Cool, lots to do before October I guess. Thanks for the input.

Well I knew there had to be one.

I’m not sure what flatpack means. The install is pretty bare bones. The only thing I use it for is literally surfing the web on a screen big enough for others to enjoy, including YouTube. That’s it.

I really don’t know what any of the settings are as I configured it years ago by researching in the web back then.

I know what you mean about learning for the first time. In fact that’s another complaint I have about Windows. They keep changing how things are done and dumbing it down each time. Instead of programs they are apps now. Which means sometimes there IS no File, Edit, etc at the top to change settings in programs. It also means when I read instructions for some company perhaps and they refer to the app, do they mean it’s only available on my phone or do they mean an app on my computer. Argh.

Man you guys are being so helpful and polite. Thank you so much. Really appreciate this.

Wow this was a lot of great information. Thank you so much.

I was hesitant to ask the question here but now I’m glad I did. I assumed my computer didn’t have the chip because a Windows check said it didn’t meet. I didn’t know it was something that could be enabled in firmware. If that’s not the case I’m glad there might be a work around too!

Thank you. This will be helpful if I go that way

Thank you. You’re mentioning if DaVinci is the kind of thing I was looking for. Would you say it’s as powerful as Vegas?

Thank you. All comments are welcome. And so far, no flames. Woohoo!

Actually the boot on the Linux box is fast it’s only loading the first YouTube video that’s a problem but it seems to be as problem whether I use Firefox or chromium.

That actually was the driver of the question because it’s been years since I last tried and wanted to know how much had changed. I am very much of the mindset of shedding this hated ball and chain but, yeah, not willing to give up things I strongly rely on.

As far as the connection goes I’m not saying it can’t stumble from time to time but the two issues I had with Linux in the past was that it simply wouldn’t connect AT ALL. And currently when I pull up the Linux box on the TV to exercise, I might as well go make a smoothie while I’m waiting for a video to load. This is only acceptable because I didn’t want to pay for an OS for that machine and I don’t use it often. After the initial video loads, it runs pretty much normally.

On my Windows machine everything loads pretty quickly under normal circumstances. I’m pretty satisfied.

Oh wow, wish I had known about libreoffice earlier. It’s fine for what I do but sometimes I pass files to other people with office products and the version open office saves in is pretty old.

Ok so tell me if I’m right here. It sounds like laptops are very difficult to switch to Linux but it is possible to buy one already set up. My laptop is an ancient hand me down from my sister that is at best 8 years old. So I’d actually be willing to buy a new one of those.

When I tried Linux before one of the things I liked a lot was that I could set up a dark theme for the OS and nearly every program I added took on the same dark theme. Friggin awesome. It also felt pretty snappy to me.

If I had my way, it definitely would not be a Windows clone. My biggest concern is with the learning curve and not really understanding how to fix some problems. I remember once getting hung up on trying to place a file in a folder and it just wouldn’t let me do it and it seemed to take a lifetime to find out it was a security measure and I should have been placing it somewhere else I actually had access to (or I guess using some kind of admin privilege or setting or something). It seemed like a silly thing to get hung up on.

Wow. Thank you for that information. It would be great if that were the case. It may be closer to three years old. If have to look at the receipts.

I’m really afraid it won’t work with the new windows either. Unless I maybe disconnect from the web and continue using 10 and have a new machine for 11. But that’s a pain and quite frankly what I’m trying to avoid.

I usually build a new computer every few years. I get real excited to buy new stuff and watch a bunch of videos and do a bunch of research on the latest stuff, spend a bunch of time doing cable management and maybe customizing stuff only to turn it on and remind myself that it’s just a computer and the user experience really isn’t much different than before. I would build a powerhouse only to have Windows stumble on something a simple as opening a new window. A friggin supercomputer will not open that window any faster for whatever reason. It seems like the only thing that improves is gaming capability, but frankly I don’t really run games that are that intensive.

Yeah, you’re right. That’s the way it was with the place I worked.

Well I did this a long time ago so I don’t really remember. Some guy had prepared a version that was chock full of stuff that Windows users would want. It was pretty cool but I think maybe too much.

I believe the second try was Ubuntu.

I have an old laptop I use as well. It has Windows 10 on it too. I don’t know what to do there either. I mean screw Microsoft for making people literally throw away perfectly good computers.

The only problem with that, is that I was hoping to use the same hardware, but that won’t be possible with Windows 11.

The main problems in having with Firefox are that more than once I’ve had problems accessing websites with it(mostly signing up for something) and that it will slow down when using YouTube. This requires me to shut down Firefox and restart it. I never had this problem with Brave. But people were seriously poo pooing brave so I switched. I don’t want to use Chrome. Someone suggested Mulvad( I think that’s what it was called) but I’m a taboholic and when I restart my browser I want it to pick up where I left off, but for security reasons it doesn’t do that.

Yeah, I read that this new windows thing was supposed to put 240M computers on the trash heap. I figured that that was a lot and maybe Microsoft would do something due to the outrage, but it hasn’t happened yet. I mean what are major corporations going to do? Replace every computer? I suppose they could and just pass the cost to the customer.

Thank you for that. I was thinking if I felt I had to stick with Windows, I would do my best to de-Windows it.

I hear you on the skills and I’ll put it this way. I’m not prepared to learn Russian to get the job done, but I AM willing to learn enough Russian to order off the menu if you know what I mean.

Thank you.

Thank you.