Life with Linux
So I switch back and forth between multiple desktop OS and recently have been exercising Linux Mint 19.1 "Tessa" on a 5 year old Dell Inspiron 3647 desktop.
The first question with Linux distros in my mind has always been can you utilize it as a daily driver and be able to perform all of the tasks that you would normally. In my case it's an emphatic yes. The OS is extremely fast even on an 4th gen Core i3 with 8GB of RAM and Intel graphics. Compared to Windows 10 running on the same system it's night and day.
The Cinnamon UI version is very intuitive to navigate and feels very natural.
While MS does not support a Linux version of Office - the distro includes the LibreOffice suite and to be honest the quality of the Office365 Web experience has gotten to the point where you have to question the need to install Office at all.
With that said - there are two MS apps I use that are not part of our corporate E5 O365 subscription - Visio and Project. And so while available - the pricing of those to me seems excessive at $15 & $30 / month respectively. That works out to $540 annually.
When needed printing/scanning is available via my HP Officejet 8600 - so no problems there either.
For my work - all the other tools I use from Box to Slack/Teams to Webex are available to me with no lack of functionality. In fact you start to get very use to simply having a browser like Chrome open all day with tabs connected to Office, Slack, Webex, etc.
And using entertainment apps like Spotify, VLC etc, provide the same if not better experience than you get within the Windows environment. Music and Video playback is excellent and again due to the speed of the OS there are no lags or issues and this is using an Intel 3160 WiFi card.
In many ways the experience is as good if not better than my PixelBook. And while ChomeOS provides the extension to support native Android apps - many of them are simply web extenders in the first place - so really you get just as good experience just going to the Web site.
And because this is a desktop - you get the advantages of using multiple large screens without all of the docking station / USB-C / HDMI / DisplayPort drama.
I'm not a gamer - so really can't comment there and obviously not all titles that you might see for PC are available.
I would say that if there is a weakness at all it's in the App Store / MarketPlace. You're just not going to see the thousands of apps you do on Apple's or MS's stores. But the reality is that for many folks - including myself - maybe I use 10 - 15 at most and a lot of the rest is either really niche or crap.
But that's the reality of being a 1% market share OS. With that said - there are hundreds of apps available and many perform exactly the way you expect them to.
Bottom line is this - unless you're absolutely tied to a specific locally installed Windows app that you can't live without and you're not ready to purchase a new machine to take advantage of Windows 10 - try Linux and utilize the online apps that are available to you. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at A) how fast your older machine will run and B) how little you really need all those older apps.
And even if you have that old Windows app thing - you're better off installing Linux - then installing a VM environment like VirtualBox and running that old Windows environment in there.
The first question with Linux distros in my mind has always been can you utilize it as a daily driver and be able to perform all of the tasks that you would normally. In my case it's an emphatic yes. The OS is extremely fast even on an 4th gen Core i3 with 8GB of RAM and Intel graphics. Compared to Windows 10 running on the same system it's night and day.
The Cinnamon UI version is very intuitive to navigate and feels very natural.
While MS does not support a Linux version of Office - the distro includes the LibreOffice suite and to be honest the quality of the Office365 Web experience has gotten to the point where you have to question the need to install Office at all.
With that said - there are two MS apps I use that are not part of our corporate E5 O365 subscription - Visio and Project. And so while available - the pricing of those to me seems excessive at $15 & $30 / month respectively. That works out to $540 annually.
When needed printing/scanning is available via my HP Officejet 8600 - so no problems there either.
For my work - all the other tools I use from Box to Slack/Teams to Webex are available to me with no lack of functionality. In fact you start to get very use to simply having a browser like Chrome open all day with tabs connected to Office, Slack, Webex, etc.
And using entertainment apps like Spotify, VLC etc, provide the same if not better experience than you get within the Windows environment. Music and Video playback is excellent and again due to the speed of the OS there are no lags or issues and this is using an Intel 3160 WiFi card.
In many ways the experience is as good if not better than my PixelBook. And while ChomeOS provides the extension to support native Android apps - many of them are simply web extenders in the first place - so really you get just as good experience just going to the Web site.
And because this is a desktop - you get the advantages of using multiple large screens without all of the docking station / USB-C / HDMI / DisplayPort drama.
I'm not a gamer - so really can't comment there and obviously not all titles that you might see for PC are available.
I would say that if there is a weakness at all it's in the App Store / MarketPlace. You're just not going to see the thousands of apps you do on Apple's or MS's stores. But the reality is that for many folks - including myself - maybe I use 10 - 15 at most and a lot of the rest is either really niche or crap.
But that's the reality of being a 1% market share OS. With that said - there are hundreds of apps available and many perform exactly the way you expect them to.
Bottom line is this - unless you're absolutely tied to a specific locally installed Windows app that you can't live without and you're not ready to purchase a new machine to take advantage of Windows 10 - try Linux and utilize the online apps that are available to you. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at A) how fast your older machine will run and B) how little you really need all those older apps.
And even if you have that old Windows app thing - you're better off installing Linux - then installing a VM environment like VirtualBox and running that old Windows environment in there.
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