- May 19, 2014
- 3,999
- 8,661
I’ve felt increasingly boxed in by commercial operating systems. Windows and macOS are increasingly converging into a something that looks a bit like online totalitarianism – and both are jolly expensive.
Time for Linux, then? We’ve been experimenting here for the past few months, and have good things to report. First, it’s free, and unlike the other two op systems, won’t make your middle-aged computer feel as if it’s at death’s door. Quite the reverse, in fact – Linux runs extremely well on older machines, and gives them a new lease of life. Next, there’s a (bewildering?) vast choice of customised versions (“distros”) of Linux, one of them is likely to be right for you.
A highly popular distro is Linux Mint, which we have running here on a ten-year-old laptop without any problems at all. It does all the usual things – word processing, browsing, etc and (the free) LibreOffice is a decent replacement for the increasingly bloated Ms Office.
The ethos of Linux is something I warm to – it reminds me of the early days of the net, when it was mostly about collaboration and sharing. There’s no denying it is a bit of a wrench to wrest yourself away from the Fisher-Price coloured walled gardens of Microsoft and Apple. But once done, you’ll never look back (and did I mention... it’s free?).
Time for Linux, then? We’ve been experimenting here for the past few months, and have good things to report. First, it’s free, and unlike the other two op systems, won’t make your middle-aged computer feel as if it’s at death’s door. Quite the reverse, in fact – Linux runs extremely well on older machines, and gives them a new lease of life. Next, there’s a (bewildering?) vast choice of customised versions (“distros”) of Linux, one of them is likely to be right for you.
A highly popular distro is Linux Mint, which we have running here on a ten-year-old laptop without any problems at all. It does all the usual things – word processing, browsing, etc and (the free) LibreOffice is a decent replacement for the increasingly bloated Ms Office.
The ethos of Linux is something I warm to – it reminds me of the early days of the net, when it was mostly about collaboration and sharing. There’s no denying it is a bit of a wrench to wrest yourself away from the Fisher-Price coloured walled gardens of Microsoft and Apple. But once done, you’ll never look back (and did I mention... it’s free?).