I’m not completely against it. I do recognise its threats to privacy, the planet, and intellect though. The average person trusts it too much.

Personally, I do not use it that much. I do however use it to help with research. I find being able to ask a question quite useful as a jumping off point for further research. I do not rely on it to answer correctly, simply to aid in pointing me in the right direction. Then I go off and do more specific research.

I have been moving from windows 10 to linux mint recently, it was quite useful in aiding with this at times. Not all the time, just at the right times. If there were a particular issue I was struggling with it could help point me in the right direction, though I would not trust it to simply spit out the right advise and commands to type to fix an issue without researching exactly what those commands did, how that would potentially help fix the issue and how to revert if it messed something up. I have seen many examples where the advise it gave was terrible and potentially destructive because I researched the advise it gave, had I of not it would have really messed things up. It must be used responsibly.

People are all to quick to talk into their phones, get a response and trust it to be all knowing. Their queries are forever recorded and logged to their personal identity without and option to opt out. I use privacy orientated search engines with ai functionality such as duckduckgo and ecosia. Ecosia makes it very easy to verify the sources of information given from their ai, also they put in efforts to be as green as possible. Very respectable.

So no, I am not against ai. I am against the usual way in which the average person uses it and the way the majority of companies are using it to exploit people and the planet to turn a profit.

Microsoft wants to know everything about you like all big tech companies and link it to your personal identity hence the mandatory microsoft account. They have one goal, to make as much money as possible. No ethics.

Linux is open source, built by the people for the people. Their goal is to protect and respect you as an individual. Sure there are a few nefarious actors out there but from my experience thus far, very rare. If you are looking for digital sovereignty and are moving from windows and want a good solid support community to help fix any odd issues you come across, linux mint is definitely a good choice.

Could you re-iterate you last question, I don’t quite understand. I have become aware that by using big tech feeds they are mentally destructive to most, especially the vulnerable. They know it hurts mental health, destroys lives and ultimately makes people miserable. But it turns a profit, and that is all they care about. The occasional fine is nothing to them.

As for myself, personally. Being more aware of this I am making changes, taking the time and effort to do my own research. Improving my research methods. Everything I have learnt about privacy and big tech, moving to linux, managing the different systems involved in this I have not been social and asked for help. I did it all off my own back, sought out the information from scratch.

This is not a “look at me” moment, rather I struggle deeply with social situations, even online. Joining this community is a change for me. I am challenging myself at this point in my life. I need to. I’ve found a place that appears to be aligned with my way of thinking. This community never even asked for an email, I consider that a bold statement sending a clear message about what this place stands for. I feel I could be comfortable here.

I’m not sure if that answers your question hence the request to reiterate but I think it is along the lines of it.

If you want digital sovereignty, linux is the place to go. I think the process helps to learn more about it and why you would really want it.

Out of curiosity, what has delayed your migration? Is it the effort, the lack of perceived need, not knowing where to start? Just wondering.

Yup, that was part of my decision making process. The popularity and support community was a big factor for me, this was all new to me, the good community and popularity meant there was a better chance of being able to fix something that did not work as expected. The fact it was not trying to be the latest and greatest but provide a good, solid, stable computing experience for the average user transitioning from windows was another point for me.

It is working well for me. May I ask, how does my decision to go with linux mint make more sense because I decided to switch to cross platform open source software on windows? Surly by doing that it meant that going to any linux distribution becomes an easier transition.

Thank you for this, I spent an hour or so going though some of this guys videos as a result. Quite entertaining.

I have been using timeshift from the word go. Creating a snapshot before software installations and any tinkering I was about to do. I have researched how to restore from a timeshift backup if the system will no longer boot too. I plan to test in a VM at some point to get a better understanding. I did not update or tinker with the system until I had system images, backups, timeshift snapshots and knew how to restore them all including how to boot from a bad kernal update. But I’d like to actually go through the procedure so like I said, going to get a few VM’s set up for tinkering so I am more confident in the procedure.

Thank you for the advice but I am going to leave unverified flatpaks off until I learn more about installation packages in general and what exactly unverified means in terms of risk. Open source is not enough as I do not understand how to read the code, I instead conduct research into what are the best software for this and that, go through reviews from multiple sources to build an opinion on the software itself.

I have yet to have libreoffice come across a file that it could not read properly. I am aware of only office and if I did hit an issue would probably give that one a go. But for now, libreoffice has been working great for me.

Thank you, and thanks for the welcome.

Good to hear you have got a family member on board. I think the world needs more average users to embrace the open source world.

You are welcome.

Thank you for the helpful and informative reply. I think I will take a step back and just use linux for me. Like you say, take some time to get used to it and learn more about it. Also, take a break from trying to inform others of what is really going on with big tech. To be honest I am getting tired of being ostracised over all this. I want to help them see but it is clear they just cling to their existing beliefs. Even though when something goes wrong with their computer they come to me. This is something else I plan to take a step back on.

You are right on the privacy point, I once did not care either so I understand the mentality. But that was a long time ago. It is only now I have decided to do something more drastic about it as I have began to see where it is all headed and wanted out. Linux is just a part of that but it is one of the more drastic efforts for me to implement.

In my opinion, every OS has their pros and cons, and they all break in one way or another from time to time. I am under no illusion that linux is a magic OS that just works. I have fixed enough computer problems to know things go wrong. Hence the precautions I have made in the switch. I know much of the time it is user error so I have taken steps to have recovery options if I do something wrong or something unexpected happens. I plan to created virtual machines to tinker with rather than the installation I am running on.

I think your way of thinking about things is very sound and I shall be taking your advice to heart.

Thank you.

Thank you for the advice.

Until I learn more about exactly what sort of telemetry steam uses I will be avoiding it. Differences between installation methods is definitely something I need to learn more about. For example fsearch I have installed as a flatpak but it does not know what to launch found files with and I have to select what to launch with each time. This is due to flatpak not being able to see what software I have installed I think.

This tells me that the default steam installation could, which I am not keen on. Who knows what else because I am not that knowledgable on it yet.

I think GOG may be a better option for now, also everything is DRM free. But I have not used them before so again, another thing to research.

You are welcome. I am glad you found a distro that works for you. Maybe as time progresses I will start to customise more and distro hop. But for now, I am very happy with mint.

You are welcome. During my research I found longer write ups to be more helpful and informative so decided to do the same thing. It seems as though win10 is going to now be supported until oct 2027 under the esu program so there is still time to transition whilst receiving security updates on win10.

I have had a good experience, for me, it helps to bring peace of mind and control, it just involves some effort, planning and research.

I wish you well on your journey.

What is your primary reason for switching to linux?

Thank you for welcoming me. I still do use big tech, but when I want to now. I use invidious for youtube and redlib for reddit to avoid interaction with the sites themselves. I still have much of FOSS to explore.