Ditching Windows-Wish I had made the leap long before now

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I have wanted to ditch Windows for a couple of years now. I tried a few Linux distro last year but something always went wrong on the install (my fault, of course), so I would scurry back to Windows 10 in a panic.

After losing all of my bookmarks and documents several times over the last year I finally had had enough. Yesterday I erased Windows and installed Ubuntu. But I found it a bit cumbersome so this morning I watched YouTube videos on various Linux distros and chose Zorin16.

I've been using it for the last 5 hours and totally love it! The only tiny little thing that bugged me was having to use the right mouse button and click "OPEN" to access files. So I came here and searched the archives for single-click and the answer popped-up immediately.

Windows is in the trash bin by the curb and I'm lovin' Zorin!

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Congrats on making the switch to Zorin and welcome to the forum! There's a lot of great folks here who lend a lot of time and effort should you run into any more issues.

Just a mere 5 hours and you were sold huh? hahah that's great! Kudos on doing your research to see what else is out there. See you around!

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Welcome to Zorin OS 16!

I liked reading your story about how you gave Windows a kick to the curb. When I switched, I sent Windows, out of my window. Quite literally, Win-7 disk flew out the Window like a frisby, landed in neighbors yard, ran overed by the lawn mower.

Ya, I never did get onboard with that Win10 telemetry spying. Better living when your computer does what you want, not what some greedy evil company wants.

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I spot a small contradiction in terms, here. :wink:

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Lets put it this way...

Just knowing that you were doing banking under Microsoft scares me. This means Microsoft has data on your used to be confidential financing and banking information, that is no longer confidential. :flushed:

Is Zorin really that secure?

Oh heck yes it is! Your not being data mined under Zorin OS, Zorin is not stealing your data and selling it to the highest bidder. Nor is Zorin spying on your activities to send them to authorities as soon as you downloaded music, that they assume you got illegally.

Notice how your system is running faster on Zorin OS? Notice how your fans are not spinning up all the time? Thats because your not being data mined.

But as soon as you return to Windows 10, all the sudden your computer is getting hotter on thermals, the fans are spinning constantly, and Microsoft is watching everything that you do.

Ohhhhhhh, and another thing, if you have a mic or webcam enabled, especially if you are using the famous Cortona? Well, Microsoft is also listening and watching everything that you do, all the time, 24/7.

Back in the old days, if I talked like this, you could easily call me a cook, or a conspiracy theorist. But, do some research on what Microsoft does with your OS, don't just take my word for it. And you will find that everything I have said is true.

And the new Windows11, its gonna be even worse with the spying, all the way down to taking control of your PC from their end if they want to.

Is Zorin safer? Install Stacer, load it up, look at your processes, look at what runs, look at the overall computer usage after the loading up of Stacer begins normalizing. Ya, its safer.

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Oh man, I was over viewing the messages and accidentally deleted mine. Don't know how to put the text back. really sorry for this.

But I have to say that -- having a smooth running computer doesn't mean its safe. For example I'm running Mxlinux on a less powerful machine because it cant handle Zorin or Windows, and yes I have tried Zorinlite. But I think its because I was so used to Windows (never used or touched a Mac). And now since i discovered Linux especially since Zorin15, I haven't made the real big step to abandon windows totally, and perhaps It wont happen, because of Wine which can't handle recent games. But I can relate to what you're saying, using my phone for mail and banking can also have security issues (receiving its update almost every month). I use Zorin mainly for entertainment/graphics, internet surfing and download. Its not totally a contradiction because I have tried so many other Ubuntu derivatives because I was fed up with Windows I mean installing an application in Linux works so much easier and direct. And you said i already listening to the fan spinning is almost like a plane landing in my living room.

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Which is the reason why I don't do Wine gaming. Like most gamers today, I use Steam, and Steam has Steamplay Proton, which makes Windows games playable on Linux. The only time that hasn't seemed to work, is on games which have DRM attached. (Digital Rights Management)

Most of the games that I have are actually playable on Linux, except the stuff that is DRM attached. But additionally, I'd like to say that there are a bunch of games that are made to run on Linux natively as well.

