Quote:
|
If anyone else has travelled this path and can provide advice and tips, please do
|
I came to the same "F*** Microsoft" conclusion in 2004 and have been a happy Linux user since. I've used many distros, but Linux Mint is my current daily driver. I use a VM (Windows 7 in VirtualBox*) for a few programs for which there's no Linux equivalent, including some astro image processing applications. The VM doesn't need internet connectivity, so I don't mind using an out-of-date OS.
As for advice and tips, are you sure you want to use Chrome? It's the
most privacy-invading browser ever created. Using Chrome negates most of the privacy advantages of running Linux! More
privacy-respecting browsers include Mullvad, Brave, Librewolf and (hardened) Firefox ... but even stock Firefox is better than Chrome. I keep a copy of Chromium (which is the open-source progenitor of Chrome) for a couple of websites that don't like Firefox-based browsers (e.g. myGov, for some strange reason).
As for Google Docs - well, I've never used the suite - but you can use LibreOffice instead, which will work locally on all your MS-created docs and is way more private than Google-anything. You'll notice minor differences in fonts but the user interface is easy enough to work with and typical of an office suite.
My experience over 20 years is that Linux is easier to configure and maintain than Windows (any version), is more secure (if correctly configured, though that's not hard) and way, way more private. Also, it's free! There's a learning curve, but that's always the case.
Depending on your appetite for risk, you can use a separate VM for web browsing and/or opening files from the internet - I recommend doing so - to provide better process isolation and keep any javascript corralled away from the rest of your data and OS. Another instance of Linux Mint as the guest OS will be enough. However, there is additional workload involved in setting up the VM and running a second set of updates periodically.
I have tried Wine/Bottles a few times, but was never satisfied, plus running the Windows API directly in Linux pokes holes in system security. Windows in a VM gives near-native speeds for most applications. And for graphically-accelerated Windows apps, there are advanced techniques, such as GPU-passthrough** with a second video card, so you can do that, too.
Many PC games now run natively on a Linux PC, thanks to Steam (as the Steamdeck is Linux-based). Checkout the
ProtonDB database for more.
You can get help on the Linux Mint
forum or many other sites but Linux Mint these days is pretty slick, so most things will 'just work'.
* Though most of my new VMs are in qemu/kvm.
** Only in qemu/kvm.