I’ve been a lifelong ms admin, and always stuck to their desktop environments because they “just worked”. Often use Linux on containers, devices (handhelds, rpi etc) and webapp servers.
That win11 recall stuff though is a step too far. So I looked at which distro was likely to be easiest to use and just as you say - mint is the overwhelming consensus. And now it’s my daily driver. I needed to learn a few new tricks, but the mint forums are filled with windows refugees so finding forum posts is easy (e.g. I thought had a problem with my “task bar” not my “panel” but since others called it the same thing I found what I was looking for).
My biggest reason for staying on windows was that I could search for something and almost always find an answer - that’s become worse over the years IMO (often get these useless forums posts when they’re basically advising the user to reinstall with five paragraphs of pasted/generated text). The mint forums are genuinely friendly and helpful, and searching them is as useful as searching for win stuff used to be.
I don’t know if “this is the year” but I can’t imagine I’m the only one who has had enough of the MS ecosystem. My experience has been great so far, and I hope there are others who give it a go.
I learned a really strange (yet rather obvious in hindsight) lesson a week or so ago. I recently deployed Apache Guacamole at work for webby access to an RDP box with MFA. We are dumping MS’s RDG because it is not very flexible and is really complicated. One of my younger members of staff uses it whilst in the office and are almost pathetically grateful for me setting up the Guacamole thing 8) (WTF).
She’s an Apple aficionado. She can now use her Apple thingie as St Jobs intended and also connect to work stuff, which is largely Windows and Linux based but the Linux stuff is abstracted away to the browser.
The key point is that she considers herself as an Apple person for want of a better word and can be an Apple whilst using our corp MS and Linux gear and it appears to her that it is all integrated.
I’m 53 years old and have been doing IT for around 30 years. We really have to get to grips with how people think and work.
I’ve been a lifelong ms admin, and always stuck to their desktop environments because they “just worked”. Often use Linux on containers, devices (handhelds, rpi etc) and webapp servers.
That win11 recall stuff though is a step too far. So I looked at which distro was likely to be easiest to use and just as you say - mint is the overwhelming consensus. And now it’s my daily driver. I needed to learn a few new tricks, but the mint forums are filled with windows refugees so finding forum posts is easy (e.g. I thought had a problem with my “task bar” not my “panel” but since others called it the same thing I found what I was looking for).
My biggest reason for staying on windows was that I could search for something and almost always find an answer - that’s become worse over the years IMO (often get these useless forums posts when they’re basically advising the user to reinstall with five paragraphs of pasted/generated text). The mint forums are genuinely friendly and helpful, and searching them is as useful as searching for win stuff used to be.
I don’t know if “this is the year” but I can’t imagine I’m the only one who has had enough of the MS ecosystem. My experience has been great so far, and I hope there are others who give it a go.
Good for you.
I learned a really strange (yet rather obvious in hindsight) lesson a week or so ago. I recently deployed Apache Guacamole at work for webby access to an RDP box with MFA. We are dumping MS’s RDG because it is not very flexible and is really complicated. One of my younger members of staff uses it whilst in the office and are almost pathetically grateful for me setting up the Guacamole thing 8) (WTF).
She’s an Apple aficionado. She can now use her Apple thingie as St Jobs intended and also connect to work stuff, which is largely Windows and Linux based but the Linux stuff is abstracted away to the browser.
The key point is that she considers herself as an Apple person for want of a better word and can be an Apple whilst using our corp MS and Linux gear and it appears to her that it is all integrated.
I’m 53 years old and have been doing IT for around 30 years. We really have to get to grips with how people think and work.