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Why I Love Linux – Part 1 – The Transition from Windows (14 June 2025)

I write this article as a solicitor and an author. To clarify, I am not an IT professional and taught any IT skills I have to myself through a keen interest in computers and software.

Having made the decision to switch to Linux away from Windows permanently over 10 years’ ago, I have never looked back. I had not even considered trying MacOs, and it was only when I met with my wife and had a play with her MacBook Air, did I realise I made the correct decision. The question is, why did I make this change?

I have always had an interest in computing to some degree. I was gifted my first Nintendo (an NES) for Christmas when I was 5 and we also owned a Sinclair Spectrum, which I attempted to play the odd game here and there, but was too young to really tinker with. Until I was 10, my main experience of computing was through consoles, but we eventually got our first desktop computer in early 1998. The operating system was Windows 95 and I was mesmerised with what I could do.

A couple of years later we got a second computer with Windows 98 installed. Rather than my parents throwing away the old computer, I asked if I could keep it. I now had my own desktop which I effectively experimented with, and to some extent, broke and repaired. In the end, it was my computer and I was free to do as I wished with my hardware. The school I attended in North Wales had recently come into some funding and had fairly high end computers, which made me confident computers were something I may decide to learn in greater depth through education.

We then moved South and I attended a school that appeared to have the mirror opposite by way of funding. Bearing in mind this was 2001/02, I attended my first IT lesson and found the school was using Windows 3.1 for its desktops and we would often have to share a unit for work, which given pupils had different degrees of aptitude with IT, being forced to work with someone with a much lesser competence and interest in IT as another proved problematic at encouraging those were keen on IT to pursue their interest in this particular school. Given I had never experienced Windows 3.1 before, after having used Windows 95 and 98 with their revolutionary desktop and other advancements, this was demoralising.

When it came to my time to choose which subjects to study, I had already decided I was looking to pursue a career in Law and focussed on subjects that would aide this objective. IT did not appear one of them, although looking back, this was not necessarily the correct assumption, given how IT controls so many aspects of our lives and how businesses are run. In any event, this did not hold me back from creating the end of the 90s, early 2000s Geocities style websites to do with nothing in particular and learning other skills IT related.

One of my proudest IT achievements while at school was learning to network my own computer and my sister’s computer in order for us to share our broadband connection. This was before routers became mainstream in households and you were supplied a basic modem by your ISP with no firewall. I remember learning I required a crossed ethernet cable and found I often irritated my sister when she discovered her computer had to remain on in order for me to have internet access on my computer. Sharing the pathetically available bandwidth in the early days of consumer broadband also proved problematic. However, as I had learned to do something myself, I was overjoyed.

Where does Linux become relevant in all this background? The answer becomes more relevant as time progresses and Windows became more of something I would rent in order for me to use my own hardware. I have to admit, I do like Windows XP and I believe the reason why its usage was so high even at its end of life is testament to the quality of the product it is. However, the change to product keys and the graphical look was not quite the operating system I was after. Many talk of the beauty of modern desktop layouts. However, I found myself reverting back to the classic desktop every time. There is something about the simple task bar and start button that made Windows 95 and 98 so appealing.

I remember at school I would often hear people talking about Linux, but being ridiculed for it being something for geeks and was not cool. Peer pressure clearly put off trying as it was only until the summer of 2007, at the end of my first year of university did I open up my browser and type it into Google (yes I did use Google then, but soon discovered the wonder that is DuckDuckGo a few years’ later). I was taken to the Ubuntu website (a version of Linux, known as a distribution, or distro colloquially), which had been causing quite a stir in the open source community. I found at the time, it was possible to order a CD from their website for free to try and install if desired. Broadband was beginning to increase in speeds, but a full blown operating system to download was still a stretch and I therefore, input my details and awaited my shiny disc direct from Canonical (the company who develop Ubuntu).

I gave Ubuntu a try, primarily because I was disappointed in the next iteration of Windows (Windows Vista). Not only did I find Windows Vista unattractive and lacked productivity in a way that suited my own needs, I found it bloated with unnecessary applications, which has ultimately worsened as years go by, culminating in Windows 11, which in my personal view, is one large advert that tracks your every click and file.

I digress, my first impressions of Ubuntu were positive. The desktop layout, Gnome (pronounced “guh-nome”) 2 at the time was similar to a traditional Windows 95 layout, with a taskbar and the start button at the top of screen as opposed to the bottom of the screen. I did not know how to tweak these sorts of settings at the time, but have since learned that your desktop and way in which you interact with Linux can be however you please, and absolutely not only what is forced upon you.

I found much of my hardware worked out of the box, but found one or two did not. I recall this being an internal wireless card. I looked online for drivers as you would with Windows, but was taken to forums where people laid out in my view, masses of lines of code to be placed in what is known as the “Terminal”, which is a command line facility allowing you to interact with your computer. As a newbie, this intimidation put me off entirely and I reverted back to Windows for a few more years. In some respects, this was lazy of me. However, at the time, I honestly feel Linux had in reality some way to go before the every day consumer would be entirely comfortable in its use.

