2023/09/30 Modified 2023/10/16
Posted Tags: #Linux, #Windows
Other Tags: #Personal, #All
My first exposure to an operating system for desktop computers was while in the Navy. Preparing to be discharged from the Navy I created my resume to mail to companies for possible employment using an administrator’s computer at work using Word Star on DOS. After leaving the Navy and gaining a job with a defense contractor working with the Navy, I bought my first computer which was a Dell computer from a warehouse store in Virginia. It had Windows 3.1 with DOS installed from a 5.25 floppy disc and Windows 3.1 I believe on nine 3.5 floppy disc. So what I am expressing here is that I started using Windows at its first version. Fast forward through the years I used Windows up to Windows 10 with an exception of Windows Me. At the time I had bought a Gateway computer with no mouse or keyboard and it came with Windows Me installed. I started it once, shut it down and installed Windows 98. However with Windows 10 they took away the eye-candy of Windows 7 and Vista. They also instrumented a tiled start menu and metro apps of which both I despised. I paid $5 for a start menu replacement that looked a lot like Windows 7. I downloaded CCleaner and got rid the metro apps that I considered bloat. Used a Registry hack to prevent the metro apps from being reinstalled again through Windows Update. I used robocopy to backup my user files to an external SATA hard drive. It would take me over an hour if I wanted to wipe my computer and start over.
I also need to talk about Windows update and not being able to power down my computer when I want or using it after startup right away. Another issue is in the past I have repaired a lot of computers from people I know because of blue screens. Most were infections from viruses because Windows is heavily targeted whereas Linux is not. Some say it is because of the lack of market share for Linux but actually it is how in Linux the file structure and permissions are such that it is harder to target. Another big issue for me is Microsoft telemetry and this is why they basically gave away Windows 10.
So at a later date with Windows 10 I was already using Oracle’s free VirtualBox product and after reading online about Ubuntu I downloaded an ISO image. I installed it in a VirtualBox virtual machine and tried using it. I didn’t particularly like it mainly because the desktop was so much different from Windows. Searching more online I discovered Linux Mint and downloaded an ISO image of it. Linux Mint’s desktop was a lot like Windows and I found it easier to use. In Windows before I had written a lot of batch files for configuration and backups. Linux had bash being a lot like batch in Windows and so I felt at home with bash. Linux Mint used the Cinnamon desktop that I liked and I learned how to customize it. I started using rsync for backups instead of robocopy. I could wipe the virtual machine and be back up in around ten minutes. I got confident with Linux Mint and the Linux concept of user accounts. Probably about six months later I felt confident enough to wipe my Windows installation and install Linux Mint.
But one day Ubuntu, the underlying Linux distribution for Linux Mint, updated and broke my Linux Mint install. It was very annoying with my computer freezing at times. I then started playing around with Arch Linux in VirtualBox and eventually found that the Cinnamon desktop was maintained on GitHub. After playing around with the various desktops on Arch Linux a little I eventually settled with Linux Mint's Cinnamon desktop on Arch Linux. Being feed up with the Linux Mint crashes, I wiped and installed Arch Linux with a Cinnamon desktop. My Arch Linux install now looks just like Linux Mint and I have gone from using VirtualBox to using KVM, QEMU and Virtual Machine Manager. But to this day in my everyday usage I have not discovered anything I can not do. Now I have never been into gaming so I can not attest Linux's usefulness in that area. But for me Linux brings me back to my old Windows days as far as the use of batch and the command line.
I know I express my dislike for Windows here but I do have Windows 11 installed within a virtual machine so I can utilize Adobe Illustrator. I am invested in Illustrator and not Inkscape on Linux right now. Although when I have time I may try to utilize Inkscape instead. But Windows 11 annoys me wanting me to use a Microsoft account every once in a while during startup. Recently during a Windows 11 reinstall I discovered that they have progressed to insisting you create a Microsoft Account at installation. You have to go through hoops to not create one at installation now, unless you use Rufus. With all said and done Windows still has those “Don't turn off your computer” or “wait till updates are done” annoyances. With Arch Linux updates I generally manually do them when something isn't working quite right or after the first of the month when Arch Linux updates drop. Yes Arch Linux is bleeding edge as some say but I have been using it for three years now without issue. Even in a ZFS pool on root before but finally gave up on that when ZFS DKMS didn't update soon enough before Arch Linux updates and broke my install. I keep excessive backups so I don't really need ZFS on root with Arch Linux anyway. I was experimenting with ZFS on root really. I do have Ubuntu Server LTS installed on servers using ZFS for multiple pools for backups. I have a main server and a backup server for the main one. I do have excessive backups.
But never have I been asked to reboot or told to wait at startup or shutdown. You can tell that annoys me about Windows. I have no desire to return to Windows on my daily machine or anything else I use on a daily basis.
I use Arch Linux because it intrigues me. I really like the simplicity of Arch Linux but do not advocate for someone coming from Windows to use it as I am. I do have an automated way to install Arch Linux with a Cinnamon desktop that I wrote as a bash script. I will bring that here at a later date.
I bash Windows here because Microsoft deserves it. They took an operating system that was useful and rather that just charge money for us to use it they try to monetize it through advertising forgetting what an operating system is for. They also started trying to appeal to all those other than desktop users and by doing so neglected desktop users. The annoyances about updates and such is demoralizing. But money has diluted Windows and drove users like me away.
Open source works because the people creating it all care about what they are doing.
So why did I stop using Windows?
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