please install linux (please)

INSTALL LINUX ON YOUR COMPUTER!!

I know, I know. You probably think that Linux is for fat nerds who, despite not being able to make a single friend who they didn't meet at a DnD game or school gaming club, is a genius with computers and knows just about every single thing a person can possibly know about how to use them and how they work. A human wikipedia page, basically.

I thought so too.

But in the last couple of years, Linux has been brought up quite a bit in my corner of the internet. I seldom get a video on my YouTube feed where, if it's about something like "removing my reliance on big tech/smart phones", where Linux isn't at least mentioned in passing. I hear all the time about people switching to Linux or thinking about making the switch. But all my life I have been led to believe that Linux is for the people I have mentioned above: actual computer enthusiasts who know what the hell they're doing. Like, fuckin, professional computer engineers who work for Dell, or programmers who can only use Linux because if something went awry, they would know what to do to fix it.

Today, I got a brand new laptop. My first new computer in the last five years. It actually came at a really good time because my desktop PC that I've been using for the past five years is still running Windows 10, and that's gonna lose support in a couple weeks, so I was really hoping to get off that train before I was forced to install Windows 11 (which, frankly, I still will). Since this laptop was wiped clean, I finally had the opportunity to install Linux and give it a try.

I installed Mint, which I have been led to believe is the most 'beginner-friendly' distro, and by God it really is. Linux, at least this version of it, is incredibly intuitive and smooth. The UI is beautiful, it works great, and only after using it for a day, with the exception of needing to do more things manually, I actually prefer it over Windows. It feels like an OS that an adult would use. Like, it's professional. It doesn't hide anything and it doesn't inhibit me from doing what I want to do on my computer. No ads in the start-menu, no random pop-ups, none of that. It just lets me be, and that's exactly what every user deserves.

You may be like I once was: afraid of Linux. You may have heard horror stories about the terminal, and the repositories, and the God forsaken drivers, but trust me. It really isn't that much different from MacOS or Windows in terms of useability, and you only need to deal with the terminal once in a while to perform a very specific task or install a very specific program.

Trust me, and install Linux. Do some research on what version would suit you best for your own needs, but Linux is absolutely the way to go. It's everything you want and more.