Escaped Enshittification
Windows for me was a matter of convenience. I was never able to afford Apple products. Windows? Well it was piratable, and I even bought a home licence for XP and managed to cycle through the various upgrades with it.
And I remain horribly nostalgic for XP.
But with Windows 10 being put down, and Windows 11 not even trying to hide Microsoft’s greed and incompetence, it was time to switch.
I’d used linux before. I’d tried various distros from Ubuntu, Mint, Gentoo, Kali, etc. Even played about with making my own using Puppy. And of course Raspbian, because I have an ADHD relationship with Raspberry Pi projects.
In the end I decided that it was time to leave Windows and switch to Ubuntu. One of the more stable and well known, and virtually every tutorial and walk through you google will with it.
But that’s also where it falls down often, as most Linux distros do. Because to someone who doesn’t use it regularly, or coming straight from windows, it’s not as intuitive. The drive mounting, the networking, the fact that you still need to use terminal for various things, and the worst in my opinion, is that like 80% the dumbed down step for step walk through tutorials expect you to know various niche commands, formatting and such.
They’re still being written for fellow Linux users and enthusiasts and not the dumbed down customer service level required for the greater population. Android is a good example of how that should be down I think.
And let’s not get started on the naming conventions for programs and commands. I get it was faster to leave out all the vowels for repeating stuff and write faster, but geez.
Having bitched and moaned a bit, I’ve been on Ubuntu since Win 10 ended support, and I’m 100% comfortable with it at this point. The programs I want to use work well, as do the 99% games, and whatever else I need to do is not too difficult. But that’s only because I’ve made the effort to learn. Many, MANY, will not, and would rather fork out a fortune for something they could get for free with a little bit of work.
Btw, the reason the symbol for Linux is Tux the Penguin, is supposedly because on a trip to the zoo, a fairy penguin bit Linus Torvald (the guy who wrote Linux as we know it).
