It's Linux Time!

Let us begin by my saying that in my estimation Microsoft Corporation is a distillation of pure, if not always competently executed, wickedness.

Microsoft has distributed evil since it expanded beyond BASIC programming language interpreters (which may or may not have been evil) in 1980. It is continuing its assault with perhaps its boldest attack on its customers ever.

In seven weeks it will withdraw support for Windows 10, the most-installed of its mediocre line of application-operating system-spyware products. Customers who paid for Windows either directly or pre-installed on their computers are out of luck if it has a problem which, it being a Microsoft product, it probably will.

Some of them, no doubt, figured on buying — “upgrading” assumes facts not in evidence — Windows 11. The company last year began force-feeding Windows 10 users advertisements for the new product.

Which, it turns out, may well require those users to purchase a new computer, even though the one they have is plenty powerful and functions perfectly.

Literally millions of owners of good computers face the choice of being discarded or left vulnerable — well, it’s Microsoft, so “even more vulnerable” would not be going too far, bearing in mind that Microsoft is among the biggest offenders — because fixes and security updates are no longer available.

Actually, you can purchase a limited subset of support for Windows 10. It costs $61 the first year, $122 the second year, and $244 the third year. By which time we can hope that Microsoft will have gone the way of Nokia — the world’s leading mobile phone maker until the company’s partnership with, then purchase by (can you guess?) Microsoft Corporation, who put something called Windows Mobile on them after which neither Nokia phones nor Windows Mobile was much heard from again. Google squashed them like a bug with Android. Great hardware from Nokia couldn’t overcome terrible software from Microsoft.

Of course, there is a far superior alternative to Windows, 10 or 11, and it is free.

It is Linux. More specifically, it is Debian Linux.

Over the weekend I finished installing Debian on the two machines here, a notebook and a sub-notebook, that weren’t already running it. I thought about my early days with Linux and how the consensus was that Debian was by far the best distribution, but it was really difficult to install. This led in the early 2000s to a lot of “Debian-based” Linux distributions that included various niceties, chief among them ease of installation.

Debian was founded in 1993 by the late Ian Murdock, from Indiana, then 20 years old. It was named for himself and his girlfriend, Debra Lynn Roundy. (They later married, produced three children, and divorced.) Debian is the standard Linux. But now, it is easy to install.

Really easy. It takes an hour, including preparing the installer (downloading the disk image, putting it on a USB drive, setting your computer to boot from USB, booting to the USB, and actually installing it). There are no particularly difficult questions to answer.

There’s more. You get a wide choice of desktop systems.

You can choose, for instance, the excellent XFCE, which is lightweight and unencumbered by lots of fripperies; Mate, which is a slimmed down version of Gnome (about which more in a second); LXQT, which is pretty but which I have come to hate (more about that coming, too); LXDE, also light-weight and pretty, though I have never had reason to try it out; KDE, with which I have a long history; Debian Junior, which appears to be for children; Cinnamon, a desktop cobbled together a few years ago for reasons that weren’t unclear and remain unclear; and of course Gnome, which joined KDE ages ago in the battle for the Linux desktop. Both Gnome and KDE have continued to pile in stuff and complications, and in fact neither would be my recommendation for a first-time user. LXQT brings a lot of stuff with it that I’ve found irritating. It might be okay if it is your desktop of choice, but it is not a good selection if you’re contemplating it as a way station on your way to something else.

And your initial choice is not generally that big a deal: you can install more than one desktop, choosing which one to run today at the login screen. It’s cool, being able to have more than one, perhaps customized for particular moods or something. (Why not install them all? Because each comes with some accessories — basic programs and configuration tools — and those from one desktop will happily join the menu of and run under all the others. You can end up with numerous command-line (terminal) programs, a dozen small text editors, notepads, and so on. You can uninstall the ones you don’t like, but this is not an undertaking for your first day running Linux.)

Though I’ve linked to the website of each of the different desktops, they don’t really tell you much. It is far better to download the .iso images of the ones that interest you and give them a spin.

It’s easy. If you don’t have it already, install Rufus or another USB burning application on your machine running Windows. Download the .iso images of Debian with the particular desktops that interest you from the Debian listing. Burn the images to USB sticks, put ‘em in your computer’s USB socket, reboot from the USB stick, and take a look. (Remember that running an operating system from USB is much slower than it would be running on your hard drive or SSD.)

