|
I mostly gave up on Windows years ago. I now run Linux Mint Mate with Win7 in a virtual machine. That way if Win goes belly up it's just a matter of copying the last backup of the .vdi file back to the .VirtualBox folder and I'm going again. Linux installs themselves are small (I think my OS and apps total <12 GB) and the software tends to be quite frugal with resources (my 8GB of RAM is generally < 1/2 full and I can't remember the last time I used swap space). I've also found installing Linux easier than installing Win. Probably the biggest drawback is that sometimes implementation of new features is slow (eg Bluetooth was around for quite a while before Mate had a simple bug-free interface).
I need Win for some astronomy programs (Occult, OccultWatcher, Tangra, C2A) and my wife needs to use MS Word for highly formatted documents (otherwise LibreOffice Writer works OK). There are Linux versions of many programs (eg Stellarium, Cartes du Ciel) and equivalents of most things (eg GIMP for Photoshop).
|