Linux now?

[Mugwump]

NORTH: Goodbye Windows

Irene North is a staff reporter at the Star-Herald. Contact her at 308-632-9041 or by email at irene.north@starherald.com. Find her on Facebook and on Twitter.

Posted: Thursday, November 24, 2016 3:36 pm

IRENE NORTH Staff Reporter inorth@starherald.com

I climbed aboard the plane at Newark International Airport carrying my new computer in my hands. I?d spent the better part of a year explaining to my mother why I needed a computer for college. I muddled through until we could afford it. I walked down the aisle proudly with my new, dual 5.25 inch floppy disk computer and CRT monitor. It was an open box deal. People asked me what college I was going to. When my plane landed in Minneapolis-St. Paul, a flight attendant carried my CPU to my next gate.

My computer ran DOS and didn?t have a mouse. If you still use ctrl-c, ctrl-v, ctrl-p ? copy, paste, print ? you are using remnants of DOS. I knew all the commands and writing my college papers was immensely easier and cheaper.

Eventually, I moved on to a Tandy laptop. It had a greyscale screen. I couldn?t afford the fancy, new color screens. It ran Windows 3.11. I spent extra time at UNL?s Love Library learning how to efficiently use the system, mostly by breaking the ones in the computer lab.

I wasn?t pleased with my Packard Bell computer with Windows 95. It looked childish and always ran sluggish. It was the last computer I would buy. I have built my own computers since 1998. My first build ran Windows 98. I didn?t have time to learn Linux, though I kept promising myself I would, soon. Windows ME was a disaster and I quickly moved to Windows 2000. I really liked it. I could tinker with it and knew enough that if I did X, Y was going to happen. As with most upgrades, I eventually moved to Windows XP and 7. I skipped Vista.

I?ve been relatively happy with Windows 7, but my laptop runs Windows 8.1. I really don?t like it. I?ve spent hours tweaking it to make it run as I want, but it?s still a pain. I will never run Windows 10.

I have a file on my computer named ?Windows 10.? For 17 months, I have added links to the now 11-page long document of news articles about problems with Windows 10 and how to fix them. One of my biggest concerns is privacy and Microsoft was giving Windows 10 away for free. My first thought was, ?what data are you going to collect on me??

A post last week on Reddit listed 60 different web addresses which needed to be blocked to disable telemetry, a form of data collection. The post linked to a website, which took you through each step in order to do this. While this time-consuming trick works now, the past year and a half has seen Microsoft quickly change each time consumers have said they don?t like being tracked. First, you could simply turn telemetry off, but users found with updates, it was turned back on. They learned which package turned it on and let everyone know. So Microsoft announced it was no longer updating individual fixes, you?d get an all-or-nothing update.

Telemetry has also been turned on in Windows 7 and 8.1, but I?ve hacked my computer so this doesn?t happen. The average person doesn?t know how to do this.

I don?t like to be tracked. Yes, I have something to hide. So do you. But that?s a column for another day. I am a firm believer in ?if you bought it you can do what you like with it,? including telling the manufacturer I don?t want any contact with them. Microsoft is making this impossible.

So, I?m leaving Windows and Microsoft. I won?t move to Apple, for reasons that would fill another column and have begun the move to a full Linux household. The first step was incredibly easy.

My husband?s old laptop was running Windows 7. I installed Linux Mint, which comes in three versions, Cinnamon, MATE and Xfce, depending on your needs. I chose Xfce because it?s designed for older computers or computers with lower specs.

Installation was a breeze. I downloaded Xfce to my desktop then downloaded Universal USB Installer, which creates an image on a USB drive, quite literally in less than five clicks of the mouse. I stuck the USB drive into the laptop and followed the onscreen directions. Start to finish was less than 20 minutes. Using Linux Mint Xfce has been a breeze these past two weeks. Once my desktop needs to be replaced, I?ll be replacing it with a Linux computer that I build.

I?m going to be deleting that 11-page document detailing all the reasons why I shouldn?t upgrade to Windows 10. I don?t need it anymore. There are better alternatives.

http://www.starherald.com/opinion/north-goodbye-windows/article_7235df9c-b296-11e6-aebc-b7c9f36411d4.html

[BallAquatics]

I got fed up and said goodbye to Windows back in 2010.....

Dennis