Why I switched from Windows 10 to Linux Mint!

Hello hello welcome back to the iog channel my name is Casey and thank you very much for joining me in today's video where I will discuss why I

switched

from Windows to Linux. Now I want to start with a little History my history specifically and even more specifically my history with the Windows platform when I was just a little kid my family had a computer this computer was running Windows 95 or 98. I don't quite remember which due to the fact that I I was very very young, we're talking less than five or 6, I don't really remember much, but from what I've seen on old home videos and stuff, it seems to be 95 or 98.

Then another family computer followed that had Windows XP. it was an operating system now and the first one I really remember using I had to love it with that classic blue and green taskbar at the bottom, although in recent years it was probably only last year that I learned that XP apparently had different themes and never During all the time I used that computer, did it ever occur to me to try restoring Windows? That's exactly what it looked like, it had a blue and green taskbar, but yes, apparently there were other XP themes that I never knew about, this was followed for a few years. later, by another family computer, this specifically is Windows 7, it is now an operating system used by many in the past and used by some today, even if it goes against good judgment and security.

Windows 7 is an interesting operating system because it somewhat draws this line. in the arena between classic operating systems and modern operating systems, at least within Windows, although aesthetically it is very of the moment, operationally it is very modern, many of the things that we take for granted in modern Windows come from Windows 7, yes not from Windows XP, but certain things like the start menu functionality are clearly classic since Windows 8 and later 8.1, which brought back the start menu after it was basically destroyed in Windows 8's start menu, has not been the itself, one of the most important things I have noticed.

Since switching from Windows 10 to Linux Mint I find myself using the Start Menu a lot more, which reminds me of using old family computers, Windows XP and Windows 7 computers when I was a kid and how you used to navigate the Start Menu to search for programs even though Windows 10 also did this something about the way it's designed just doesn't feel the same it feels less like you're supposed to use it at least you're not supposed to dig into it it's more about having the little icons on the big panel when you first open it, which of course is a carryover from the beloved Windows 8 design options.

Speaking of Windows 8, when I was a teenager, my grandparents bought my brothers and me these

windows

. There were 8 laptops, I think Dell sponsored them, they were very low power, I don't know how much they cost, but I imagine they were pretty cheap given that they had, I think, an Intel Celeron processor, 4 GB of RAM, I don't remember how. lots of hard drive space, but it wasn't much and they booted from a hard drive, not an SSD, they weren't very fast, they weren't very powerful or high performing, but they were ours and as for Windows 8, was it really that bad? as they say, I mean it wasn't great, most of the design was clearly designed for touchscreen tablet type devices, especially with the start menu it featured, which basically filled the entire screen with all these little app panel things .

Later resolved in Windows 8.1 was one of the few modern examples of a Windows 0.1 version that basically just added the Start menu back to Windows 8, but it was a distinctly Windows 8 Start menu very similar to the one we have now in Windows 8. Windows 10, where we still had the little app panels on the side later in my teens. I bought myself a more powerful laptop, an Acer Aspire E15, a laptop I still have today somewhere, this thing was great, it had a dedicated GPU which was a big improvement over just running the integrated integrated graphics on the CPU Intel, especially since I had gotten more into gaming and just couldn't run many games on the D Inspire on the laptop and had gotten into making models and rendering scenes. in Blender and trying to render scenes on that CPU just wasn't a good time.

I also started this YouTube channel back then in 2014 and yes, trying to make, edit or handle any type of video on that old Dell laptop was not Great, I was very happy to have this new Acer laptop and compared to the Dell, was fast and ran Windows 10. A few years later, I would build my own desktop PC that also ran Windows 10. This is the same PC from my PC Upgrade Video posted earlier. I initially built it in 2017 and have been using it ever since and up until a few months ago I was running Windows 10 on it, but there was this anxiety I had about being able to do that.

I'm not getting around when Windows 10 will end its life on October 14, 2025. Now I'll state the obvious, of course, Windows 10 ending its life doesn't suddenly mean your computer will crash, crash, and stop working. I'm not letting you do anything about it because it's already at the end of its life, but what it does mean is that unless something really major happens in terms of a security flaw in Windows 10, regular updates will no longer be made, including minor security updates, and that's just not a risk I really want to take given that I use my desktop almost every day and still occasionally use the laptop.

I would rather not be running on an unsecured platform and as time went on and this anxiety never ceased, I faced another one. problem, my computers are not eligible for Windows 11. See in the past, if you had an operating system running on a computer and you wanted to upgrade it to the next version of that operating system, the most important thing that could stand in your way, isn't it So? be compatible with your hardware, specifically your hardware, not be powerful enough to simply run it; However, due to the kind of technical stagnation that has occurred in the last decade of computing, there is no reason why Windows 11 can't run on any of these systems, except for the fact that Microsoft has been trying to flex its muscles a bit. muscles in control.

