This is part 1 of an ongoing series on moving away from Windows and onto Linux. In this post we’ll explore the reasons for the move and examine the two main alternatives together with their benefits and challenges.

Its seems that many people are looking to move away from MS Windows. There are at least a couple of reasons for this:

  • Windows 10 support has come to end of life. This, together with changes to Windows 11 that essentially renders many computers – even fairly recent ones – useless as they no longer meet the requirements. This alone has caused a lot of folks to look else where.
  • A lot of people don’t like the idea that Microsoft now requires that you have a Microsoft account in order to access your computer. This also, of course, means that your files are in the cloud, which is a situation that makes some folks (maybe many?) uncomfortable.

Today I want to take a look at the two primary alternatives to Windows. But, before I do that, I want to point out that I’m looking at what I believe the average user wants and and needs in a computer, not at what the tech nerds consider important. One of the greatest challenges for the average person is making sense of all the gobbledygook that the tech nerds spew. You just want a system that works and lets you get your work done and that’s what I’m aiming to address.

Looking at Alternatives#

In truth, there are only two alternatives to a Windows computer: Apple’s Mac, or Linux. Being a regular user of all three operating systems, I feel like I am able to provide a bit of insight into the advantages and disadvantages of each.

Apple Mac:#

The Mac is a great computer. While many Windows fanbois may bitch about the cost and question the quality of the hardware, the reality is that the hardware is actually very good, particularly now with the ARM based M-series CPUs. I’ve used Macs since 2006 and have only had one failure which I’m pretty sure was my fault. Mac has a tagline that says that they “just work” and that’s been pretty much my experience.

While I think that a Mac is a great option, it’s not without its challenges.

Mac uses a very different paradigm for its desktop. Locating and firing up applications is … different. And even after nearly 20 years of using them, it still seems a bit clunky to start a program. Once you get use to it, and particularly once you understand how to leverage the Spotlight function to call up the program, it’s not hard, just different.

An interesting observation I’ve made in many of the discussions about moving to Mac from Windows is that while many people claim to be leaving Windows because you’re now forced to have and use a Microsoft Account, these same folks don’t seem to have a problem with using a Mac which also requires an online account in the form of an iCloud account in order to fully utilize the OS. I can’t for the life of me figure out the logic there. Yes, there is an argument that Apple doesn’t mine your data in the same way that Microsoft is presumed to do. But … really … can you be sure?

Beyond the different paradigm for using the OS, I think the two biggest challenges for a Windows user moving to Mac are that not all software you might prefer (or require) is available on Mac and because the Mac CPU is ARM-based, you can’t easily create a virtual machine to fire up a copy of windows when you need to use those programs. Now, for the average user, this is not likely a big issue and I’ll address this further shortly.

In addition to the cost of the hardware, none of the software you used on your Windows machine will work on the Mac. This means investing in a lot of new software. That said, many of the programs you’ve come to rely on in Windows are available for the Mac, including Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Suite. Most major software companies produce Mac versions of their main software lines. Of course, if you’re trying to move away from cloud-based services, which both Microsoft Office and Adobe’s Creative Suite are, you may need to look for alternatives.

In addition, the Mac also has some awesome and very useful software that is not available on Windows and you might find that these tools meet your needs in ways that you didn’t anticipate. And that’s a good thing. Just bear in mind the cost.

LINUX#

The other real option for switching away from Windows is Linux. Linux has several advantages, not the least of which is that there is little if any monetary cost involved.

Because you can install Linux on your current computer, you’re saving the cost of a new device. Moreover, your current device is most likely overkill for most Linux installs, meaning that you can revive older machines and find them to be at least as useful as a new Windows machine. I am, for example, writing this post (and all of my posts) on a 10 year old Lenovo laptop. It’s works beautifully and I’ll be providing a bit more info on it’s performance in a later post.

Secondly, with a few exceptions virtually all Linux distributions are free to use. Not only that, but almost all of the software that you use on Linux is also free. This is definitely different from Mac. That said, just like the Mac, the software you used on Windows won’t work on Linux. At least not directly. There are some emulators that allows some software to work, but I wouldn’t depend on that!

Aside from the cost savings and the ability to reuse hardware rather than generate e-waste, one of the big draws to Linux, in my mind, is that the desktop paradigm is very similar to Windows. You’ll have no trouble making the transition. There’s a start button that calls up a list of applications, just as on Windows. And, depending on the version of Desktop Environment you choose, you’ll find a list of commonly used software already installed. That software, by the way, generally mimics pretty closely the software you’ll find in Windows. I’ll talk about Software in part 2 of this series.

Now let’s speak to the “elephant in the room”. Linux has a reputation for being hard to install and use. And that used to be true. Today, though things have changed considerably.

I started my computer journey back in the DOS days, moving to Windows 1.0 then 3.1 and I think every version of Windows since then. The reality is that those early days of Microsoft were just as challenging as Linux is reputed to be. But just as Windows has improved and addressed those challenges, so has Linux. Today, installing Linux is quite easy. A few clicks and in less than 10 minutes (usually) you have a working system.

Similarly, while it used to be quite challenging (reading that “frustrating as hell!”) to install software on Linux (you might have heard the term “dependency hell”) installing software today is often just a few clicks away and there are seldom any real issues. And, while the quality and utility of early versions of Linux software were questionable, today you’ll find applications that are as sophisticated, attractive, and easy to use as their Windows counterparts.

The great thing about Linux software is that it is rarely, if ever, cloud-based. That means that what you create on your computer stays on your computer unless you specifically and deliberate choose to save it in the cloud. Finally, if you find that you have a piece of Windows software that you absolutely must use and there’s no Linux alternative, you can still create a virtual machine, install Windows, and use your software that way. We’ll talk about this in a much later post.

Wrapping Up#

So there you have it. If you’re wanting to move away from Windows, you have two main options and we’ve taken a look at both.

For my money I strongly recommend at least spending some time exploring Linux before you plunk down a lot of your hard-earned cash to buy into the Apple ecosystem. There’s nothing wrong, in my view, with Apple. After all, I have two apple computers and an iPhone. But the total cost of ownership, isn’t just the hardware, it’s the software you’ll need to make it work as you want it. Meanwhile, Linux generally has pretty high-quality software that is available for free (though I do encourage you to donate if you find the software useful) that will likely meet your needs just as well with minimal learning curves.