I didn’t realise just how much better it would be. Like holy shit everything works. I have had very few problems that weren’t very easily fixed.

Everything that windows did, this thing can usually do better. And the things it can’t do better, it can do just as good.

Things I’ve noticed:

Mint and Linux in general use a logic that gels with me way more than modern Windows. Even though Mint is technically a very simple distro, it’s still waaaay better than what I was used to. Terminal commands are easy to learn and the way Mint is organised is great for example (how do I word this?) if I want to do something I don’t have to guess which submenu the OS is hiding it behind like in Windows. Like if I want to look at the health of my disc, it’s right there under “discs” and it tells me everything about it from the temperature to how many bad partitions it has. If I want to flash something to a USB its a fucking built in option when you right click, something I had to download a program for in Windows. If I want to use a printer, Mint just connects and prints, on windows HP or whatever company will ask you to download their personal software suite and do it that way. There are soooo many unnecessary programs companies push on Windows owners.

What brought this home is recently I bought my parents a new mouse as a gift because they complained theirs wasn’t working well anymore. I got them a blutooth Logitech mouse, nothing crazy, and I try to connect it to their laptop for them. Windows makes you go though a couple of menus to do this but whatever it’s not too bad. A popup comes up after like 10 minutes after I was about to walk away because this is a slow old computer. Logitech wants me to download and log into their software suite for a fucking mouse. Lmao. So anyway, after week I get a call from the parent that owns the laptop, the mouse isn’t working anymore. I take a look at it next time I visit and sure enough it doesn’t work. I take out my laptop. I right click the Bluetooth icon and click search. It finds the mouse, I tell it to connect. It works fine.

Now I disconnect it from my Bluetooth try to reconnect it to the parents Windows laptop, no Bluetooth icon in the system tray, weird. Also if you hover over the system tray Windows now slides up a bunch of clickbait articles for some reason, lol. I go into settings, look for blutooth, it’s not there. Remember that Windows 10 hides its blutooth shit under a devices submenu. Go to that submenu. It says the mouse is connected and the little tab to turn on or off Bluetooth is missing. I restart the computer. No change. I look up if anyone else has had this problem. I find a Reddit post complaining about the same thing. For some reason the solution is restart the laptop with its actual power chord unplugged. Confusing, but I try it. It works for some reason. I am suddenly way more thankful than ever that I no longer use Windows. When something goes wrong on Linux, it makes sense, as opposed to this where I have no idea what Windows did to cause this.

I’m just so surprised at how much better Linux is. It absolutely destroys the idea that profit motive makes for better products, or that the richest companies are rich and popular because they’re better. Here this thing is, funded by collaboration and donations, and it’s leagues better than something produced by one of the richest companies in the world that has near infinite funding.

There is no way in hell am ever going back.