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Why I Switched From Windows To Linux For Everyday Computing


Cawsign

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I was fond of the arrangement that I had with Windows XP. It did some annoying stuff: there was the bi-weekly bluescreen surprise, a sound card which jumped in and out of existence, and a resource hungriness that could only be satiated if you had the money for upgrades (and I certainly didn't). Apart from all that it was lovely, and life was good.

It's hard to adequately describe the extent to which computing deteriorated afterward. The ribbon interface for MSOffice came along. Then came shittier and shittier updates to "Windows Live" that screwed with the software. Microsoft decided that if you wanted to play Halo then you better get Windows Vista. The cost of getting these OSes always seemed a bit of an insult to me as well. I knew being a student I could get them for cheaper, but I also knew that OEMs who had significantly more money than I did were getting the same licensed software for pennies.

None of the problems with the operating system were all that severe to be honest. It's just that I started feeling both spied upon and insulted by the things Microsoft were releasing. I'd gone as far as Windows 8.1, and from there I'd absolutely ruled out getting Windows 10. I basically decided that the furthest that I'm willing to go in terms of the Windows software schedule was Windows 7, so I'm basically condemned to the land of the deprecated.

Or so I thought. (Is it reading as too preachy? It's more "thems the breaks" to me)

So I went through a tonne of Linux distributions and not one of them would do exactly what I want. I've used Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu, Debian, Mint, Arch, Alpine, Antergos, LXLE, whichever version of slackware called itself "the lazy version of slack" (I forget)... Basically everything that looked like "it could be for me" I tried. The distributions always lacked something. Lubuntu and Linux Mint were too easy. Arch and Gentoo were too much work.

After a couple years trying different things I found one I was happy with: It is called Devuan with LXDE.

That's probably enough on the topic for the first post. I'll go into the advantages and the drawbacks of using it in the next couple of posts. Needless to say I'm fairly pleased with the way it works and (if I can figure out how to make the image small enough) I'll post a screenshot of what it looks like on my system:

KRZfW4y.jpg

Edited by Cawsign
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  • 7 months later...

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