Like many people I'm a reluctant Windows user who hates Microscum, and does not want Kill Gate's evil fist up my rectum. So I have long wanted to escape and move to Linux.
In fact I did try to do that back in 2010, but I'm not very technically advanced and it was all just too difficult, so I gave up and went back to Windows XP. (A modified version called Last XP). At that time the programs I was mainly using were Microsoft Office, and Adobe Photoshop, neither of which work on Linux. I did a blog post my Linux experiment in 2010: https://www.frot.co.nz/design/computing/linux/
Now I've been using Libre Office for years, and all my email is done through Proton Mail rather than Outlook, so a big part of my software problem is already sorted. I'm still using an old version of Photoshop (CS6), but I can see that GIMP 2 can do everything I'm doing in Photoshop. Gimp 3 is due out soon, and that will probably be more advanced than the Photoshop version I'm using. So I'm now more motivated to learn Gimp.
One of the biggest roadblocks to new users switching to Linux is that it's all just too confusing. There are endless options, both for the distros, and the software as well. But nobody seems to want to give a straight answer about what is best.
The website Distrowatch is probably the best source of Linux information, but the first thing you are confronted with there is that there are 272 distros. And most of them have multiple versions, which are constantly being updated. So there are actually thousands of distros! Here are the current top 40:
What I wanted is for someone to tell me which ones are any good. And it turns out if you are a non tech user like me, there are only a handful of suitable choices.
Back in 2010 I tried about 10 distros, and ended up going with Ubuntu. But I never actually liked it or felt at home using it. And this may sound odd, but I also just didn't like the people it seemed to attract. There were lots of angry geeks mouthing off in forums, and it was all just a bad vibe. I later found that most of the other distros were friendly and helpful.
This time around, I only found two distros I liked enough to seriously consider, Mint and Zorin. I gave both a decent try, and found that although Zorin looks really cool, and is better sorted out of the box, once I started learning a bit more, I could get Mint looking and working how I wanted, while on Zorin I had a few things I couldn't get to work. I came to the conclusion Mint is more stable, has better support, and is fully sorted.
So now I'm gradually shifting over to using Linux Mint. It hasn't been a quick process, because I've been using Windows since the 90's and making changes is difficult. But looking at what Microsoft are up to, I can see there is no future there and I have to find an alternative. This is my Mint desktop so far:
