Why I switched to Linux (after accidentally deleting Windows)
I think I’ve secretly been a Microsoft fan since I was 12. Why? I dunno. I’ve always perceived it to be an underdog with a lot of potential. I know it sounds absurd, but perhaps it’s because in the consumer market, it doesn’t receive as much brand love as Apple and Google. Growing up, Apple was cool and hip while Microsoft was seen as the boring and greedy one with frequent mess-ups and poor taste. Perhaps because of this, I always silently cheered its products like the Windows Phone (all 3 versions), SkyDrive (now OneDrive), the Surface Book, and the Fluent Design language.
Looking back, it was obvious that I just enjoyed the story of a company (or someone) proving itself in areas where it had low market share. But I digress. My point is, among the big 3 companies that had a presence in the consumer market, I had a favourite — Microsoft. Oh, and I had no idea what Linux was.
Early Encounters
I suppose the first time I came across something Linux-related was during my smartphone-fantasizing phase. I suppose reading about Android counts. Then there was the Ubuntu Touch OS (remember how I gravitated towards underdogs?) Still, my loyalty lay towards Windows Phone and the Blackberry 10 OS.
Many years later, as I started my course on Computer Science, I came across the term Linux more often. I remember having to enable the Windows Subsystem for Linux and install Ubuntu from the Microsoft Store.
Fast-forward two years and I interacted with Linux more through Git Bash and WSL 2 during web development, which I had to use because a Python library dropped support for Windows. One time I saw a post about Elementary OS and read more about it. In addition, as a simple-minded being, I liked to ask my peers to rank OSes from Linux, MacOS and Windows, having tried only Windows.
One day, I happened to watch a video showing the benefits of an auto-tiling manager. After seeing it, I was so hyped about the potentially incredibly beneficial feature that I installed Pop!_OS on a Virtual Machine to try it out. Unfortunately, it ran slowly on my laptop and I promptly deleted it along with VirtualBox.
How I ended up installing Linux
My family has a seven-year old Dell desktop with an Intel 4th-generation CPU and spinning hard-disk running Windows. It was so much slower than laptops and smartphones that it basically turned into a desk-weight that happened to store photos. One morning, my father backed up his data and told me to try putting it up for sale.
I had just read an article about how Linux could speed up an old computer and couldn’t contain my curiosity any longer. I decided to factory-reset the Dell desktop and dual-boot Linux on it. I chose to use Linux Mint because I read that it was the most stable of them all and as a total newbie I wanted that as my starting point.
Alas, the reset took too long and after I had to cancel it midway when my mother realised she had forgotten to back up some files on her desktop. At that moment, I headed into my room out of impulse and tried to perform the task on my only computer which I use for everything, a Dell XPS 13. And so came the installation process.
Download Linux Mint ISO and burn it into a USB stick. Check. Disable fast-startup and secure boot. Check. A small command to run. Nah, it couldn’t be that important. Or at least that’s what I thought before I proceeded to disable RAID and reboot my computer and have a Blue Screen of death presented to me. Shit. A few more reboots and different ways of rebooting followed with more Blue Screens of Death. Shit, shit, shit, and more ****.
Well, I think I just broke my Windows. Shit again. Apparently, disabling RAID without running the command prior caused my computer to not be able to find Windows properly when it boots up. With my mild fever at 2am+, and bent on finding out if my computer was broken, I decided to use my USB-stick to install Linux Mint and clean my drive in the process.
First Impressions
This is fresh and cool (read in Comic Sans)! I felt like a kid again enjoying a clean operating system with a different user interface. This was simply different from any other windows release I experienced.
In vanilla Linux Mint, animations were quick and everything was where I expected it to be coming from Windows. I went on spending time to try out the different built-in accent colours and themes before going to bed.
I woke up with a worse fever the next day. Nevertheless, I was excited to use Linux Mint for work. I installed Visual Studio Code, cloned my GitHub project, installed some packages and was good to go. Boy it sure feels fun starting on a clean slate. I felt lean and mean.
Unfortunately, there were some issues I faced. I could not change the overly high sensitivity of my Microsoft Ergonomic Bluetooth Mouse despite sliding the uh, sensitivity slider. While things looked perfect on my Monitor, everything on my 1080p 13.3 inch laptop looked too small and changing the font size didn’t help but make the user interface look worse. I was still happy but had a sprouting interest to try another Linux Distro.
I woke up in the middle of that night in the midst of my fever with the urge of installing Pop!_OS. So that’s what I did. I was impressed. In its default state, Pop!_OS had smoother animations and looked more polished and modern than vanilla Linux Mint, all while having a more consistent design compared to Windows. I played around with the Tiling Manager and really unique wallpapers before going back to bed.
My Experience with Linux after one week
Pop_OS! is awesome (I even grew to like its name)! The auto-tiling is the killer-feature. Like I expected, it saved me a lot of time and annoyances. And as its makers, System76 sold their own towers and laptops, Pop_OS! did not have the sensitivity and scaling issues that I faced with Linux Mint. It even had built-in battery profiles. I truly felt that it was near perfect for me!
That is not to say that Linux Mint is worse. In fact, I couldn’t get Pop_OS! to install on my brother’s dying laptop but Linux Mint worked fine on it. That laptop is even breathing a new life by being a test local server which I am planning to turn on the whole day. The laptop’s touchscreen also worked on Linux Mint, and on its 720p display, the scaling was fine. I also went back to the old desktop and installed Linux Mint. It worked fine as well and the desktop is now more responsive. Furthermore, my parents could use Linux Mint as its desktop layout was almost identical as Window’s.
Having bash as the default terminal was also great. It replaces Command Prompt, PowerShell, Git Bash and the Ubuntu Terminal in my previous OS. Linux just felt clean and minimal without compromising on functionality I cared about. And yes, speaking of my previous OS…
The Windows 11 Announcement
I admit that I was still pretty excited about the Windows 11 Announcement. Overall, aside for the nicer user interface, it was disappointing. I think that auto-tiling would be a better user experience than window-snapping presets but I could be wrong. I hoped for more under-the-hood changes and performance improvements. I hoped for a cleaner windows. Still, Windows 11 was pretty cool in my book.
Meanwhile, I realised that I would need some school-specific software that was not available on Linux, such as the LockDown browser for online examinations. To avoid future inconveniences, I decided to dual-boot Windows. Out of my 256GB of SSD, I decided to give 64GB to Windows and allocate the remaining to Linux. I found out that Microsoft is selling its Surface Go in a 64GB configuration so I knew it would be fine for my usage. And, I could try out Windows 11 when it arrives!
Dual-Booting Windows from Linux felt kind of strange. It was just the opposite a week ago, and now I feel like I’m “at home” using Linux (which ironically is the marketing message of the Windows 11 announcement). I surely didn’t go into Linux expecting it to use it as my daily driver!
Expanding my Knowledge of Linux
As usual, when I get excited about something, I like to read up on it. Well, I have just finished reading the book “Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary” by Linus Torvalds and David Diamond. It was a really interesting read and definitely made me think about the idea of open-source and reflect on my own consumerism. Sharing my experience through this article was definitely fun and is a small token of appreciation for the wonderful experience I had with Linux and open-source software.
Finally, I’m still a newbie in Linux. What should I try and know? Thanks for reading and I appreciate any feedback!
