This probably isn’t the one you should read; I didn’t switch to Linux. I’ve been running Linux since the kernel version was 0.96; before Linux distributions. I haven’t run Windows at home until I could run it in a virtual machine … and almost exclusively for work.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t have a few thoughts on it.
Don’t Switch
Is the thought of replacing Windows on your machine making you a bit nervous? No wonder! So don’t do it.
If you have the space and money to do it, pick up a refurbished laptop from Linux – refurbished laptops from manufacturers such as Lenovo or Dell can often be obtained for cheap. Performance will suffer a bit, but it’s only bleeding edge applications where that matters – the latest games, video production, and local AI. Anything more mundane will work fine.
The cheapskate option is to run Linux as a virtual machine on your existing machine; there’s plenty of options here from VirtualBox to VMWare. Or even libvirt (a gooey for QEMU and others) which is the one I use. This has several advantages – you can switch back and forth very easily, and even access your files on your C drive.
What Distribution?
You might get the impression from Youtube that the choice of which Linux distribution you choose makes an enormous difference. No it doesn’t.
Sure different distributions look a bit different, but when you come down to it, when you’re writing your Will in LibreOffice you will have a hard time telling the difference between the different distributions. Even in terms of appearance you can often make distribution X look like distribution Y.
That’s not to say you can’t have fun selecting different distributions, but just don’t think it is that important. Choose a popular one (such as Ubuntu) so searching for answers will be more likely to get an answer that works for you.
Use It
Probably the most obvious advice is to use it. Every task you do with a computer, try to do it with Linux. Cheat if you need to but add what you resorted to Windows to use to a list of things to find out how to do.
Linux is different and it runs different applications, so it will take some learning to become as effective (or even more so) as you would be with Windows. It doesn’t matter how long it takes to switch over – there’s nothing wrong with it taking 6 months.
And have fun doing it!
