Ten Months Without Windows

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I’m sitting here a little more tired than I’d like to be, but that’s the life of working a manual labor day job, and code-jacking at night (what the hell is code-jacking). Today I want to sort of look back over the past year, and reflect on what it’s been like to mostly abandon Windows (with a slight hiccup of returning for a week).

A lot of people panicked earlier in the year when Microsoft unveiled its AI powered “recall” feature, that screenshots virtually every single thing you do, and then stores it for uh … recalling later. The scary part is, or was, that you definitely should not trust a mega corporation with that kind of info. Even if they tell you not to worry.

And many rightfully made the plunge into Linux, and stayed there.

That’s not why I abandoned Windows, though. I actually left Windows earlier than that, a couple months before the Recall announcement, when I decided that using a laptop for all the resource intensive things I do, … might not be a great idea sometimes.

Building a massive song in FL Studio with many, many layers can really lag out a system that isn’t up to spec.

See, I have another PC (that’s quite dusty now) that I bought in 2018, that was entirely crowdfunded, so that I could do things I need to do in order to make money (at least at the time), and it was great. It helped me out a lot and I eventually dug myself out of a hole. The thing is … Microsoft is dropping support for Windows 10, next year. And it pissed me off, especially, because the processor in that PC is one generation behind what Windows 11 supports. And, because of that, I would have been stuck on Windows 10, without any security updates, or substantial system updates, forever.

I ultimately decided that this was enough of an insult to literally abandon Windows altogether, and forever (seemingly).

You know, and then they announced Recall, like 2 months later. Two months after I bought a massively powerful Linux PC from System 76.

And for months I used it under their flagship operating system, Pop!_OS. I got familiar with VS Code for web development. I moved all of my creative work to Linux, and I even got most of my games that I regularly play working, just fine.

But, like it does with me sometimes, I got this itch. I wanted to play some Call of Duty, and I definitely don’t feel like running a console, when I have a PC with 64 gigs of ram, something like 15 cores, and 8 gigs of videoram. Doesn’t make any sense.

So, I made a split decision, and installed Windows 11. And it was fine … for like a week.

But I noticed, even with all that power, Windows was … somehow laggy, and glitchy. Almost like my PC wasn’t designed for it (or maybe I forgot to download System76 drivers).

Either way, I said, “You know what, this isn’t worth ONE game.” And I then installed one of my favorite Linux distributions, Debian.

We’re almost caught up to where I am now.

For about two more weeks, I used Debian, and then I noticed some … weird things, such as games blowing my fans up and my PC sounding like it was taking off into space.

It was then I realized, I need to update my firmware, and have system drivers from System 76.

Which, unfortunately, has almost virtually no existing documentation for Debian.

Enter: Now.

I’m back on Pop!_OS.

What a journey.

The reason I originally didn’t immediately go back to Pop!_OS, was because I’m … kind of unsure of how I’ll react to my Gnome desktop being replaced by whatever it is they give me with COSMIC. But, fear of change aside, this OS is actually, or has actually, really grown on me.

And it’s probably as close to Arch as I’ll ever get (that’s ragebait, Pop!_OS is nothing like Arch).

But, having spent most of the year in Linux, I think I can firmly call this OS my home. It feels natural. I enjoy opening the terminal. I like writing everything in code, even if I don’t have to.

I am become system developer.

Whatever they’re constantly saying on /r/linuxsucks is at least, partially untrue (and also, I can’t tell if these people are serious, or shitposting constantly). It’s not as complicated as they make it seem, but it is definitely more challenging than choosing a Mastodon instance.

You don’t need to be a developer to use Linux, but it helps!

You can literally just, make a Debian bootable, or a Mint bootable, and then replace Windows, and continue using your PC like nothing happened. You don’t even have to interact with the terminal. You can just use the graphical package manager that’s standard on, well, at least three Linux distributions I’ve tried (but where’s the fun in that?)

You can install Pop!_OS, and then Steam, and then continue your game in Dwarf Fortress just by switching on a little toggle in Steam user options that enables Proton support across every game you own.

It’s really that simple.

Just don’t expect to play anything with kernel-level anti-cheat.

Which is probably actually a good thing. Why do game developers think they’re allowed to touch the kernel? Who the hell do you think you are? That dude from Scary Movie 2?

Suffice to say, I think Linux is where I’ll stay. As Windows becomes more and more bloated, and far, far away from the nostalgia of its greatness in 1995, Linux easily takes its place.

Now, watch this wholesome Debian presentation I found on Youtube.