Greetings from the Netherlands. I’ve been using Linux Mint/Ubuntu for the past 4 years on and off. But can you really use only Linux and ditched Windows forever? Help me please 
2 Likes
Albertico,
I certainly believe it is entirely possible, as I have accomplished this myself, but it will all depend on what work you need to do with your computer.
Make a list of all the programs you use on a regular basis and note the ones that are a must have. Then you can see if there are any FOSS Linux alternatives for those programs to try out when you are ready. Some people have been also successful running special windows programs in Linux using an emulator like Wine.
Once this list is gathered you will need to decide on how you are going to try out these new programs to meet your approval. You can use either a second computer (or second hard drive) to load Linux on it, or if you have enough free space create a dual boot machine with both Windows and Linux.
Remember to always make backups of your data just in case something does go wrong with your Linux install if you are using your current disk drive.
2 Likes
I stopped using Windows some time ago, even for my most demanding aspects. If you do want to make a transition easier, you can still install Windows via Virtual Machine (I found that VMware has the best results) and ruin it from within Linux.
Also, thank you so much @mva for your awesome input!
1 Like
With MS Office now available on the web with Office 365, most people can actually switch to Linux. Also, as already mentioned, with VMs being so easy to run, that’s another option for more experienced users who have to have Windows - run it inside a native Linux box.
2 Likes
Thank you for your advise
Absolutely.
You may have to make sacrifices here and there or find alternative ways of doing the some things.
The biggest sacrifice when I dropped my last Windows install was gaming and entertainment(movies an music) probably 15 years ago. I really started getting into Linux just before Y2K and maintained 1 Windows machine up until about 2009 with XP Pro on it still for use with our digital camers and vide recorders. One rainy day I just started copying all of my photos, videos, music, documents and Bookmarks, emails etc over to an external drive, local and cloud media.
I downloaded, I think it was Ubuntu 8.04 and already had CDs of Etch and wiped my desktop and trialed both for my desktop was already running Debian Etch on a local server. I created accts on the forums and dug into my hardware specs and PCI cards (at the time an nVidia card worked well with xorg, sound card etc…
My desktops and eventually numerous laptops were Ubuntu and derivatives(Mate, XUbuntu because I can’t stand Gnomes interface anymore) up until about Ubuntu 18, dedicated. Version 20, snaps came into Ubuntu hard and it had to go. Had still been running Debian on a server and kept up with it so I installed Buster and then eventually Bullseye on everything.
The advancement of Linux over the last 15 year has made it a competitive replacement to Windows for basic use and a lot more gaming. Entertainment is still a hassle at point with the likes of Netflix and drm etc but non of that concerns me.
The beauty of Linux to me is stability(that’s why I run Debian for ALL of my daily drivers) and privacy.
If I want to distro hop with some bleeding edge Linux distros I have Oracles VirtualBox. I have absolutely no need foranything Microsoft related with LibreOffice.
If you have questions or are looking for certain programs to use as alternatives to Windows World, check these sites out:
https://alternativeto.net/
Hope this helps