Sick to the back teeth of Microsoft. Are other OS's viable?

[Fermit]

Pretty much as the title says. I've not liked the way they do things for a long time now. The way they perpetually force you by the hand to get you to use their programs etc. An example. Recently I required a fresh Windows install, due to the motherboard on my laptop being corrupted (I think that's the correct term?) The time I spent trying to avoid having Bing shoved on me, to be my default search engine took more time than re-setting up everything else. Even then, the laptop doesn't allow me to remove the program all together. Another. Using Open Office to try and avoid using MS's equivalants, then when attempt I save it defaults to save as something or other MS, with no idea how to work around this.

I also am getting constantly annoyed at how long it takes to simply get in to applications etc. An EG, from this morning. My wife and I have spent literally over an hour trying to get in to my Outlook account. Messages along the lines of 'there is no account associated with this address' even though it is up and running on my phone! Also, you can't reset your own password, because password reset isn't set up properly for your organisation. You must contact your administrator. Odd, I thought last time we had things done with our Outlook we became admin, after some ahole held our old slightly different address to ransom.

The long and the short, are there any other OS's such as Linux or Ubunto which are viable for day to day use? For reference, the main uses are internet browsing, emails, and using programs along the line of Excel and Word. Also, requiring these to work smoothly with such bolt ons like anti-virus, Adobe and paint style programs.

Someone please help, before I send an envelope stuffed full of anthrax to Bill Gates home address (a joke, of course, I'd prefer my mug not to be making headlines around the world!)

[mmm-five]

MacBook Air

https://www.apple.com/uk/shop/product/FGN63B/A/ref...

But whatever you choose, I wouldn't recommend installing any aftermarket AV/security/privacy package over the W11 built-in offering, as they seem to be getting dodgier & dodgier every year.

Edited by mmm-five on Friday 23 February 11:38

[ARHarh]

All the apple fans are going to MAC all day long but you will end up with very similar issues with that as you have with windows. Any commercial product is going to steer you towards their subscription services and over the next few years this is likely to get a lot worse.

Linux is the obvious answer, but if you are not confident with the command line anything more than email, web or office could prove an issue.

Try a live version of Linux Mint, you can run it from a usb stick to try it out.

https://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.i...

[Fermit]

ARHarh said:

All the apple fans are going to MAC all day long but you will end up with very similar issues with that as you have with windows. Any commercial product is going to steer you towards their subscription services and over the next few years this is likely to get a lot worse.

Linux is the obvious answer, but if you are not confident with the command line anything more than email, web or office could prove an issue.

Try a live version of Linux Mint, you can run it from a usb stick to try it out.

https://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.i...

The bit highlighted blue could be the first thing to try, cheers. Email, web and Office type programs are all I really use the laptop to. Except for Candy Crush when I want something to kill time (sad, yes I know)

[Shiv_P]

Once setup properly W11 is really quite good now. You can get O365 activated using ahem, circumvention methods very very easily, which gives you full access to O365 suite inc excel, word, outlook etc...

[MustangGT]

Fermit said:

Pretty much as the title says. I've not liked the way they do things for a long time now. The way they perpetually force you by the hand to get you to use their programs etc. An example. Recently I required a fresh Windows install, due to the motherboard on my laptop being corrupted (I think that's the correct term?) The time I spent trying to avoid having Bing shoved on me, to be my default search engine took more time than re-setting up everything else. Even then, the laptop doesn't allow me to remove the program all together. Another. Using Open Office to try and avoid using MS's equivalants, then when attempt I save it defaults to save as something or other MS, with no idea how to work around this.

I also am getting constantly annoyed at how long it takes to simply get in to applications etc. An EG, from this morning. My wife and I have spent literally over an hour trying to get in to my Outlook account. Messages along the lines of 'there is no account associated with this address' even though it is up and running on my phone! Also, you can't reset your own password, because password reset isn't set up properly for your organisation. You must contact your administrator. Odd, I thought last time we had things done with our Outlook we became admin, after some ahole held our old slightly different address to ransom.

The long and the short, are there any other OS's such as Linux or Ubunto which are viable for day to day use? For reference, the main uses are internet browsing, emails, and using programs along the line of Excel and Word. Also, requiring these to work smoothly with such bolt ons like anti-virus, Adobe and paint style programs.

Someone please help, before I send an envelope stuffed full of anthrax to Bill Gates home address (a joke, of course, I'd prefer my mug not to be making headlines around the world!)

I use OpenOffice, the default save setting is .ods for a spreadsheet and .odt for a document. Just select that the first time round and it will then stay with this.

[camel_landy]

Another MacOS vote from me. Currently typing on a PowerBook M1 Pro. I run LibreOffice and Thunderbird for email.

FWIW - I have to use multiple OSs daily (Debian, Windows, RHEL, CentOS, etc...) but my OS of choice is MacOS - It just works.

M

[Fermit]

Shiv_P said:

Once setup properly W11 is really quite good now. You can get O365 activated using ahem, circumvention methods very very easily, which gives you full access to O365 suite inc excel, word, outlook etc...

Handy to know Shiv. Any chance you could PM me RE this? You will get an out of office reply, but I will have still received it. @Mustang GT, very handy to know, cheers!

@ Apple suggestions. I'm sure they are good, and I (on the face of it) prefer the way Apple do things. The thing is though, when I buy new machines (and this one isn't particularly old) I look at around the £600 mark, I guess maybe half of what you'd need to spend to get a Mac? Unless, for when the time arises, you have any suggestions around which OS Macs are the ones to look for etc, to allow a second hand purchase.

