Leaving the Dark Side of the Force (Microsoft Windows)

 It seems like Microsoft-Hate is in a growth phase these days.  You would have to know a lot about operating systems to sum it all up, fairly.  Hating Microsoft appeals to some of us on an emotional level, especially for people who are suckers for an anti-establishment, anti-mainstream cause.

One practical issue is that laptop PCs only seem to last about three years, these days.  And it's getting harder to buy a replacement for $300, as in the recent past.  Chromebooks can be bought for that, but that just switches you to Google-Hate.  Chromebooks don't even have a delete key.  They are too browser-oriented for me -- Google wants you to shove everything onto Google Drive, etc.  And Google will find a way to defeat any ad-blocking by the browser. 

I was turned off by going to the Linux operating system by partitioning the drive of my current laptop, dual-booting between Microsoft and Linux, or farting around with the boot menu keys to get the laptop to boot from the external SSD.

So it seemed best to look for a used or refurbished laptop on eBay, with Linux already installed on it.  And they let the buyer choose which flavor of Linux they want.   After all, Linux is a less bloated operating system than Microsoft Windows, so a Linux laptop shouldn't need massive amounts of RAM or memory or the fastest CPU.

 So I bought a used laptop with Linux Mint Cinnamon installed on it.  It was fun to fire it up and see a Linux screen come up instantly.  Linux Mint comes with the Firefox browser installed.  Once you pull that up, set up the extension with your password manager, and bring up your email accounts, you feel like you are on a real computer.

What a pleasure it was to stick a flash drive into it with my documents, music, photos, and videos from my current Windows laptop, and see all those things work without any headaches.

The next project is to do photo resizing (downsizing) on the Linux laptop.  Perhaps I should just do that on my phone, which takes all the photos and videos in the first place.

Actually I prefer to listen to music and watch movies on my tablet because it lacks a keyboard.  There is something about a keyboard that pulls my psychology away from relaxation and entertainment mode. 

Perhaps the Windows laptop will still be needed to run the program that connects to an external DVD player, for burning (backing up) DVDs onto the hard drive.