Following my initial poor experience with Linux, Windows 7 was released, and while it remained bloated and rigid, was a dramatic improvement over Windows Vista and by many accounts, was a very good operating system, and another example of where user numbers were so prominent at its end of life.

Then followed Windows 8. For those that can remember the controversy surrounding the removal of the start button and the implementation of the metro menu, this was painful to transition to. Having just purchased a new laptop, I asked myself, what do I use Windows for? Can I try Linux again. I then navigated to Ubuntu’s website again and found CDs were no longer distributed, but instead I had to download the operating system and burn it to a DVD or USB stick. This was simple enough and I proceeded as such.

My first impression was shock at both how much Ubuntu had changed, it was now using an entirely different desktop environment known as Unity, which in some respects, was attempting to have some form of a metro style menu, but was infinitely more functional than Windows 8. I gave it some time and decided to install Ubuntu on a desktop I had and use Windows 7 on my laptop for now.

I remained a user of both Ubuntu and Windows 7 for a couple of years, also trying out another Linux distro during this time, known as Linux Mint. This uses Ubuntu as its base, but is maintained by the community as opposed to a large company. I was not entirely happy with the desktop environment at the time and so continued to use Ubuntu. This arrangement satisfied me for a time as I continued to accustom myself to open source alternatives to major software, such as LibreOffice over MS Office and GIMP over Photoshop. Such open source software is available for Windows and MacOS I must add.

Then came the introduction of Windows 10 and the expiration of security patches for Windows XP. At the time, I was managing the general advice service of a local advice charity. The IT infrastructure was probably around 8 to 10 years’ old at that point. Our new IT contractors informed us it was time for an upgrade to cope with the end of Windows XP support. Windows 10 was not quite ready at this point and due to the issues arising from Windows 8, the logical solution was for Windows 7 to become the standard, albeit, Windows 7 was now 5 years’ old and was only scheduled for around another 5 years of free security patches.

Our contractors labelled which desktops could handle the upgrade (for now) and which ones were redundant. The entire upgrade cost in the region of £15,000, which, for a small charity was a huge expense, effectively half the gross salary of a caseworker for the year. I did as much as I could to preserve the redundant desktops as long as Windows XP remained supported by adding RAM sticks from disposed of desktops, which helped to a degree, but was no long-term solution.

This situation was my first experience outside of my home environment where I witnessed how the monopoly of Microsoft causes sheer panic and the wasteful situation of usable computers being thrown into landfill across the globe. You may consider that this was necessary as the hardware was not capable of running a more up-to-date version of Windows. However, some experimenting with Ubuntu on these machines opened my eyes to how little resource intensive Linux is and that with Linux, they were perfectly capable of running modern software, video playback and other needs of a business. I asked myself why we were wasting so much money on new hardware when we could transfer to Linux and keep the hardware going for a few more years and slowly upgrade over time when the hardware had truly gone as far as it could. It seems the reliance on Microsoft Office truly does prevent work environments from having the freedom over their IT infrastructure. A lack of IT technicians and professionals with experience in Linux appears to also be a problem, which is unusual, given nearly all servers and super-computers in the world are running Linux.

Windows 10 then became available for testing. While graphically, this was a vast improvement on Windows 8, my goodness was this full of clutter and advertising. Also installing the system on a test computer allowed me to see the level of tracking and telementary data being sent back to Microsoft, simply by you having your computer turned on and connected to the internet. I knew that wherever I worked this would be accepted in order to maintain the status quo and minimise disruption of training people in something new. The irony is, the only workplace I found where people are highly competent in MS Office was a charity for people with sight loss. This was mainly because staff received specific training in how to format documents to make them highly accessible. Everywhere else I have worked, the formatting has been horrific and I have inevitably had to edit templates and teach staff key skills in formatting. If these are the levels of competency the majority have in using MS Office, would transitioning to LibreOffice really be such a chore to train people in? The competencies cannot be any worse?

After perhaps a week of testing Windows 10, I asked myself, do I really want to accept this fate of lack of customisability of my desktop environment, the level of tracking and control from a big tech company? I concluded now was the time to abandon Windows altogether from my personal productivity. I backed-up my data on my main laptop, got out an Ubuntu DVD and gave a clean install, moved the data back onto the hard drive and have never looked back.

I have now surpassed 10 years without using Windows outside of work. I have made some changes to my use of Linux since then. I have in fact moved away from Ubuntu itself. Linux Mint, with its beautiful Cinnamon desktop environment is my daily driver on my laptop for writing and other personal productivity.

And there you have my journey from transitioning to Linux from Windows. In a future blog, I shall be looking at various features of Linux that I use which have persuaded me to continue using this operating system since my transition and how I aim to make use of open source as far as possible with my work as an author.