Switching to Linux... what should I do!?
2024/06/23
So recently Microsoft has made headlines for its new "feature," Microsoft Recall, for new Copilot+ PCs. Now, I'm not going to even pretend I know everything about this new feature, but what I do know is that enabling it would capture a screenshot of the user's entire screen every few moments and that the feature is being developed by Microsoft, which is bad news from a user privacy perspective. Naturally, people were pretty pissed off and not an insignificant amount of Windows users switched over to using distributions of the Linux system after this whole debacle.
That got me thinking about what it was first like for me, switching to Linux for the first time after using Windows for my entire life. I was completely clueless when it came to competent computer-ing - oh, I could use the things, but I didn't know much about how they worked or what to do if something went wrong beyond sending it to some place to get fixed.
Oh, how things can change in a year. But that's not important - what is important is the people now who are bravely jumping ship from a product they've used for their whole life and switching to something completely alien to them. If you're one of them, then be proud of your decision and try to stick with it. But how exactly?
The answer is unfortunately complicated. There is not a one, single god-king Linux distribution that everyone uses and makes a united front to fight Michaelsoft Binbows. Not only that, but there are dozens of desktop environments, customizations, update patterns, package managers... you get the picture.
Ultimately, you have to make a conscious choice for what you as a computer-user want to use. And, ultimately, you need to get back to work as quickly as possible, which is why I've made a little number here that should speed the process up a little bit. This obviously isn't the only resource available, and my opinions aren't the most popular, but if you're short on time then I hope this will do.
By the time I've finished, I'll have written a couple of articles that quickly cover each of the major options that I think a beginner would be most likely to be interested in - if you disagree or want something new to be added, then e-mail me and I'll see if I think your opinion is right enough to warrant getting off my ass and changing the thing.