Hasbro / Wizards of the Coast have mothballed another thing I love ►
◄ Project Zebra: WE KNOW THAT YOU CAN HEAR US EARTHMEN
I replaced Windows 7 late last year, because, having tried and used Windows 10 on another machine,there were too many problems and I wanted to find a reliable alternative before 2020 when support for Windows 7 runs out.
The problems included forced updates and restarts (an absolute dealbreaker), but also many other annoyances – ads on the lock screen and in other places, spyware-like data collection, a tablet style interface introduced in Windows 8, the hassle of completely disabling voice search, the way Windows 10 wipes out preferred application settings during updates, the untidiness of having a new Settings manager alongside a Control Panel, the flatness of its new theme, and other issues.
Even if you just look at the privacy issues, as noted by the article below, "29 per cent of Windows 10's 500 million customers didn't settle for default settings. That's 145 million people who didn't just click through on the default setup, but actively tried to restrict the amount of data the operating system leaks." That's a phenomenal number to have had concerns.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/09/microsofts_privacy_enhancements/
Many of the interface changes could be worked around with tools such as Classic Shell, and a few (eg update management and not restarting your machine when they feel like it) have been backtracked on to some extent by Microsoft, but it felt too much like fighting the operating system and company producing it at every turn. The number of complaints and seriousness of some of those issues overcame my resistance to change, which has always been fairly strong.
These are actually some of the more positive write ups, noting backtracking or ways to disable:
https://arstechnica.co.uk/information-technology/2017/04/windows-10-creators-update-privacy-telemetry/
https://www.windowscentral.com/how-remove-advertising-windows-10
https://www.cnet.com/uk/news/microsoft-forced-windows-update-auto-restart-snooze-indefinitely-windows-10/
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/17/08/23/1831250/microsoft-will-never-again-sneakily-force-windows-downloads-on-users
But my goodwill isn't coming back, and having to hunt around for settings to turn off data collection or advertising isn't acceptable. Just because they got a lot of complaint, including from governments as well as end users, doesn't mean it's a good idea to trust them again. Essentially they're sorry they got caught, and it's not for the first time – you may not know, but Microsoft was convicted for abusing a monopoly position some years back.
If an Android or iOS tablet doesn't do everything you need, and/or you don't want to buy a Mac – because there's usually no good reason to ditch a working computer if the hardware isn't that old – or you simply like being able to customise, I'd definitely consider Linux worth a look. Having been using Windows for personal use for over twenty years it felt like a fairly big decision at the time, but at no point have I thought "I should go back".
The advice I'd give is still more-or-less the same:
- Aim to start off with fairly standard or slightly older hardware for best compatibility.
- Get familiar with software alternatives that are available first, because a lot of software native to Linux is also on other platforms, such as VLC Media Player, Chrome/Chromium, Firefox, Audacity, Calibre, Thunderbird, etc.
- Identify weak spots (eg Microsoft Office dependency, Kindle software or updating a satnav) and possible workarounds – some Windows software will work using a tool called Wine, particularly if you don't have to have the most recent version. I currently use Office 2007 for work documents, and Foobar for playing music. But remember it doesn't hurt to keep an "other OS" laptop around as a fallback or for games, occasionally updating a sat nav, etc.
- LiveCDs allow you to easily try different Linux distributions and desktop environments without installing them, or installing them VirtualBox is another way to do this. But put the two together and you can actually run a distribution from a LiveCD ISO inside a VirtualBox window on your desktop, which is perfect for testing until you've picked one you like.
- Ubuntu is a well-known Linux distribution and "parent" to all of the other distributions I'm about to mention, but also does things differently to the operating systems people are most likely to be familiar with. Other popular and consistent distro recommendations for new users are Mint Cinnamon or Mint MATE (for Windows people, depending on whether you have new or older hardware) or Elementary OS (for Mac people). As much as I like Xubuntu, which uses the traditional Xfce desktop environment, there are more websites online that can help with the others if you need it.
- Beginners should also choose a long term support version of a distribution if one is available, giving several years between bigger upgrades and allowing users who are happier to experiment or more confident (like myself) time to find and get issues fixed.
- Buy some new user type magazines to flick through, and try to have realistic expectations because it's unavoidable that not everything will be exactly the same in a new OS and there will be some things to learn.
- Try to make a clean break and spend some time setting up a new computing environment rather than switching between old and new, if possible.
Various useful links: ubuntu.com | linuxmint.com | elementary.io | xubuntu.org | virtualbox.org
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