Yes, it IS possible, and can be done with minimal efforts... If and ONLY -if- they will make a small effort to get beyond their comfort zone, AND: Totally ignore the nay-saying windoze fanboiz who loudly disdain that which they (usually) have no experiences of & (usually) know nothing about - and then=> 1. Just grab a good live bootable & well matured Linux ISO to try out. (Which will use less BW than viewing most online movies.) 2. Get that ISO onto a USB stick, which is trivial for most folks who visit here. 3. Set up one's PC to boot from that USB stick at least temporarily. (Rather than the domineering & already installed OS.) Does it work OK ?? Most or all h/w (display, sound, Wifi, etc...) doing as it should ?? (Or not ??) Either way, to get back to whatever was 'normal' - all one does is to reboot minus the USB stick. Did it look good & satisfy the needs of the user ?? If yes, then great for you; Installation of most mature distros can be done either alongside or instead of the previously dominant OS very easily. If no: Sorry - and HUGE congrats to you all the same, because you did a very brave thing in trying something new to you. Yes, it IS different, and still in most ways that matter - quite the same, EXCEPT=> When it is good, Linux is VERY GOOD & amazingly reliable. The benefits from having Linux as one's main OS just start with it simply being there & running in the background with its incredible reliability - much like a good house foundation; Solid for years to come with no real need to poke at it. Is it PERFECT ?!? No. Nothing in the PC or tech realm is perfect & this world is only perfect in its imperfections. BUT: It is possible for many folks to have a very much happier time as Linux users, as I have proven with great successes in the last 10+ years of setting it up for totally non-techie folks who have been utterly delighted with it ever since. (I even have some elderly friends who live thousands of miles away now & have zero problems in being full-time Linux users.) My personal note to add in closing this 1st entry here: What I love best about Linux is NEVER having to be interrupted in my work when all that I was working on suddenly vanished, replaced by the horrible & useless (MS OS -only-) BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH !!
Just a quick shout out to Yen: Thanks so much for making equal ground with the related thread about moving TO Linux !!!
Wow, I had thought there were other entries in this thread...must be that me old memory was playing tricks on me !!
With all due respect, if you create a tech related thread where you would like everyone to be like minded and not bring any opposing comments or critical questions to the table...... the silence becomes deafening it seems. I'd be happy to share my experience in a non flaming fashion though, if appreciated !?
By the way, no flaming/trolling from my side. Looking through the Linux threads because it interests me, not because I think anything negative about it in general. Would actually really like to use Linux as a full fledged alternative.
Yes, there is that other thread: My comment was however, aimed at THIS thread !! As said in that other thread...: Here: It is a sad fact that so many technophiles have zero awareness of what came before - and why it still matters today. For those of us who witnessed the arrivals of all the OSes and the outright thefts committed by the 'winners', a strong disdain for the inventor of 'piracy' and his gang sometimes came also. This did not hamper folks like myself from making a thriving career in the tech realm, but it DID give us older guys a wider perspective towards the extreme misdeeds & inhumane wrongdoings of such as the Redmond based gang. So nowadays with so many folks who literally have zero comprehension of what h/w & s/w & OSes even ARE - and the saddest of that lot convinced that windows IS the PC and that mikr0$0ft is a diety to be bowed to and obeyed... Such threads as these far too often just serve to attract those who wish ONLY to condemn that which they have ZERO experiences of. For anyone who truly is open minded & willing to try an alternative OS: It is not at all difficult UNLESS it is attempted with 'modern' h/w that has been so locked down as to become totally impervious to ALL changes. This is why (in)secure boot & uefi were made - to protect existing monopolies because folks would just rather give up than to work at defeating such horrid & restrictive things. For folks having less restricted h/w & s/w it is as easy as getting a live booting ISO, putting it on a USB stick - telling the system to boot from it, and if that works - you are 1/2 way there already. Point attempted in all this above: Folks need friendly encouragement as opposed to the opposite. I, personally have nothing to gain from this as I can and do use other OSes anytime I wish to - and for me that is already 99% Linux.
