The change to Linux is not necessarily possible for everyone.

This is mainly because of corporate environments using Windows so heavily in the world of desktops.

Commercial products are tempting and habit-forming.

Linux alternatives are not always "free" (that is if you want support).

Gaming on Linux is just not quite there, unless you want to do a little bit of research.

System 76 machines, are pretty great at running a custom version of Linux that focuses on including stable NVIDIA drivers – but I'm still going to recommend Windows for gaming over both Linux and Mac, especially users who already have their collection purchased for the PC. Yes, there are compatibility layers that you can install in Steam for Linux, but it's just not the same – at least on a few machines I've tried it on.

Office and productivity on Linux are pretty great – as far as Libre Office goes. In the end, we're still going to compare it to Microsoft Office and if it's "as good". As far as not having OneNote, that is kind of a bummer. But I really do wonder if the team in charge or Libre Office (The Document Foundation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice)- would ever consider trying to make an open source OneNote alternative. That would be amazing.

What Can You Do If You Feel "Stuck" With Windows?

Start with a fresh install of Windows 10.

Download Windows 10 Debloater script and run that sucker.

https://github.com/Sycnex/Windows10Debloater

If you go to the link that I'll include in the description, I recommend that you download the "Windows10DebloaterGUI.ps1" file to your computer

Since you'd likely be running that script on a new install of Windows, you'll want to run Powershell as admin, then type in set-executionpolicy remotesigned in the prompt, press Enter, A, then Enter. Then you can just run the powershell script that you've downloaded by typing ./scriptname.ps1 and press enter. You can then disable much of the spyware that Microsoft has pre-installed on your machine. I also recommend disabling Cortana, because who knows if Microsoft is keeping her around forever, anyway.

Next, I'd recommend you head over to https://Ninite.com - begin checking the boxes of some software you'd like and run their installer, which will batch install them for you, faster than any human could do it manually. If you don't know which apps you'd like on a fresh install of Windows, I'd recommend, Notepad ++, Firefox, VLC, thunderbird, 7zip, Greenshot, irfanview, and LibreOffice (if you don't already have a purchased Microsoft Office subscription or license), and maybe Foxit Reader if you don't plan on downloading Adobe Reader (I recommend downloading a PDF reader, unless you're comfortable with the Microsoft Edge browser trying to display PDFs properly.

Why did I mention 7zip? Because the built-in zip tool for Windows is slow. 7zip is something like 30% faster and it's free/open source. I always wondered why I could extract zip files in Linux SO much faster than Windows, so downloading this tool for your Windows machine will help you catch up 😊

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