This is hugely important. Since Windows is what they use now, I’d start by seeing if any peers are using macOS. See what issues, if any, they have. If you can find someone who uses ChomeOS, ask them too.
Linux will likely have a solution to any sort of compatibility problems, but I imagine folks who have already moved off of Windows will share similar problems.
I think you should absolutely download a Linux distro or three along with VirtualBox and try it out. Look at a couple different desktops, play with cowsay, have a good time.
Don’t switch to an unfamiliar operating system on a work machine without doing a lot of learning first.
Linux itself works in a very different way to Windows. The file system is fundamentally different, for one. You should learn how the Linux file system works, how it’s structured, how users and permissions work, etc.
You would be amazed the little things I’ve seen people lose their shit over. Give a small example, I saw a guy blow all the way up because Linux doesn’t use the word “shortcut.” You know how in Windows, you can have an icon on your desktop with that little arrow next to it, and it might start a program, or it might open an individual file? In Linux, those concepts are called Launchers and Links respectively. There’s a lot of little details like that. Keyboard shortcuts, what the middle mouse button does, all that kind of stuff is different as well, and that kind of thing even varies between distros.
You’ll have to learn how to administer the system, how to keep up with updates, how to take and restore backups for your files and for the system. How to secure the system.
The bigger thing is going to be the software library. The phrase “word documents” stands out to me. There are several different productivity suites and word processors available for Linux, none of them are perfectly compatible with MS Word. In college I found that LibreOffice was perfectly adequate for projects I was doing myself. MLA formatted essay? No problem at all. Group project where you have to work together on a powerpoint presentation? Functionally impossible. I’ve given plenty of talks using LibreOffice Impress for visual aids, it works fine, but it interoperates with MS PowerPoint about as well as my cat does. If you’re expected to communicate documents to other lawyers, the government etc. in .docx format…Linux may not be the best choice at least yet.
Your Word templates and such would likely have to be converted or redone. You don’t need to install a Linux machine to find that out; you can install LibreOffice on a Windows machine and try it out.
PDF support is a bit better with the exception of forms. I forget exactly why, which organization was being a little pissy diaper bitch about putting closed source components in an open standard, was it Adobe themselves or the USPS of all people (why do I remember they’re involved?), but PDF forms aren’t well supported in PDF readers and writers available for Linux, and Adobe doesn’t publish Acrobat for Linux. Typing up a word processing document and saving it as a PDF, opening a PDF and looking at it? Those work perfectly fine.
Viewing videos and that sort of thing, I’ve never run into a problem with that sort of thing on Linux, VLC is present and accounted for, and codecs aren’t the nightmare they were back in the heyday of Windows Media Player.
Affordable we got. Linux and practically the entire software ecosystem are available for free, and Linux will run very well on computers that Windows doesn’t. I’ve got a Dell here from 2012, it’s got an Intel Core i7 with three digits in the part number, it doesn’t run Win11 and feels like shit running Win10, feels brand new running Linux Mint. You don’t need to buy a brand new top of the line machine to get a decent experience out of a typical Linux distro.
You expressed some concerns about not being a programmer. You don’t need to be a programmer to use Linux, at least not this decade. It probably helped in the 90’s. I will say though, one of the biggest advantages of Linux is how close at hand scripting tools like Bash and Python are. For example, I have a script that converts .docx files to .pdf files without launching any applications, and it appears in the right click menu when I right click a .docx file so it’s convenient to run. It’s like a two line bash script with a 7 line config file that’s mostly stuff like what text and icon to put in the right click menu. This doesn’t require a degree in computer science. On any platform, you might want to look at an autokeyer, which can save you a surprising amount of time.
I will strongly second the “don’t use an unfamiliar OS for critical work tasks” sentiment.
I got a MacBook for work, before I had ever used mavOS before and it was absolutely infuriating and anxiety inducing because I couldn’t get my actual job done.
The OS was in the way. And it was small simple things. I shit you not trying to just use the “delete” key made me almost throw the MacBook out the window.
And if I may expand upon this, I bet you don’t think this is MacOS being objectively terrible. There are lots of Mac users and they seem to get along with it just fine, and in fact they look at you weird for fussing about it.
I’ve often pointed at an LTT video where they had iJustine on as a guest, and Linus and Justine swapped platforms, him on a Mac and her on a Windows PC, and they were given a series of tasks such as “install Slack. Take a screenshot. Save that screenshot as a PDF. Save that PDF to a thumb drive. Attach it to a Slack message” etc. And both of them hit points where they said “Oh, you’re going to struggle with that.” Apparently the keyboard shortcut to take a screenshot on a Mac makes no intuitive sense, and at least at the time Windows 10 didn’t ship with software capable of saving a word processing document as a PDF. They both struggled, and they both hit things where they thought someone unfamiliar with the platform would struggle.
Just as you will encounter culture shocks transitioning from Windows to MacOS, you will encounter culture shocks transitioning from Windows to Linux. The time to get used to a new OS isn’t when a client needs some important documents right away.
