How and why I switched to Linux

I've just made the big move from Windows 11 to Linux Mint do I regret doing it we'll discuss that as we go along the first thing that helped me make the switch was having an injured toe which meant I could spend a lot of time at the computer but you don't need such an excuse some previous experience of Linux also came in handy I've used Chromebooks a lot over the years I've worked with unraid a fair bit and so I'm not afraid of the command line and and that's a big deal as much as some people say uh Linux is all gooey now you can just navigate uh user interfaces it's all very accessible that's not 100% my experience yeah if something isn't working as intended I still find it's easiest most of the time to jump into the terminal and write do this rather than navigate a bunch of UI to try and find the button that says do that even with a very clean userfriendly setup at times I still find that's necessary thankfully I have a leld interest in Linux it's such a huge and exciting space in it the global movement towards open operating systems and it Powers so much of the world from large businesses servers it's all around us and like many of us I have a desire for better privacy and security now that's a hard thing to measure but linux's Independence versus the big companies Apple Microsoft Google it's a plus for privacy and being a smaller creature in the big animal kingdom is arguably good for security less of the Target and linux's openness is arguably the other big plus here the democratization of how Linux operates and being able to see inside every line of code means there are so many people around the world who are keeping an eye on what it is doing and what it isn't doing in a way moving to Linux means shifting your trust from a big company like Microsoft over to people people just trusting people there pros and cons and as time goes on and the internet is becoming less recognizable and everything is machine learning this and artificial algorithms that my desire to control the technology that I own is growing all the time yeah so a big thing that helped me switch to Linux is my constantly reinforced frustration with Google Microsoft and the like I swear big Tech is more out of touch with average human people than ever or out of touch with me at least Windows is an increasingly noisy operating system that requires you to sign into your Microsoft account and is incorporating AI features left right and Center that I haven't been convinced that I that I want to know anything about yet it's really an uphill battle to try and tame windows and make it do what I want it to do and as little else as possible and that's where Linux does a really good job on Linux there are far fewer processes happening in the background that I don't know about on Windows my PCS Fans will often spin up uh and it's clearly thinking about something I don't know what it is whereas on Linux it's just much less common that anything significant will happen unless I myself have activated a process but even with all that ideation I certainly had some hesitation about making the move but one thing that made me feel better about dipping my toe in the Linux water to see if it's fine is how easy it is to dual boot these days it's so Breezy to just add a partition alongside your windows one install Linux there and then you can boot into whichever operating system every time you turn on your computer it's a highly recommended approach to get started into Linux which is why I enjoyed thinking about it and then I just decided to delete Windows Al together and just dive straight into Linux YOLO luckily here in 2024 Linux is in a good State I I'm impressed by what I've seen it's more accessible than it's ever been before absolutely for sure that's not to say that any of the distros are going to hold your hand as much as Windows but with the likes of zorin I think you could get pretty close and Zoran looks really great by the way for me it was a choice between Zoran popos and Linux Mint all very accessible userfriendly starting places I ended up going with mint and though it's essentially an operating system like any other and you you know you won't get too lost around here all dros are laid out differently and it was important for me on this journey to have a willingness to think differently I just said that one out right once I was up and running I got customizing everything to my liking and there are a lot of customization options it's way more flexible than Windows and by the way this is a significant item on my list time shift it's a snapshot backup program specifically for the core operating system it was installed by default on Linux min if you make a mistake or something stops working it's practically one click to go back in time to a previous System state and it takes just your system files back so it doesn't affect your personal uh documents or anything that's still all up to date after rolling back I've only had to use it once thankfully and it was so easy now every time I'm like H this might be the solution to the problem I'm looking at or a worthy upgrade or or a package I should install or uninstall but I'm not quite sure I can just run a Time shift back up and it'll be easy as pie to turn back time next it was time to get installing all of my favorite software and it was very helpful that I am already a big user of heaps of free and open-source software which for the most part is perfectly happy living on Linux seriously stuff like open Office is just such a good replacement for Microsoft Office no matter what operating system you use I think there's so many people out there who should really be freeing as many of their applications as possible now unfortunately and I and anticipated this a lot of devices and peripherals don't get official Linux drivers but fos saves the day again because an app called solar can actually manage all my Linux mice and keyboard absolutely perfectly in fact it sort of improves on logitech's