I’m also nervous about using an OS I’m not familiar with for business purposes right away.
Install the latest version of VMware Player (17.5) on your current OS, then install linux distros on virtual machines to figure things out first.
If you settle on any you like, make a full disk image backup, before repartitioning to install linux as a dual boot setup and try it on hardware that way.
Keep the Windows partition around, if nothing else just for games or apps that don’t work on linux, or as your backup working profession setup.
edit: some will recommend VirtualBox instead, but for me (on Windows at least) it always resizes on startup incorrectly and obscures part of the desktop, so I have to manually resize on every VM boot. VMware does it properly each time for me without issues.
Linux is usually light compared to windows, and no nonsense bloatware and faster to run. Plus is customizable.
If you are a lawyer I assume you are looking for stability and prefer simple over complex. So my guess is that Debian(since is the most stable rock solid distro) would suit you, and most importantly is the desktop environment, if you are looking something similar to Windows I would choose KDE Plasma and if you like MacOS interface then Gnome. Both of them are very different but customizable, I find Gnome is simpler and less busy and Plasma is full of features but busy IMO. Oh and Cinnamon desktop environment is best of both worlds I think. If you are concerned about security and encryption then I’m afraid I can’t advice you on that. Finally I recommend looking up in “distrowatch” if you are looking for something most specific, most distros come with Libre Office as some of the comments point out. There are some distros specifically made for business wich I would recommend if you go big.
Here is a post I made of my desktop with Gnome so that you can see how it look and feels.
I myself am currently using a Chuwi Hi10X. I don’t have too many major complaints about it other than its quite underpowered. It does perform decently well until you need something graphics related then just kinda sucks. However I can use Firefox with it without any major gripes aisde from video playback, then I need to use chromium.
The desktop environment you use can actually play a massive part in its usability. I have found that GNOME is pretty much useless. KDE isn’t bad but it’s still heavy. I have been testing Cosmic DE and it has been pretty good. Definitely the best performing of the bunch so when that releases I’ll probably be using that full time.
To solve number 4, I need to know the desktop environment you went with. Is it Gnome? If so, there’s a tweak (a Gnome extension) that makes the taskbar stay on screen permanently or appear when you hover over it (kinda like MacOS) and then you just right click a program you’re using in there to pin it to the taskbar
Arco -B has the widest range of DEs and WMs at install that I’ve seen so far. Almost all of them are modded to have a unified control scheme, but the appearance is usually close to vanilla.
My suggestion would be to setup a keyfile to unlock the partition automatically. You can use your EFI partition to store the keyfile, which makes no sense from security perspective; or you can keep it on a usb drive. Machine will ask for password if usb is not present, or boot straight up if it is.
Regarding 4; I suppose you’re looking for the ArcMenu extension if you wish to continue using GNOME as your Desktop Environment (will be abbreviated to DE from here on). Though GNOME’s workflow is considerably different to Windows’. Therefore, you might be interested into looking elsewhere unless you’re actually interested to continue GNOME. FWIW, GNOME is one of the most popular and most polished DEs out there, but it’s very opinionated; which rub some folk the wrong way. I personally like it, but others might differ on this. Lastly, GNOME is NOT particularly known to be light. Therefore, if you’re not happy with how it runs; e.g. frame skips with animations or just high RAM usage overall, then perhaps consider Xfce or Lxqt. If you’re not discontent about the performance on GNOME, then you could also consider KDE or Cinnamon as those might ‘feel’ more ‘modern’ than the aforementioned Xfce and Lxqt.
Regarding 5; Ubuntu gets a lot of hate due to:
how they’re forcing Snaps (their in-house universal package manager; therefore a direct competitor to Flatpak) onto its users. So much so that even attempting to install some packages through apt will result in the Snap being installed instead; which is basically unprecedented within the Linux landscape.
some mishaps in the past resulted in very bad PR; especially to those that are privacy-conscious and/or F(L)OSS-advocates.
You’d have to get to your own conclusions though. It’s probably still the most used distro and therefore you might expect some QoL-features are only found within. If you’re inconclusive, just try it out and consider reporting back to us on how it went. Regarding old hardware; the DE is the most important factor anyways.
Thanks! I think I’ve seen some frame skips, I’ll double check and maybe go with a different DE. And having heard all that, I’ll keep Ubuntu as a last resort.
Nothing special, I just kept distrohopping and backing up my home folder to a seperate drive each time via rsync. Eventually I messed that up somewhere, some data was lost. I think that was early this year.
Nothing to major, bit of a nuisance is all. And a grim reminder that eventually you WILL mess up. It’s just a matter of time really. So try to minimize the factors that lead to mishaps like distrohopping and be diligent with your backups.
Personally, I keep the redundant backup as cold storage to minimize loss. Three 8TB content or archival drives that are always attached via USB but not powered until needed, plus another on NAS for streaming, and two more 8TB each for double backup that are only turned on when I want to do a sync. So the drives get minimal wear, and whenever a primary dies, the backups get promoted and a new one is bought to be third in line. I have lost too much data in the past. As well as I can manage, never ever again.
What is kind of funny is that my computer has the SSD for system and home, and I only ever used the storage to copy over files from my home. I also have a little 1TB SSD That I could have used as an offline backup… but didn’t do that. I had the tools, just never thought to do it. I will look into a NAS, that would be nifty. Can’t bork that with a new install.
It only takes a few tragic events before “backup frequently, often and offline” really takes hold and doing preemptive backup becomes a neurosis. You have to experience a certain amount of fear, loss and regret to get there.
edit: the upside is I haven’t reinstalled a primary OS in years. Something is fucked? Restore that last image and keep rolling.
Yes! I am becoming more careful. I am definitely getting deeper in my knowledge of programs and linux. The stuff to learn is immense. But, it makes my life so much better.
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