But that’s the point: it’s NOT a standard and government or justice departments should require open standards so that EVERYONE can participate because everyone MUST participate. Now the government at least allows the defacto forced sponsoring of a single damn near monopoly. Want to use the government? Sorry, gotta pay your Microsoft taxes first. That is not okay, not acceptable. There are loads of open standards that can be and should be used and enforced
Linux is vastly superior. I’ve been on Linux desktop for over 20 years now, I’ll never go back.
As a typical example: this weekend I install Linux (with download and making iso) takes 20 minutes, I install windows (first time in decades, something for my son), took fucking 6 hours, 14 attempts, loads of problem searching on internet.
Having said that, there are some things to keep in mind. Linux mostly (to users) is slightly different on a few details, and because of Microsoft, there are some things to keep in mind.
You’re a lawyer, so you might have to deal with Microsoft documents. Those you can process with LibreOffice (I don’t like it very much, like Microsoft office), google drive (works very nice, but is still closed source, google) or your own hosted linux server with nextcloud and only office (a bit harder to setup but then it’s all yours and under your control)
Look into any closed source windows applications that are required. Most windows programs run also under Linux (wine, proton, and these days various other solutions up to a virtual machine with windows for those few exceptions that won’t work on Linux for some reason)
Video formats are non-issue, Linux eats everything and mostly out of the box.
Then, Linux has distributions. See it as different car brands. They’re all cars, based on the same tech, just different brand names that do details slightly different. You gotta choose a distro (distribution). I HIGHLY recommend either fedora or (my person Lal preference) a Ubuntu variant. I personally have been using kubuntu for over a decade now. The graphical user interface works mostly like windows (just better) and most programs have Ubuntu ready Linux versions available, making installing them super easy. Install VirtualBox (free, as usual) to run windows in a virtual machine if needed, and setup multiple desktops so that you can easily switch to a windows desktop when needed (hopefully, and likely, never)
First: windows isn’t the superior option. This is basically windows being VHS, Linux being betamax. Linux is vastly superior, but it’s just that Microsoft marketing is too good at lying.
Second: Linux is very apt at running Microsoft programs, including office.
Third: fuck Microsoft office, use online office in a browser. Microsoft office 365 if you’re dumb (because my god, it’s cringy bad, or google docs if you want it easy (eats most Ms crap with little to no trouble) or if you want to go truely open source, setup nextcloud with only office.
Side comment: if governments or courts FOCRE you to pay money to a specific company to use services that can quite easily be done by open source alternatives then I say that smells like corruption and or incompetence.
I recently reinstalled Linux. 5 minutes download, 5 minutes USB write, 15 minutes install including setting up an encrypted drive, everything works out of the box. Installling the graphics driver for my RX 7800 was “hard” because it was two steps instead of one, and that added an additional 5-10 minutes. Now I’m having convenience and productivity beyond all coworkers who constantly battle with windows problems, but hey, windows is windows, it always has some issues, it’s fine.
Over this past weekend I installed Windows 11. 1.5 times the size. Took about 7 minutes to download, 20 minutes to write to usb, fine.
Then the nightmare started.
First try: boot windows installer, go to install, about 3 minutes later I get an error about windows installer needing drivers. Wut? Search the internet, turns out that windows installer won’t work if Linux partitions are available on the system. WTF, can’t just ignore them? Nope, I gotta screw out the m.2 drive. Fine.
Second try: boot windows installer, go to install, about 3 minutes later I get an error about windows installer needing drivers. Wut? Search again, find that windows installer can have driver issues if it sees a mix of m.2 drives and other devices. Fuck me. Open up the other side of the computer, disconnect the other drives. fine.
Third try: boot windows installer, go to install, about 3 minutes later I get an error about windows installer needing drivers. Wut? Search yet again and it turns out that windows can have issues if it’s using a mix of usb 2/3 port and device. Try a various different USB ports, keep running installer until find one that is accepted. Fine!
Thirteenth try: boot windows installer, go to install, about 3 minutes later I get a new error, turns out that you can’t use Linux ISO writers for windows installers, apparently Microsoft fucked around with why because we gotta make shit hard for non ms users, right? “Luckily” I had a virtual box install, rewrite the usb there.
Fourteenth try and hours later: boot windows installer, go to install, about 3 minutes later I get a new error. My AMD Rhyzen 5 64GB 3000MHz system with an AMD RX 7800 XT and 1TB m.2 dedicated to windows doesn’t match the specs for windows 1, it can’t run windows 11. That’s what it actually said. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK! Search again, about an hour later I figre out that Microsoft finally started implementing the evil TPM system and it was disabled in the BIOS. Go to bios, enable it, now I can run the installer.
The install the requires 4 reboots just for the operating system, took about another hour to do so, it asked me loads of times if Microsoft could please please please sell me more shit that I don’t want, it required me to connect it to Microsoft services even though I don’t want that and finally I had a desktop. Installing graphics drivers took about another hour and a reboot.
Then I didn’t wanted to use Microsoft’s shit browser, at the least I prefer google to spy on me rather than Microsoft. Go download gogle Chrome, immediately get bombarded with “please no please use our shitty browser, you get the Microsoft experience ™!!!”
Welcome to the fucking Microsoft experience! It took me over 6 fucking hours to complete. I could have installed Linux arch in LESS time, a version known to be finicky and HARD.
Why does anyone pay money for windows? It’s insane. Their shit doesn’t work because Microsoft never cared a single shit about good software. They care about money and so their marketing department is doing the heavy lifting. Just lie to people, tell them that their shit is all superior and the “best experience”
I run into trouble with Linux sometimes, but NEVER this level of shitty incompetence and sabotage.
I love “the good place”. It’s light comedy, it actually makes you think a little, it’s a lot of feel good and it’s one of those shows where you can see that everyone is having a blast making it.
Edit: I should finish reading the post before commenting, lol.