Though there is an “install” button on each, do not click on it during your tryouts! We’re talking your computer’s new operating system here. It’s not to be taken lightly.

First, do you have copies of your documents, pictures, passwords, music, and so on safely backed up to storage that is not at the moment in your computer? If you don’t, you need to do that. A nice external SSD that can be unplugged is a good choice, because you can then put those files back on your machine with its new operating system later. (And be sure to check those files — backup failures are, sadly, not unknown.)

Once you’ve made your choice of desktop and made sure you have good backups of everything important, then you can hit “install.”

There will come a point where you are asked if you want to use the entire drive or the biggest piece of free space that’s available. This could make it possible to keep both operating systems on your hard drive, and you can select the one you want at boot time. It’s up to you, but every time I’ve run dual-boot, as it’s called, I ended up regretting it. Still, if there is some Windows program you absolutely must keep, it is a way to do so while installing Linux to do everything else.

If you choose to use the entire drive, make sure that on the page where it talks about partitioning select the choice that creates a separate partition for your “/home” directory. Why? Because then, if you manage to get all exploratory and do something you shouldn’t and break your Linux installation, you can reinstall it and all your documents, configurations, and so on will most likely emerge intact.

I am sad to say that there are not Debian versions of my favorite desktops, the Trinity Desktop Environment and Enlightenment. The former is the latest manifestation of a desktop that I have used since its release in 1998. I do not know of any better desktop, or even its equal. The latter is a beautiful and clever desktop. I talked about it last week. If either of them interests you, I recommend installing the XFCE desktop, which is perfectly competent and light weight, getting comfortable with Linux, then installing the desktop of your choice. TDE, the Trinity desktop, is easier to install and to make your own. On my own desktop and laptop machines I have TDE, Enlightenment, and XFCE installed, but I spend most of my time using TDE.

Now. Why Debian and not one of the scores of other Linux distributions out there? It’s simple. Debian is the one predictable distribution, the standard. Many of the others are based on Debian for that reason.

Linux is published under a license that says in effect that anyone can do pretty much anything with it. Numerous companies repackage it with large or small alterations, the intentional or unintentional effect being that the user is locked into that distribution — which might disappear tomorrow, or take an unsavory turn.

(For example, one very famous and popular distribution, Ubuntu, rolled along for 20 years and was highly regarded. Then it announced that some security upgrades would be withheld unless the user registered with the company, Canonical. Then it changed the format of its packaging such that most software could be obtained from or registered with it. It started changing the format when users upgraded applications. It did not make this optional. That was a very “dark side” play. And it was at that point that I removed Ubuntu from my machines.)

Many distributions produce other “features” that either tie the user to it or have irritating, undefeatable effects. This applies to some desktop systems, too: I have been in the middle of doing something fairly complicated only to have a box pop up saying there are system or application upgrades available, the Linux equivalent of the hated Microsoft paperclip. Want to do users a favor? Produce an easily installed, easily understood, easily maintained desktop.

Over time, some distributions have just up and disappeared, never to be seen again, leaving their users to find a different, incompatible distribution in order to remain current. (This is a case in which having /home on a separate partition is vindicated.)

Some distributions are designed for a particular purpose, such as checking the security of other computers or as platforms for developers or hobbyists. These are often complicated to install and not ideal for someone inexperienced with Linux and interested only in replacing Windows and its applications. Debian is the safe choice.

Nor need you worry about finding Linux applications. The Debian .isos that I tried out all include a browser or two, the excellent LibreOffice (which produces documents compatible with those produced by Microsoft Office), and a good range of high quality applications. There are additionally repositories of other applications that can be installed with a click. The Debian package management system is a marvel, and the applications are free (though it is the decent thing to do to donate a few dollars from time to time to the projects that you like or use a lot).

It is frightening at first, making a switch in operating systems. But with just a little patience you will discover that changing to Linux is like the moment in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy opens the door and everything changes from black-and-white to Technicolor.

The chances are that after a few days you’ll be wondering why you didn’t move to Linux earlier.

And perhaps you’ll even be thanking Microsoft Corporation for forcing you to do it now.