Do not get me wrong, OP. I would love to see your independent law firm running open source software rather than relying on the megacorporate duopoloy. I think you can do it, but I want to be clear that you will likely need retraining and experience in the new platform.
I do strongly encourage trying a distro or three out in VirtualBox, right there on your Windows machine. Give it a look, play around, follow some tutorials, have some fun. Install VLC and LibreOffice on your Windows machine and see if they’ll do the work you need them to. I also strongly encourage you to come tell us how it goes.
If you are talking about the arch installer. It’s still a commandline. Nothing like the popular calamares GUI installer. Anyone can follow steps to an install easy. The real juice is in maintenance of the installation.
I really like cascadia-code for my terminal (nerdfonts.com has the version with all the ligatures)
I don’t do any graphic design or anything like that, so the fonts that come with any modern distro seem to do the trick - maybe I’d install ttf-ms-fonts for better compatibility when dealing with files across multiple operating systems.
Disable auto-off power management features for the port you have the device plugged into. Try the ‘Tunables’ menu in the powertop utility if you want to temporarily test to see if it works. Easiest thing I can think of for a beginner.
To anyone wondering why, it is because it is Arch linux with pre-configured drivers and also it is one of the few distros that are on the bleeding edge of updates and features. Bleeding edge because one update might cut you and break everything for no reason. That being said, I've used Arch for almost a decade for my gaming PC and never had huge issues that reverting to the previous kernel at reboot did not fix.
A lot of people lately have whined that Linux people are zealoted evangelists. You sure wouldn’t know that in this thread… Most popular jist of responses is “make sure its the right tool for the job first”
Others have given you some good advice but I’ll still give you my opinion because more data points is good.
First of all, as others said, it’s better perhaps if you switch your home computer first or try it out on a VM or dual-boot first as you learn how to use it rather than erasing Windows altogether at first. Regardless of your choice I’d recommend giving it a try still.
Affordability is not a concern at all, most Linux Distros are free and they’ll work perfectly fine, usually when you pay for distros you’re either paying for better tech support or to support the distro itself, and a lot of the software that’s on the repos is also free.
Your biggest concern probably would be re-learning the OS. Now, obviously Linux and windows work very differently, for example installing software on Linux is mainly done via an app-store or the terminal. As for graphics, shortcuts, etc, there’s two approaches here, which one is better depends on your preferences. You can either stick to something similiar to windows, so any distro that has Cinnamon, KDE plasma, or Xfce (you will have to move a few stuff and configure it a bit at the beginning) will do well, I’d recommend Linux Mint; or you can do something more different that will force you to learn something new and will tell you visually “Look, I’m not windows, I’m built different!” so something like GNOME (or customize the other DEs to something you like), personally I’m not a fan of GNOME but it works well for your use-case, as any DE will do, in this case I recommend Pop!_OS.
Both of my recommendetions use apt and are debian (through Ubuntu as the middledistro) derivatives btw. This is important because when you encounter a problem or a certain software not being in the repo it is good to look for sources closely related to your distro.
Linux can do everything you mentioned and more, however compatibility with M$ Word documents/etc can be a bit iffy. Personally I always used LibreOffice and aside from some minor annoyances never had issues with it and using .docx but I also don’t work at a professional environment that requires it to work perfectly. However you’re in luck as you can still use M$ office & other stuff from your browser if needed, tho I assume it will have less resources and will require an internet connection (this can be mitigated by working offline with LibreOffice, OpenOffice or any Office suite you like then copy-pasting it to M$ word or whatever), tho I wouldn’t know since I don’t use either and never planning on doing so. There’s also google docs.
Video types should work just fine especially common ones, VLC is a powerful tool. If you’re installing Mint make sure to install the media codecs at install.
Also I recommend learning the terminal, it may seem scary at first but it is easy, fast and will help you troubleshoot. Also accept that you will encounter problem, like in every system, and you’re expected to solve them yourself, this means you can spend a lot of time looking up stuff, learning to look at logs, etc. This will of course take time but it would take as much if not more time on windows too sometimes, on the bright side Linux tends to be a little better at telling you the problem if you know what to look for and also you almost never have to deal with an issue until the company fixes it, you can literally go and fix the code yourself if needs be. Anyways, on this end I recommend using a stable distribution (like the ones I mentioned), stick to the official repos as much as possible, and at install make a separate partition for your home folder, that way worst case scenario you can always just reinstall the OS (takes 15 mins) without losing your files*. Also, this goes for everything and I can’t stress it enough: MAKE FREQUENT BACKUPS, and better yet do them in multiple places: Proton Drive, external hard disk/USB, an other drive on your PC, whatever just have at least one, preferably 2+, place that isn’t your computer or its main drive be your backup space. This goes for Windows too and even though I assume you know it I will still say it because it’s extremely important and always overlooked.
*Unless you erase the partition by mistake or something.
P.S. also given the nature of your job, you might want to encrypt the hard disk (write the password somewhere and make sure to use a password specifically for it and one you can remember, password managers/generators don’t help here) and learn to use the gpg command when you need to encrypt and sign documents.
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