See Microsoft's biggest competitor in the desktop operating system space is Apple with its Mac computers. Mac is a proprietary operating system that runs on proprietary hardware over which Apple has full control. Anyway, they have a lot of full top-down control in the manufacturing process, they make the operating system, they assemble the computers, they even make their own CPUs, they now have full control and doing this has allowed them to have a pretty close-knit security, up to the point that for In the past, as long as I've been alive, there's always been this debate between Mac OS and Windows about security viruses, malware.

For a long time, when I was a kid, a statement here on the Internet was that you would never find a virus on an Apple. To say now that there is no malware or viruses for Mac OS would be false, there are some, but when Windows makes up about 70% of the desktop market share, of course the people who create malware and viruses will create them for the More popular. operating systems that and the fact that Windows is just an operating system made by Microsoft for a long time, they didn't make their own computers, people could install Windows on anything, so if your system didn't have any additional security protocols, Your system could be more at risk of viruses and malware adding to this tarnished reputation of Windows, so Microsoft made a small and simple decision: they were going to exercise a little extra control now instead of making the requirements for Windows 11 They will be based solely on what is needed to actually make the system work is based on abstract security requirements that Microsoft has implemented for you and that you do not have the option to opt out of.

The computer does not have a TPM 2.0 module and the motherboard does not even have one. a place for one, but TPM 2.0 is required to use Windows 11, not only that, but Microsoft has created an honestly not very extensive list of CPUs that are compatible with Windows 11, specifically everything 8th generation and above, now the specific exact reason why they only allow 8th generation. Microsoft hasn't explicitly made clear the generation and later processors, although from what you can gather on the internet, it basically boils down to security requirements after the 8th generation of CPUs, certain security flaws in them were fixed at the hardware level and, as such, Microsoft doesn't want to have to deal with supporting older CPUs that don't have these security features built in, which probably helps a little to its reputation of being known as the operating system full of malware viruses, now All of this wouldn't be such a Big Deal if there was a version of Windows that users could access between Windows 10 and 11 or at least what we know now is 11, but in this version of reality let's say it would be Windows 12 or 13, Unfortunately in our current reality.

There appear to be no plans or anything in the works for a Windows 10.1 or lightweight Windows 11 that seeks to remove these security requirements from Windows 11. Microsoft doesn't want to give you that option, or you have to buy a new computer. You'd probably prefer something like the Microsoft Surface Pro, I'm sure, or build a new computer and buy a new Windows license, although there may be a way to get around using an old Windows 10 license by installing it on your new PC and then maybe upgrading to Windows. 11 from there, but I'm not sure why we don't look at some numbers here.

Numbers are fun. Who doesn't like numbers. What I'm looking at now is the Wikipedia article for the published versions of Windows. It's good. a table that categorizes different statistics about Windows versions, such as when they were released and when they ended their lifespan. Now, in theory, it could be possible for someone to have a computer that was initially built to run Windows 7 and that could be upgraded to Windows. 10 over time, let's see how long that system would have lived. Windows 7 was released in 2009 and ended its life in 20120 from there, you could have upgraded to Windows 8, which was released in 2013 and ended its life in 2016, but of course, let's not forget Windows 8.1 released in 2013, almost exactly a year after Windows 8, which seeks to solve many of the problems that people had with Windows 8.

Windows 8.1 stopped working in 2023 and, of course, in 2015 it could have been updated to Windows 10 Windows 10, as we know, will end its lifespan in 2025. Now, when you look at this Windows release history through the end of its lifespan, you notice that generally the more popular versions of the operating system have longer life cycles, for example, Windows XP. The popular operating system initially released in 2001 stopped working in 2014 13 years, that's quite a long time, however, Windows Vista, a less popular operating system released in 2007, stopped working in 2017, just a decade, which seems to be normal in the Windows course. Windows 7 operating systems released in 2009 ended their useful life in 2020 for 11 years, not as long as XP but longer than Vista, which shows that if an operating system is more popular, they are willing to support it for longer, the life The useful life of Windows 8 was only 4 years from 2012 to 2016, but they anticipated that everyone would upgrade to Windows 8.1, so we can really call the total lifespan of Windows 8 from 2012 to 2023.