Windows software by pairing down the nonsense to the the raw features that I want and the community creates drivers like this for for all sorts of Hardware not all of it though and we'll come back to that and Beyond just drivers GitHub is a doorway to an absolute Treasure Trove of brilliant open- Source gadgets it's all very clever and inspiring I happen to stumble across this new little program that someone has made which turns off the TV I have connected to my Linux machine uh when I turn off the machine lovely and once you get comfortable exploring GitHub and a little more familiar with how it works you can start experimenting with all sorts of wonderful gadgets by all sorts of smart people and of course you can do this on Windows as well but even more of github's Genius is catered to Linux and it's not all just command line ciphers but there's stuff with lovely graphical interfaces as well like local send which is this really efficient little app that beats out airdrop and nearby share and you can install it on any device I've only just come across it now but it's not just a Linux thing but it's everywhere and you can send files between your devices so easily it's the best um and then there's video Mass which is a uh a graphical interface for FFM Peg and lets you convert all kinds of files so easily and then there's pea backup which so much for being on Linux I feel like I should have to suffer through some very detailed and extravagant backup program that's very complicated and has all these kind of formats and pea backup is just this beautiful little front end it would look at home on Mac OS honestly I say that as a compliment right now uh even though I I generally I'm not a fan of Mac OS now the trickiest stuff that I've had to try and set up on Linux is not the open- source stuff now unfortunately I I really really wanted to install Da Vinci resolve and though it technically works on Linux it's no easy feat did I mention that all of this required a fair bit of time and patience well it did anyway it turns out that to run to Vinci on Linux meant I had to turn the file into a Deb file then run that and then I run into all these driver issues and then I tried installing it in a drro box and that didn't even work through all of this I hit so many roadblocks and one of the big things that helped me through ironically is Gemini and chat gbt yes the machine learning chat bots of Google and Microsoft are the very things that helped me attempt to leave that World Behind seriously though as helpful as Reddit threads and Linux forums and and Discord servers are and they are extremely helpful my constant companion through all this dense troubleshooting were these AI chat Bots and if you can describe things well enough to them they have a pretty decent knowledge of Linux and they helped me work through all sorts of Errors now to get Da Vinci properly running I ended up having to install amd's proprietary Graphics drivers you see Linux Mint by default comes with these open source ones which are mostly better but if you're having an issue like I was with a particular application you kind of have to go with the proprietary stuff speaking of Steam runs so easily on Linux these days thanks to valve now having a vested interest in the area steam proton can get the vast majority of games running I jumped into Star Wars the Old Republic ostensibly a Windows only game easy no problem and for other non-linux games and applications there's wine and crossover and virtual machines these days it's really not that impossible to run software from other operating systems like a champ I came across some great advice online about this whole process which is to eventually leave it all alone once everything's up and running pretty nicely and you've got your applications and you can do your day-to-day stuff let it rest you know resist the temptation to fiddle for a while let it settle in and I think that's good because setting up an operating system can put you in this mindset of Tinker with everything make it perfect but you want to snap out of that and not get sucked into that swirling Maelstrom of discontent just be happy tweak it over time it's fine I mean at this point you've been sitting in front of the computer a lot I think you've earned a little bit of time away from it all it's the hardest thing in that moment I think to just step away but I think you need it so much I mean my back needed it with all of that I managed to get Linux Mint running pretty darn well and a lot of little things are better than Windows like the way that I can customize things to my liking and make programs run exactly how I want them to I feel like I'm in control of this in a way that I'm not of windows but the big bummer is that I might still have to switch back personally and it's only because I make videos which involve all sorts of gear and and microphones and tools which I plug into the computer and I need all of their features to work but so many of these companies you see don't have Linux drivers and the community drivers aren't enough to have full control over these pieces of technology and it really is a downer because I Feel So Close you know just about everything works and works so well even my favorite video editor Da Vinci after a complicated setup runs well but if I'm going to hit a hurdle every time I need to update the firmware on a microphone or or be able to connect to a wireless light properly my computer just won't be doing what I personally need it to do so that's my journey through Linux so far and even if I have to pop back to Windows in the end I'm glad I went on this Expedition I've obviously learned so much and you know it all just develops one's appreciation for computers and the people who make them but that'll do it for now I hope your technology is treating you well ciao

Channel: Thomas Midena

Views: 89,871

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Id: HL1XavoNqsM

Length: 12min 22sec (742 seconds)

Published: Mon May 06 2024