Something different – for several decades the personal computer has become a household product, similar to a television or telephone, if not a replacement of those. And, there has been little change in how those tools or entertainment devices run. Windows, Apple and Android made those devices do what they do.
Computers and other things also can be run using other operating systems, such as Linux. Long taunted as the replacement for Windows, it never has been. As hard as Windows is to most people to understand, Linux was beyond comprehension. A goal some Linux teams, there are different flavors of Linux, was to create that Windows replacement. Many of the issues were from all the patents that Microsoft, Apple and other companies had on software and hardware. Many of the issues were from how Linux functions.
Those teams working on being a Windows replacement kept to the task, year after year. The last four or five years started to yield results. Installing and maintaining became easier, no need to understand how the operating system works. The issue of lack of ways to make the computers work, drivers, is being closer to being resolved. More software programs are designed for Linux.
This week I installed the latest Linux Mint and am happy to say that for many people a replacement for Windows is now here. No need for fiddly The office applications function without strange issues. Speed is very good. You can run MS Office on the web, not installed on the computer though. MS has some applications for Linux. The installed office programs are very good as a replacement. Everything is free too.
The reason I installed Linux on a laptop is the computer suffered a cup of coffee causing some damage to the screen. It came with Windows 7 then updated to Windows 10. It could never be a Windows 11 machine. Once I realized how damaged the machine was I decided to turn it into a Linux computer. That was in 2016. Since then I have put different versions of Linux on it. No version was a replacement for Windows, until now. Linux Mint Cinnamon does work very good. If you have an old laptop you can install Linux and it will be usable for school or home or working on websites.