So I would agree it is no longer so much about the hardware, even though my experience with even more modern hardware is pretty horrific. Any run of the mill PC should be able to run the generic Linux distro's and run them well. It's really about ease of use. I've been in hardware/software for more 20 years, but even though I've come very close a few times, I never quite manged to make the switch in the end. Finding alternative tools is not so much the problem. I quite like that process actually as there are many hidden gems out there.. I'ts getting stuff configured that seems the stumbling block every time. A few thing's I've tripped over are : - VPN, which was an absolute nightmare and I only managed to get it working once on a Linux Mint flavour. Even then I kept having to drop out of my workflow, go to terminal, go through long lists of country codes and manually enable/switch on/off the VPN with long command lines every time. - Mapping my shared files on a private fileserver (permanently) and without having to keep entering passwords or install one on top of the other on top of yet another tool to keep passwords and mappings permanent. - Having one stable application to deal with my email, contacts and addresses without having to use hacks, plugins and days of configuration and tinkering. I could go on with more experiences, but I think this should give you enough of an indication as to what a person such as myself experiences when trying to switch to Linux. So rather than me saying "it's not possible" I'm saying it didn't work out for me even though I had invested time in it on several occasions. Easy answer is "ah if you don't like command line and you don;t want to invest the time it's not for you" The thing is that Linux is often these days portraited as being easy, easy to install, manage/configure to hearts desire and to use and everyone should and could use it. But my experience so far is that everything requires disproportionate amounts of time to get 'sort of working'. So realistically what is it ? Easy and for everyone or not so much ? Remember, not bashing .... help me understand guys, why would I be running into these type of issues trying to do fairly basic stuff. I've played with a variety of distro's and can also see many of the great concepts in them. I'd really genuinely like to know why it is that I keep running into these type of issues and if there is something I could do different !? This is your chance, convert me
Hi, Let's see. I use my VPN not just for browsing but also for downloading... stuff... you know. I know of Samba but, unless I am overlooking the obvious, it's not the easy way of accessing my shares. Really let me add this for some perspective. I was a hardcore DOS guy well into the windows '98 period and have done all kinds of networking on it too. Heck I even managed to somehow get an old unix system working again at some point that nobody knew anything about anymore at the time with network connections that suddenly started failing. But having the house, wife and kids I don't have 'weeks' of time to spend on figuring out and configuring something that has become such a basic task. I've had less trouble making my android phone map shares on my (windows) fileserver with the right tools so it really puzzles me why on regular Linux it appears to be such a mission. Again, I may be overlooking the obvious here, feel free to shout out (or ridicule me ). Mozilla thunderbird I definitely tried. It didn't do what I needed it to do. As I recall email worked fine, but some of the other stuff needed 3rd party plugins or something. May need to look into it again, but I'm not too hopeful. I do realize Linux is free (so is windows these days essentially by the way) so that's a fair point. I guess it's more a matter of frustration that I hear people's granny's hacking away with Linux while for some mysterious reason I can't seem to get it to do basic stuff. Trying Distro's is something I do plenty. I can certainly appreciate all the hard work that went into making such a thing. In any event, thanks for generously giving out your thoughts.
Greetings Again Pvdven777. A bit more info for you, hoping it may be helpful in some manner... Zerotier is purely a delight IMO - simple, simple, simple to get going & does so much, so easily !! On top of which, it is the least laggy & fastest compared with any of the remote access tools I've ever used. Regarding Seamonkey: It is very much like the old Netscape suite; Used for email, contacts, calendar its OK - but with the most recent version, its browser got a lobotomy and is FUBAR IMO - but there's great news browser-wise=> The successor to Palemoon, Basilisk, is WONDERFUL !!! My browser preferences can no longer be met by any of the current brain-dead things, but they CAN be via Basilisk, so it is headed to become my 'daily driver' browser nowadays. As to Robolinux & ZorinOS - I simply regard them as things to goof around with on a VERY rainy day -if- my to-do list has all been fulfilled...which is unlikely to happen anytime soon. Replying to your analogy: I have no industry specific s/w that I need to use with ONE single exception: My Phone Explorer, as it is the very best PC to Android device access of all IMO. It is very fussy - 100% useless under WINE due to connection troubles, too fussy if used from a VM, so my solution is to have an older, scraped down NB PC with XP that is literally mounted under a high shelf & gets connected to externals & used just once in a while - ALL else is done now with my main, Linux PC. As to note keeping, I learned the hard way that doing that via SAAS can be a very bad thing, so MY data is now always stored in spaces that are within MY control, always. VPN-wise (for 'stuff'): None of them are perfect enough to warrant being paid IMO, so for that function, if/when it may be needed - it is time to use any number of free & current proxies. VS: For other VPN functions like file transfers & remote access - that is as I've already indicated. Samba: Meh. NO - it was NOT easy or simple to set up for me & I'm no sort of newbie - and the worst of it was getting connected with older, pre-existing windoze file shares, which was a real nightmare until I gave it up & just copied ALL that stuff into a Linux partition. There *ARE* 2 easy ways to get Samba & make shares all at once - but they are NOT OBVIOUS at all. Those can be done via either Nautilus or Caja and will do -most- of the file permissions right. Please bear in mind that as with all things Linux, permissions are often the (very real) 'monster under the bed', and can have some very perplexing side-effects - such is the price paid for being a bit more secure though. Thunderbird has NOT gotten any better & if anything (IMO) has gotten very limited compared with pre-lobotomy versions that had excellent extensions to choose from...but now...meh. I do use it myself - daily in fact - because Seamonkey refused to play nice with Gmail whereas TB handles that fine. Mine is current at version 68.10.0 (64-bit) and is tolerable...just enough for emails only. The 'secret'...?: Is not secret at all - but instead quite simple=> Set your mind to it - list out your needed functions/apps - do your data recovery/scraping of ALL your existing stuff - install your desired distro making 100% sure to have a totally separate EXTFS HOME partition - use another for your saved files if desired (I always have done this) - and power down the windoze box. (Then ignore it...until it is time to do away with it.) Yes - make it appear to be an intentional one-way trip, and TRULY get into it. Personal asides: Do I still have my 'old' windows PC ?? - Nope, dismantled it completely. Do I still have the HDD from it with EVERYTHING left as it was before ?? - Sure do. Do I use that HDD at all ?? - Yes=> A couple of times as an external USB connected device, to scrape out a couple of things I missed at 1st. But NOT as a boot device - that ship has sailed & is LONG GONE !! Do I regret in any manner having moved 100% into Linux with such force ?? - Not...even...one...tiny...little...bit !!! HTH ??
Like the article says...many users will be unhappy about this removal. I, personally have zero interest in ever using that product - but: It is amusing to see how they continue to lobotomize their products and then 'modern' users regard that as 'progress' somehow.