37 years MS, 30 years windows, 7 days Linux

[olo]

build my first Sinclair ZX81 in 81 with a solder gun myslef.
Had my own computer company 2 years later.
Build my first IBM clone in 84
Had my own brand of IBM compatible PC in 86
Quit PC business in 94 because too many dumping price big chain stores.
Tried an Android TV box 1 months ago, discovered CoreElec and for my mini PC box LibreElec and liked it.
Looked just for fun what is the easiest Linux distro for a beginner.
Most mentioned was Mint Cinamon and Pop! OS
Mint looked like the better choice.
Tried life USB and on my 3 year old China crap Jumper with a N3450 Celeron, everything worked.
Did install and messed it up 10 times in 7 days.
The dual boot got shot several time
wine drove me nuts, the installation what worked the day before refused to work with the same commands the next times.
Linux fell back to the bash screen, but I did not wanted to bash it - what is a bash anyway?
Now it improves by the hour, backs up hourly, works with the fastest image viewer ACDSee 2.44 what is 22 years old with the help from wine 5.18.

I always like to push the envelope, I was the first to got GTAV running fluidly on a N3450 Celeron with an integrated Intel HD 500 in 1024er resolution. Got 15 Watt Package power for hours out of a 5 Watt design.
The same laptop now runs dualboot win10 2016 LTSB (no updates ever) and on the other half of the 512 GB SSD I screw with Mint.
Already added some results into the wine database and try with submerging into a new system to clear my head from 6 months continous research about what, who, why and connecting all the puzzle pieces with outlook for the next years.
Since this is completed, I take mint as a new hurdle to jump over and try not to fall to often.

If I do (and I will), I hope here is someone who picks me up.
Had already the first positive experience with a quicker picker upper.

---- end of line

[Pierre]

Hi olo,
welcome to our forum.


there is no shortage of Ex Windows Users, around this place.

[kc1di]

Hello olo,
Welcome to the Linux Mint Forums, enjoy!
And Thanks for sharing your story. With all that experience you get the hang of Linux in no time

[Welcome]

Welcome to the forum!

[deepakdeshp]

Welcome to the forum

[olo]

Thank you, but I an anything but an ex win user.
I try out to learn and compare and sofar after around 100 hours and finding a lot of pit falls I am honestly boggled how complicated Linux still is and through how many hoops I have to hop to reach a goal.
It is amazing how often I have to use the console to do installs or modifications, just to find out that something does not work or people simple forget to mention a simple thing and therfore another problem arises.

Do not get me weong, I come from a time where programs and games were printed in code in a magazine and the useres had to type it into the computer and if there was a space wrong or just one symbol in 3 pages of code you had to check every line and hoped to find the error.

Then came the DOS time where eveything was punched in also.
10 print hello
20 pause 50
30 goto 10

In the early times of windows 1-3.11 there was the console often used too to get things done.
With windows 95 things got much better and got more colour. The console was very seldom used.
With XP windows got good and reached its peak of user friendliness with win 7
After that a big step backward.
I hated 10 because it was like being back at the beginnings of windows and the constant updates what broke programs and took hours and days to get things back to work were just torture.
I made my peace with 10 when I put the 2016 version of the ltsb what is without update and good for 10 years on my computeres.
With simple programs my 10 looks and behaves like 7 and all the spy crap is with another simple progran and one click disabled or uninstalled.
time to east more later

[Welcome]

I made my peace with 10 when I put the 2016 version of the ltsb what is without update and good for 10 years on my computeres.
With simple programs my 10 looks and behaves like 7 and all the spy crap is with another simple progran and one click disabled or uninstalled.
time to east more later

I fought with Win10 and was winning,
I had it fully locked down,
It didn't update, and no telemetry,
The menu was like 7,
And manually I loaded certificates,
And manually I loaded updates,
But then Firefox would no longer work,
Because Firefox had changed and needed some Win10 update.

So I updated Win10,
And Firefox was once again working,
But now Win10 had bypassed some of my controls,
And was phoning home once again,
So I started anew,
And I fought with Win10 again,
Finding ways to lock it up,
But now the developer of my Win 7 like menu had quit,
And manually I loaded certificates,
And manually I loaded updates...

And then I tried Linux Mint.

[motoryzen]

wine drove me nuts, the installation what worked the day before refused to work with the same commands the next times.

---- end of line

-- Have you tried Lutris yet? It is legit a Godsend involving managing Wine. I thought Chris Titus Tech was joking. He wasn't. I've finally learned to a good enough extent how wine works thanks to Lutris and have finally been able to get all of my games working ( barring Warcraft III original retail 2disc Battle Chest set. May have to VM that one) --

[bob466]

Welcome to the Forum.

[deepakdeshp]

Welcome to the Forum

[olo]

I fought with Win10 and was winning,
...
But then Firefox would no longer work,
Because Firefox had changed and needed some Win10 update.

You just prevent Firefox from auto update
and there is waterfox and palemoon if you liked the to older firefox better

@ motoryzen
I will give it try, thank you

@ Moem
never in all my decades of pc and internet I had a browser security problem after I ditched IE who was happily selfinstalling things in the early days, that was when I switched to Opera what I left after they sold out to google and used chromium instead of their engine. Now I have 7 browsers in use each for certain tasks and websites.

[Moem]

You just prevent Firefox from auto update
and there is waterfox and palemoon if you liked the to older firefox better

I think that security-wise, you're better off running Waterfox or Pale Moon (or Basilisk) than running an outdated Firefox. Those FF forks get their updates a bit later than FF does, but at least they get them; an outdated browser is a weak point in your computer's defence.

[JerryF]

Welcome!

[AZgl1800]

Classic Shell has been revived!!!

https://alternativeto.net/software/classic-start/

[olo]

you were saying?

one is a 2 year old win 10 the other a 2 hour young mint 20
both have acces to the same 1TB ssd, but mint is running of a 64gb usb 3 sandisk ultra fit installed.
bottom and top bar on both are autohide.
Boot menu is on the USB

screen shots