So long Windows!

I needed to do a fresh install of Windows the other day. And the whole ‘we want you to log in with a Microsoft account’ is getting a bit tiresome. It was still easy to bypass, but with recent changes it looks like it could get a lot more annoying.

But then I started to consider if I even need Windows any more.

Year of the Linux Desktop?

I’ve played around a lot with Linux over the years. Initially with Slackware and Debian doing projects in Defence back in 97-99. And I’m finding more and more, that my work revolves around linux (although there’s still a heavy Microsoft component to part of what we do).

But I’m also a bit of a gamer at times, and that used to be a sticking point. Recently I installed Bazzite and tried a few different game installs. Not all worked perfectly, but on the whole it was a pretty decent experience.

I perhaps short-changed linux a bit too. I always installed it on the old, spare laptop. And never really gave it the chance to be my daily driver. But Debian 13 was released this year, and my poor laptop only had a 512G ssd in it (and I had a spare 2TB after updating my desktop), so that, coupled with the way MS has been going, meant I was going to give it a go, for real!

Man, I didn’t realise how beautiful and fast it could be. Normally I’ve used a lightweight version of Linux to make an old laptop usable. I got surprisingly good results installing ChromeOS Flex on my old Samsung Ultrabook (i7 from circa 2010). But after installing Debian 13 (I just went with Gnome desktop by default), and I am so impressed with just how amazing the experience is.

And what’s better, is gaming feels like a very first-class experience now too. A distro like Bazzite is pretty awesome, but I got equally good results just installing Steam, Lutris and Wine straight on Debian. There’s a few gotchas, like scaling issue with high DPI screen, and slightly more effort involved in installing some things, but on the whole it’s a fairly seamless and painless experience.

But like any change, it’ll take some time to get used to.