If you don’t mind paying to use a search engine, Kagi is actually pretty good. Not as good as Google was 20 years ago, but significantly better than any other search engine I can find today.

Start today. Download VirtualBox (or equivalent software) and if you make a mistake, you can just nuke the OS and start over without risk.

You can always try Linux risk free in a virtual machine like VirtualBox.

If you like what you see, and you have any valuable data backed-up, you can try dual booting. That way you get to use Linux as your primary operating system, but can switch back and forth as much as needed.

I found I was dual booting Windows and Linux for over 3 years before I was comfortable enough to stop using Windows entirely. Switching to Linux doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing approach. You can take it as slow as you want.

Xed

It opens quickly

Windows kept doing things I didn’t want it to.

The last straw was when I had a 24 hours render running, and Windows decided to update and reboot 1 hour before it was done. I was using the computer at the time, RAM, CPU, and GPU were all at max, the mouse was being moved, I clicked “later” every time the update pop-up appeared, and it still rebooted.

Linux does what I tell it to, and doesn’t do what I tell it not to do. I didn’t think that was a big ask until Windows.

A better comment would be delay in seconds as that is the one thing not obvious from glancing at the code.

Aaargh, that makes so much more sense now.

Hopefully I’ll remember this time.

git-fire

Try Linux Mint with Cinnamon.

Cinnamon was built for Mint. The only time I’ve run Cinnamon on another distro, I encountered a bunch of confusing bugs.

At least this will tell you which bugs are caused by Cinnamon, and which are due to the integration with a custom distro.

deleted by creator

The plural of regex is regrets.

I’ve found syncthing to be easier once the initial setup has been done.

https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1654:_Universal_Install_Script

132

Can you do all 4 at the same time? I genuinely don’t know, I haven’t had access to windows for years.

Framework has the option to purchase a laptop without an operating system.

My computer takes longer to get through POST than to boot Linux. It’s a little frustrating.

Customise the displayed clock. I have 3 monitors, a taskbar on each, and at least one clock on each. From left to right my clocks show:

Unix time (1695110535)
Full datetime (2023-09-19T17:32:15 +0930)
12 hour time (5:32)
Abbreviated datetime (Tuesday, 2023-09-19, 17:32).

If I wanted to, I could display the datetime as YYYY-hh-MM, ss:DD:mm. I’m fairly sure this is not possible on windows.

Thanks for this post. It has taken me down the rabbit hole of new software.

I now have f-droid and simpletask on my phone, sleek on my computer, and syncthing on both.

I have needed a really simple to-do list synchronised between my phone and computer for years, and just didn’t know this was an option. I’m very happy now.

I really hope those aren’t factorials.