I did say I had "boomer skills". Cortana sucks, I was able to suppress it somehow, windows 10 is just a big piece of spyware. Not enough room to type all of the features I hate, I am trying to find a positive thing to say about it, but I can't. I try to avoid the "cloud" at all costs. That is where all my music went when my last computer died. Thanks again, Sandman.
What I get a kick out of are these netbooks with only a 32GB drive that come w/ Win-10 preinstalled. The OS itself takes up 30 GB
(Actually, the specs call for 32 GB)
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-10-specificationsJust for comparison, the OS I use takes up just under 700 MB on a fresh install and RAM usage at idle on startup is under 100MB. (It's a fully functional Devuan spin) Some features of Win 10 require a minimum of 4 GB RAM be installed.
Win 10 is a bloated pox on the people of this planet.
Gates is not only a thief, but he sold his stolen software at a loss to drive free-thinking, innovative, competitors out of business.
If you're thinking about switching, take a look at this -->
https://itsfoss.com/best-linux-beginners/I would also highly recommend taking a look into
ArchLabs Linux.
(
Here's a nice review.)
I set this up for a 70+ y.o. relative of mine about 4 months ago, and she absolutely loves it.
Pros:
Speed:
Damn near instantaneous when launching programs - even large ones like the Linux Photoshop equivalent; GIMP - or opening menus, or any other thing you do on the system
Arch is one of the fastest OSs out there..
Do you like under 10 second (cold) boot times ?
Installation:
One of the simplest installers in Linux-land.
It also auto detects all the drivers you need and automatically fetches them. This can be problematic on other Linux Distros - especially if installing on a DELL with their proprietary drivers. It's not a problem with AL.
When installing new software, it's compiled from source - automatically.
This means that AL retrieves the source tarballs (as opposed to a pre-compiled binary,) and builds it specific to your machine specs while also fetching all the required dependancies so you don't have to check for missing packages. Other linux distros sometimes have problems fetching the required deps, or require the user to do it before installing the main software Pkg. All this is done automatically, and if you don't like the command line to install software, there are gui wrappers for pacman (the software installer) - although pacman is extremely simple to use.
Arch linux has one of the best documentation forums out there if you run into trouble.
Cons:
Partial upgrades are not allowed. This means that when you update your software, everything on the system is updated. This can be anywhere from 1/2 GB to over a GB, depending on how long ago your last update was.
Arch, and ArchLabs are what's known as a rolling release. This means you have the cutting edge software and updates are pushed as soon as they are coded. Once in a while this will send a buggy update, but this rarely happens, and you can always roll-back the upgrade.
You get the newest software, but once in a while it could be quirky.
Not really a con for most, but a philosophical standing point for me: It uses Systemd.
I believe Manjaro - mentioned in the very first hyperlink above, is Systemd free.
All in all, I really like Archlabs, and highly recommend it for someone looking to switch away from M$ WinBlows.
Edit: Oh, forgot to mention, telling friends you are using an Arch distro adds to your geek cred.