Interestingly, it is a lifespan of 11 years, which is shocking given how unpopular Windows 8 was, although technically if we count it from 2013 to 2023 as specifically the time of Windows 8.1's release, ignoring the original Windows 8 2012 release, it now becomes a decade. Windows 12 is arguably probably one of the most popular versions of Windows in recent years, probably because it was the only version of Windows for a long time. time since 2015 between 2015 and 2021 there have been no new versions of Windows it was not until finally Windows 11 in 2021 that we saw a new version of Windows now Windows 10 despite being a fairly popular operating system once again it has only been given the treatment of a decade and it is strange to me that operating systems that were popular like XP and 7 had a lifespan a little longer than a decade, but Windows 10 is not, obviously, it would eventually have to stop working, either next year or 2 years from now.

It would have to stop working, so really making Windows 10 last longer would only delay this problem. My big problem is that in theory you could have upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10 on a computer, but from Windows 10 to Windows 11 that can be completely completed. impossible due to increased security requirements and despite all the complaints people have about Windows 11,I would have updated if I could personally what little I've used on other computers, okay I think the changes they made to the right click menus are a bit strange and the refocusing of making the taskbar centered instead of facing The left one is strange, especially since they give the user the ability to customize the taskbar only to the extent that they can change it from centered to off. left like in previous versions of Windows, but they didn't add any additional customization to make it face to the right, instead it seemed more like they wanted the centered version to be the version that people will use because that's what the Mac operating system has and the option on the left is there for people who want Windows to feel like every previous version anyway, I felt like I had run out of options and although I still had about a year and a half until Windows 10 reached the end of its useful life.

I wanted to do something about it, so I started researching Linux distributions from all the dros. Linux Mint stood out for being the most seemingly beginner-friendly for those new to Linux like me and the included cinnamon desktop environment. It was similar to Windows and through various themes I have been able to make mine even more similar, I actually have a Windows 7 theme on my desktop, it's great, the taskbar is like a transparent, shiny thing and the clothes buttons and minimize at the top right of each window look like they do in Windows 7, it's pretty cool and even makes all the icons look like older versions of the icons, for example the Firefox logo really looks good, not to mention the Firefox's current logo is bad, but in my opinion nothing beats the old one and Linux can do a lot of the things I was doing on Windows, including gaming, a good number of games in my Steam library have native Linux ports , like city skylines for example, other games I play like Minecraft also natively support Linux, which of course is a very integral part of my YouTube channel. now and even through Steam, but even games that don't have native Linux ports can be played on Linux thanks to Proton, a compatibility layer that basically allows these Windows programs to work on your Linux system.

I don't fully understand how it all works. It doesn't always work perfectly, but I'm surprised it works, to be honest, now on the more creative side of things, making videos and music it was definitely a little difficult transitioning from Windows to Linux to make videos for this channel I had. I became reliant on Da Vinci Resolve as my video editor to make videos for this channel. I became dependent on Da Vinci Resolve as a video editing software, it was free and fairly easy to use and although it has native Linux. port A, I couldn't run it on my system for some reason and B, the free version apparently doesn't include the Codex available for exporting videos as MP4, which seems to be due to lack of support for the AAC audio codec for videos.

For some reason, I

switched

to Kaden Live, which is a video editor available on Linux, which is also free and has done a pretty good job. I definitely miss some of all the similar effects and filters that Da Vinci Resolve had and there are definitely some things. I still need to learn Kaden live, but it works as far as audio production goes, my digital audio workstation of choice for many years has been Studio 1. There is a native Linux port of Studio One, but it's still in beta and also is incompatible with my system, so I just installed Reaper, which is actually what I'm using to record this audio at the moment, and I've been focusing more on unused music production styles anyway, so I don't being able to use a familiar Daw is not that great. a deal as I've been experimenting with combining my Tas cam Model 12 and npc1 together to create a bare metal recording setup that way and as for other things I've been able to find Linux alternatives and for anything I can't find a Linux. alternative to the existence of Wine, a compatibility filter like Proton that I mentioned before for games, but more generalized for any type of Windows software, allows me to run Windows-only programs.

The programs I'm running with Wine are few and far between. MP3 tag. and the MP3 tagging program which there are Linux alternatives to, but the Linux alternative at least I found wasn't very good, you couldn't even preview album art for the tracks, which I always thought was very useful on the MP3 label, the only other one. The program I've actually used with Wine is Bryce 3D, a sort of abstract 3D rendering program that makes these renders look like 9. It's cool, but it only runs on Windows, but now I can run it on this computer running Linux via Wine.

