Tech, and Joe Collins. Plug any of them into the YouTube search engine and just browse. Here are three that I think would be good to start with:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcdquhB6hT8 6 Things to Know When Switching to Linux from Windows.Now, here is a point that I think none of those guys makes clearly enough: For many, many people, the differences between Windows and Linux will become irrelevant once they have gotten the new OS properly installed along with whatever programs they normally use. Once you've opened a web browser, or an email program, or a word processor, or whatever, you likely won't notice anything different, and you won't need to know anything you didn't already know. Of course there will be differences between Outlook and any Linux-based email client, or between Microsoft Word and whichever word processor you might run on Linux, but for ordinary users those differences are trivial. And, if you're already using a non-Microsoft program made for Windows, there is probably a version already made for Linux, and you will see no difference at all.
Here are two exceptions that might give you an idea of whether you will need to keep a Windows machine available, either on a second computer or on a virtual machine within Linux. One is based on my own experience, the other is not. Personal experience: I use a Microsoft HTML editor called Expression Web for maintaining my website, and I have not found a Linux product that makes the job as easy. Not personal experience: I have heard over and over that many people who do serious graphics or video work complain that no Linux product is as good as the best Windows or Mac products. I don't do any video editing, so I don't care about that. I do some graphics work, mostly photo editing, but what I do is pretty basic stuff, and the Linux program I now use is just as good for my needs as the old version of Photoshop that I was using before.
According to some of its advocates, Linux is not a program as much as it is a community. It's actually both. Just as there are several programs collectively called Windows, there are several programs collectively called Linux. There is also a community of computer-savvy people who maintain the Linux software and provide various levels and kinds of assistance to people using the software. That assistance includes the production of YouTube videos from which Linux users can get most of the help they might need.
One potential difficulty for the Linux newbie is the sheer number of Linux operating systems, which the Linux community calls "distributions" or "distros." There are hundreds—count 'em, hundreds—nearly all of which almost nobody has ever heard.
The original Linux OS was developed by Linus Torvalds, who released it in 1994. From that beginning, the software has been under a license making it available for anyone to use, modify, and redistribute without commercial restriction. If you have a copy of it, you own it and can do whatever you want with it except sell it. If you want someone else to have a copy, either modified or original, you have to give it to them: The original free-use license stays with it. Usually. The exceptions need not detain us here.
A result was the proliferation of distros we see today. Countless geeks got a copy of the software, tweaked it, and sent the results out over the Internet so that other geeks could do the same. And, like "Linux" itself, "distribution" does not refer to a specific OS. I use the Linux Mint 19.1 Cinnamon OS, which is one of several editions of Mint, of which the original was one of many based on Ubuntu. The Ubuntu group, in turn, is one of dozens that branched off from the original Debian OS.
This kind of anarchy creates some obvious hazards for the end user. Microsoft has to worry about making money, if nothing else. If they can afford to sell an OS that's vulnerable to malware, why should a Linux user feel safe? What motivates the programmers to do good work, if they're not trying to make money? Well, they make money, all right, just not by selling operating systems. The Linux community includes a bunch of businesses motivated partly by altruism (maybe) and partly by plain old capitalist greed (certainly). They need a good reputation, probably more than Microsoft does.
The community gets that reputation by, among other things, maintaining the websites where you can download one or another version of Linux along with the software that will run on that version. The geeks police the websites looking for any malware that someone from the Dark Side might try to upload to them, and to keep whatever is supposed to be there as bug-free as they can. They're also keeping the software as resistant to viruses as anyone can, which is why Linux users don't need to keep antivirus programs running on their computers—provided they keep their systems properly updated, which is easier to do in Linux than in Windows.
Nothing in this life is perfect, and there is no free lunch. I much prefer Linux to Windows because its many advantages, for my needs and in my personal judgment, far exceed its disadvantages. Here are the main examples.
1. I'll probably never need to pay another dime for software.
I am not anti-business in general or anti-Microsoft in particular. In the late 1990s, Bill Gates was the richest man in the world, and I had no problem contributing to his bank account. His business was the only reason why, in those days, I could even afford to have a computer. That is no excuse for some of the things he or his subordinates did against their commercial rivals. The fact remains that the main reason he got so rich was that he made a useful product and sold it for a price that even poor people like me could afford. That is how free enterprise is supposed to work, and I'm OK with it. That said, if some other people, working within the same free-enterprise system, can make a product that is just about as good and then give it away, I damn sure want to support those people.
2. Linux runs faster than Windows. It boots faster and the programs running under it launch faster. And when you're done, it shuts down faster.
3. You're never interrupted by updates. You will never get a "Do not turn off your computer" message. The Linux update manager just doesn't work that way. When you click the shutdown button, the system just shuts down, no questions asked. When you start the computer, it just starts—no waiting for updates to finish installing. Updates are usually available every day, and you can set up the system to do them automatically. As absent-minded as I am, I probably should do that, but I haven't yet. I manage on most days to remember to do it. It takes about 5 or 10 seconds to get it started and then I'm back doing whatever I was doing. Oh, yes, and the software knows whatever programs you have installed on your system, and it will include whatever updates are available for those programs.
4. Help is easy to get, unless you're having a problem no one else has ever had. Just google it, and you'll find a link to a Linux forum where somebody else had your problem and found a way to fix it. Just don't forget to mention in the search box which distro you're using.
5. Programs are easier to install. This not a big difference, but every little bit helps. There are a few exceptions, but in most cases, you just open the program manager, type the program's name into the search box, do two or three mouse clicks, wait a few seconds, and then you're done. And if you'd just like to browse through what's available, you can do that, too.
6. Big Brother is not watching. I am not paranoid, but neither am I completely indifferent to privacy issues. What you pay for when you buy Windows is not the software but Microsoft's permission to use it. As a condition of that permission, Microsoft retains the right to access your computer whenever you are online to get certain information from it, kind of like a super-administrator. It's their software, after all, not yours, and so they can do whatever they want with it. While there may be legal limits to the information they can extract, there is no technical limit. The Windows software basically lets them go anywhere on your computer they feel feel like going without your knowing about it. According to every credible source I have found so far, that is not the case with any Linux system. The Linux software on your computer is yours, and it was written so that no one else can do anything with it without your say-so.
(This page last updated on November 29, 2019.)