This is something I plan to research a lot as I really don't want to "upgrade" beyond Win 7 Pro.
[[This is something I plan to research a lot as I really don’t want to “upgrade” beyond Win 7 Pro. ]]
I don’t blame you- When i learned what windows 10 was all about- I said “Nope- not gonna happen’ and decided to dual boot with linux as my main online OS and windows 7 as my offline os for windows only programs such as photoshop and games- I’ve been very happy with my decision- windows 10 will have to do a lot of revamping before I’ll consider going back to windows only- p-lus i enjoy the fact that linux is much much less vulnerable to viruses- though not totally immune- and it’s quick and very stable- windows seems to really work my computer- linux runs almost silently- and cooler as well-
Watch some youtube vids of linux mint- it really is a nice os-
I find Mint to be a bit bloated. Won’t run as fast on our thinkpads as ubuntu variants. Mint is based on debian AND ubuntu which might be why it ran slower for me. It looks nice though.
There’s a bunch of flavors of ubuntu, Lubuntu, xubuntu, kubuntu, edubuntu.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions#Ubuntu-based
My favorite has become ubtuntu studio. Even though I don’t use all the bundled software(you can choose which ones you want and create a build so to speak), it runs in low-latency mode and it’s a rare thing to make it freeze. I’ve used video editing software on this business laptop and never could before until ubuntu studio.
And you can make ubuntu(and probably mint) look like windows(or mac) using a theme.
https://duckduckgo.com/how+to+make+ubuntu+look+like+windows&ia=web
About the only time you have to use the terminal - command line, is when you want to add a software repository to get a program not listed in the regular ubuntu repositories or once in a while, compile a program from source code but the regular ubuntu repositories have pretty much any program a regular user would need. I just like trying out alternatives. That and you can do some neat things from the terminal. For example, there’s an image editing program called imagemagick that will do amazing things but is command line only. It was built to work on web servers. It’s strange working with images without actually seeing them but it works and is fast. A GUI(graphic user interface) is what takes up a lot of processing power. A program can work much more efficiently without having to draw the GUI on the screen for us to see.
For one or two images, I just use gimp(like photoshop) but for bulk processes, I use imagemagick. It can edit 100 images in a folder in seconds.
I do have a few programs I use that are available for windows only so I have the dual boot setup. I don’t surf on windows so I have updates turned off because I’m not worried about security since windows isn’t connected to any network, local or internet. I have wifi and hard wire networking turned off in windows as well so it can’t connect. Win 7 Pro service pack 2 is what I run for windows. Best there ever was imho.
I haven’t paid a dime for software in years. No virus or malware/adware in that same time. Most of the time, those things came from some free program. You get what you pay for and pay for what you get with microsoft.