I can certainly understand if you don't wish re-buy the games you own on Steam. Cause I know that if you are using Wine, that means you are trying to install games off of disk. But like I said, many of those games are able to purchase on Steam, and if they are super old games, they cost next to nothing.

I will say this in regards to the gaming scene in general. I don't like where gaming is going in our society. There was a time when a game cost 30 to 60 bucks new, then cost next to nothing a few years later. Now days, games are costing between 60 dollars to 100 dollars new.

And even if a game gets 5-years old, it still costs as much as a new game. Some people claim that its to make sure that developers get paid, but you and I both know that gaming developers don't get paid squat, cause the big company they work for takes all the funds.

And you know a gaming company who acts just like MS? EA! Yep, greed is the motivation of the gaming scene now days, just a darn shame, it really is. I miss the old days. lol

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Lutris has runners that implement proton as well. I have issues with some game to add in steam, in lutris they work just fine. I think it is because i added it as none steam game i don't know. But so far lutris does most of the job for me.

lutris-fshack

Same as lutris, but includes fshack, a software implementation of monitor modesetting (resolution changing), ported over from Proton. With it, your whole monitor will no longer modeset to a lower resolution if the game requests it, instead Wine itself will do it and only do it for the game itself. It may also improve fullscreen behavior for games that run in your native resolution, but results may vary from game to game. Additionally, due to fshack being quite big and modifying a lot of components, some fixes and patches that are used in normal lutris aren't compatible with it and thus missing.

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"Missing the old days" lol, you sound like a dinosaur behind an advanced computer.

That greed is with almost everything not just gaming. Reading about Windows 11 and requirements will make everybody go shopping for a better an newer machine, and perhaps if we reach something like Zorin50 or so we will also have to swap our computer for a better one.

But back to Zorin16, are you using the Evolution email app?

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This new generation of kids today would consider me a dinosaur, thats the funny thing about it lol!

No, I don't use the Evolution email app, never have.

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I also am ditching windows. I am 75 years old so I had to laugh about the comments of missing the good old days. I worked in industry for about 25 years working on CNC machine tools. I saw machines with lots of proprietary computers as well as some of the latest which ran on Windows NT. The older proprietary machines never crashed unless there was some kind of hardware failure. Couldn't say that about the Windows machines.
I tried several versions of Linux about 7 or 8 years ago. I settled on Fedora and used it for a few months. I found I just couldn't get some of the programs I needed so went back to Windows.
I decided again a few months ago to try Linux again. I found Zorin 15 and gave it a try. I was pleasantly surprised to find that almost any kind of program I want is now available on Linux. So I installed it on my desktop with the option to dual boot into Windows just in case I find something I can't do with Zorin.
Since that was so successful I have now installed Zorin 16 on my laptop and really am impressed with how well that works. I also installed it as dual boot but eventually hope to be able to wipe out Windows completely.
I use Thunderbird as my email client because I have been using it for years on my laptop. It was pretty easy to setup for Linux. Seems to work great on Zorin 15 and 16.

Carroll

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Why did my above reply spread out so wide you have to scroll from side to side to see it?

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I fixed it for you. You may reference markdown language for web use, but the short answer is because your paragraph began with an indent (tab).

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Thanks! I'll try to remember that.

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Same, since the above just taught me how to do something I previously did not know how to do.:wink:

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In school English class, one of the first things they teach you, is to always indent the beginning of your paragraphs. That technique is mainly for writing letters, but can be found used on important documents as well.

When I started writing reviews for Epinions back in the day, I learned that was not proper, and I got corrected on proper review etiquette. Since then, I learned that pretty much everything you type on the internet, doesn't need the indent. lol

And now that I have lived in the real world for many years, I look back at some of the BS we were taught in school, laugh, and say whatever lol. You look at many kids today, they don't even form a full sentence, thats how much they rebel against English class lol.

But yeah, apparently, with this forum software, it don't appreciate the indents either lol.

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