Well, it’s 2016 and the most recent Windows release (10 that is) is getting more and more bad publicity with the security and privacy issues. I have been looking at upgrading to Windows 10 but with all the news decided to try Linux. Again.
I decided to switch my laptop first. Just recently bought a high capacity new SSD drive (1 TB Sandisk) and have replaced my old-ish drive. At first I had Windows installed on it, but then decided to give Linux Mint a try. Unlike my attempts to use Linux 3-4 years ago (Ubuntu that time), this time around it went much better. I first tried Mint as a “live” OS (running it from a USB drive, not installing on the computer) and it seemed to pick all of my devices just fine. Once I was sure it was going to play nice with the hardware I’ve installed it and it seems to be running just fine – I haven’t booted into Windows yet.
While the OS seems to be OK and there are few applications that everyone now expects to have (ie. browsers, office productivity tools, some computer related software) I have my concerns and doubts – the software that I need the most is pretty much Windows exclusive (photography related software) and it is going to be very challenging to find anything comparable. So I’m not kidding myself – there is no way to get anything close to Lightroom or Photoshop on Linux, so it’s going to be a struggle. If only Adobe released their software for Linux – I’d be buying (or rather renting) it right away. But no, they ignore Linux and, unfortunately, they have no competition. I believe they ignore Linux because the userbase is small, but at the same time I’ve read a lot of posts online of people who’d move away from Windows if only Adobe’s products were available on Linux. Classic chicken and the egg problem.
Well, with all of this said, I am going to document my adventures in Linux move as I go. Mostly for myself – once I decide to switch my desktop to Linux I’ll need to use some sort of a checklist of what I need to do.