[Coco] OT: Upgrade to Windows 10? -- Upgrade to Linux?

[Francis Swygert]

Gene, at this time I am trying to learn more about Linux so that i can use it seriously. I feel as though I am at the level where I can power up, login, browse Internet, and shutdown, but I want to go much farther. I think it is important to know Linux, and to know it well. But this is a Windows world. Many use Windows, for better or worse, for the simple fact that this is where the money is. I am trying to change that by looking for employment and projects that are more Linux centric, but once someone has been in a specific field for most of their career, it is hard to convince anyone that they can do anything other than that. If you can perform all your activities off the Windows grid then fantastic! Unfortunately, this is not the case for many of us. The biggest problem I have with Linux is that I can't find a way to determine which of the many (many) distros there are out there is best suited for my needs.
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Regards, Salvador
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Actually, you probably CAN perform 85-90% of what you do in Windows with Linux. The most USER friendly, ready to run Linux seems to be Mint. It's also one of the most popular. If you go to DistroWatch it's the first on their list of top 10 distros. There is a good description of it there. ZDNet has it as number one also:The most popular Linux is... | ZDNet

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| The most popular Linux is... | ZDNetNo it's not Fedora, openSUSE, or even Ubuntu. It's Linux Mint. |
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| View on www.zdnet.com | Preview by Yahoo |
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I'm running Mint on one machine, though I haven't been using it much lately -- my wife's laptop is Win 10 and I find myself using it mostly since we have been together almost two years now. Mostly from convenience, not choice. She's not real tech savvy, and uses Windows at work, so I'm stuck there, but don't mind. I found no issues going between Mint and Windows, I switch between them all the time now. I did purchase codeWeavers "Crossover" product. It runs many Windows applications under Linux. It's a commercial version of WINE. The main advantage is that Crossover makes installing Windows apps much easier, and managing them. It's not necessary -- WINE is free and works the same, but I like the Crossover interface and user interactivity. I'm not a programmer and don't care if I never use the Linux terminal or command line (I have had to to make some minor tweaks, but do so following published instructions, not on my own!). Sounds like you want to learn Linux from the command line, which is fine -- I'd say required for a programmer/developer. I would think it would be nice to have an easy to use stable system that just works to learn from though, and Mint is that. Install then hit the terminal and learn from the command line as you would OS-9 on a CoCo3. 
 Frank Swygert
 Fix-It-Frank Handyman Service
 803-604-6548