I don't do anything too serious with it, I pretty much just use it to create wallpapers for my computer and, uh, my phone's wallpaper was also made in Bryce 3D. I don't know how well you can see that, but yeah, kind of abstract. sky and water and geometric shapes floating everywhere type thing it's fun I learned about this I think it's reviews of lazy or lgr games on YouTube now look, I'm not a Linux devotee I don't worship the penguin like some on the Internet seem to do I'm not here to To tell you that converting from Windows to Linux was a piece of cake, it wasn't, there were complications and difficulties and a learning curve which, to be fair, there was a learning curve with how Windows worked, but I had been using it for everyone. my life, so it didn't really matter, but I also don't want to sit here and try to sell you some fake image that you can easily convert from Windows to Linux without problems, maybe you can depending on what you do, but if you are more focused on the work of production, especially if you do it as a job, the transition might be a little more difficult for you, although if you do production as a job, you could probably afford to get a computer that runs a window that can run Windows 11, for example. which may not be a problem for you and of course I have some praise for Linux, the customization is certainly some of the best I've ever seen, usually when you upgrade from one OS to another, sort of you only have the style option of whatever that new version of the OS has, since the user can't really choose how they would like this older version to look more like or something, you don't have that option Linux. you can do it at least with the cinon desktop environment that comes with Linux Mint, although from what I can tell of other desktop environments they all seem to allow for good customization, as I mentioned before mine is configured for something like that.

It looks like Windows 7, which is a lot of fun and the nice thing about being on Linux Mint is that, as I mentioned before, because of the way computers have stagnated in the last decade, I'll probably be able to keep updating my system to the latest version . for quite some time, which is great because the next version of Linux Mint is set to use a different audio system called pipewire. Currently on Linux Mint uses something called pulse audio to run the audio system on the computer and it doesn't even suck. for production purposes there are other audio engines for that alsa or something um but pulse audio is terrible uh it just stops working I don't know why um I haven't been able to find a reason why it stops working but every time look for problems pulse audio not making any sound

linux

mint

computer not making any sound people just say oh yeah remove pulse audio setting uh and then reboot your system and it works and works but i would like to know why happens and stop it yet, no one seems to discuss that on the internet, if you know please leave a comment because I tried looking for a solution and none came up so I just deleted the settings, rebooted the system, it's incredibly annoying and I'm so glad that They are switching to a new audio system for the next version of Linux Mint because the pulse audio is terrible.

I've never had so much trouble with an audio system on a computer before, mainly because Windows audio usually just worked. although I will say that over the last few years of using Windows 10, maybe in the last year, I started to occasionally develop some issues when watching videos or even playing a game. Windows would just cut out my audio and I would have to rewind the video a few seconds and suddenly the audio would restart or I would have to unplug and replug my audio interface if I was playing a game for it to come back, although it was very strange.

It wasn't as annoying as what's happening with Pulse Audio on Linux. I can't wait to not have this in my system. I know I can install the pipe cable now, but I tried installing the pipe cable and it didn't work. I had to update the system. Let's go back to a previous flashback that I had saved before installing pipewire because I knew it might mess something up and it just didn't work, so I'm waiting for it until the next version of Linux Mint comes out anyway. I've rambled on enough, I hope you can see why I've now switched to Linux.

I would recommend that you switch to Linux if you have a system that is not eligible for a Windows 11 upgrade. Yes, if you have been using Windows your entire life, consider Windows. 11 If you end up not liking Windows 11, try Mint, but I can't say I recommend uprooting your entire computer workflow and having to climb a huge learning curve, essentially relearning an operating system all over again if you have the chance. to do it. stay on

windows

platform like i said before, if i could have stayed on windows i would have but here i am anyway. I think I've rambled on about this enough, um, if you have anything to add to what I said, if I have anything. incorrect information or you just have things to add about what I was saying, feel free to leave a comment about it.

If you have any questions about the move to Linux U, you can leave a comment, although I would also recommend checking out some of the Linux updates. subreddits there are um r/

linux

4 noobs with four being just the digit for instead of being written f um there is a Linux Mint subreddit r/ Linux Mint there is a r/ just Linux subreddit that is just general Linux stuff you could ask um I I can try to answer some questions, but I'm far from being an expert on the subject. I'm not using Linux because I'm really passionate and devoted.

I'm using it because I've run out of options for Windows 10, but I'll certainly do my best to answer any questions you may have, especially if you're switching from Windows 10 to Linux because you're on an ineligible system like mine. What I will say is that if you are worried about a program not being available on Linux from Windows it is probably as if the entire Microsoft Office suite has an alternative on Linux called Libra office that works pretty much anyway and with that I will ask you if you If you liked this video, consider leaving a like on it and If you want to see more content that I'm doing on this channel, click the subscribe button down there and check the notification bell so you get a notification every time I upload a new video with everything said.

I'm Casey. from the iog channel and this is me logging out goodbye now