[C5_Steve]

Based on your usage, have you considered a Chrome book? Google's own free versions of Word/Excel etc I found to be just a useful as MS right up until you start getting into massive spreadsheets where MS is slightly more powerful but other than that it was perfectly adequate and in some cases, better.

[Shaoxter]

When I do a fresh install of Windows it takes all of 30s to download Chrome and set it as the default browser, not sure what you're doing wrong. Office 365 also includes 1TB of cloud storage which you can maybe use to justify the subscription cost.

MacOS is total wk, tried to create a USB boot drive recently and it took half a day of reading guides and using terminal commands. Not intuitive at all.

[Fermit]

C5_Steve said:

Based on your usage, have you considered a Chrome book? Google's own free versions of Word/Excel etc I found to be just a useful as MS right up until you start getting into massive spreadsheets where MS is slightly more powerful but other than that it was perfectly adequate and in some cases, better.

I would, but for now the laptop I have still has plenty life left in it, hence considering an OS change. Cheers all the same though!

[simon_harris]

Shaoxter said:

When I do a fresh install of Windows it takes all of 30s to download Chrome and set it as the default browser, not sure what you're doing wrong. Office 365 also includes 1TB of cloud storage which you can maybe use to justify the subscription cost.

MacOS is total wk, tried to create a USB boot drive recently and it took half a day of reading guides and using terminal commands. Not intuitive at all.

isn't the running joke that edge is only ever used to download chrome?

[JimbobVFR]

Fermit said:

I would, but for now the laptop I have still has plenty life left in it, hence considering an OS change. Cheers all the same though!

You could give ChromeOS Flex a go
https://chromeenterprise.google/intl/en_uk/os/chro...

Unlike a proper Chromebook it doesn't have the ability to run Android apps but TBH I've not found that essential, more of a nice to have.

Like most flavours of Linux or similar operating systems it can be run from a USB stick to try it before installing.

[C5_Steve]

Fermit said:

I would, but for now the laptop I have still has plenty life left in it, hence considering an OS change. Cheers all the same though!

Sorry I missed that part, however, you know you can install Chrome as the OS on any laptop right? It's very useful for doing this with older hardware as it extends the life significantly as it's less demanding (cloud-based) an OS and you'll see a massive improvement in boot/load speeds when running Chrome.

The version you can install on anything is now called Chrome OS Flex, have a look.

[mmm-five]

Shaoxter said:

When I do a fresh install of Windows it takes all of 30s to download Chrome and set it as the default browser, not sure what you're doing wrong. Office 365 also includes 1TB of cloud storage which you can maybe use to justify the subscription cost.

MacOS is total wk, tried to create a USB boot drive recently and it took half a day of reading guides and using terminal commands. Not intuitive at all.

Was it the 'createinstallmedia' command that flummoxed you?

It just took me 10 seconds to google it and read what I had to do...
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/101578

[grumbledoak]

OP,
almost anything can surf the web now.
this basically comes down to how important is Office to you.

If you don't mind re-training on "compatible" (ish) Office products, then you can switch and there are several choices.
If you are a power Microsoft Office user, suck it up.

[Shaoxter]

mmm-five said:

Shaoxter said:

When I do a fresh install of Windows it takes all of 30s to download Chrome and set it as the default browser, not sure what you're doing wrong. Office 365 also includes 1TB of cloud storage which you can maybe use to justify the subscription cost.

MacOS is total wk, tried to create a USB boot drive recently and it took half a day of reading guides and using terminal commands. Not intuitive at all.

Was it the 'createinstallmedia' command that flummoxed you?

It just took me 10 seconds to google it and read what I had to do...
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/101578

That's the one I followed. Maybe you should try it and report back if it really was that easy.
Of course it wouldn't have been an issue if Apple hadn't shut off their recovery servers for the older OSs, and why do you even need to connect to the internet to wipe clean an old laptop anyway.

[Whataguy]

Fermit said:

The long and the short, are there any other OS's such as Linux or Ubunto which are viable for day to day use? For reference, the main uses are internet browsing, emails, and using programs along the line of Excel and Word. Also, requiring these to work smoothly with such bolt ons like anti-virus, Adobe and paint style programs.

Yes, I was a lifetime PC user until a couple of years ago, moved to Mac and would never go back.

Started off with a very old secondhand Mac that still ran the latest OS to try it out. Ran it alongside the windows laptop to compare them.

Once I'd discovered how easy it is to use then I bought a new one. I have similar use to you, with word and excel Mac versions but you don't even need those as the free ones that come with Mac OS are fine.

[camel_landy]

Whataguy said:

Fermit said:

The long and the short, are there any other OS's such as Linux or Ubunto which are viable for day to day use? For reference, the main uses are internet browsing, emails, and using programs along the line of Excel and Word. Also, requiring these to work smoothly with such bolt ons like anti-virus, Adobe and paint style programs.

Yes, I was a lifetime PC user until a couple of years ago, moved to Mac and would never go back.

Started off with a very old secondhand Mac that still ran the latest OS to try it out. Ran it alongside the windows laptop to compare them.

Once I'd discovered how easy it is to use then I bought a new one. I have similar use to you, with word and excel Mac versions but you don't even need those as the free ones that come with Mac OS are fine.

The biggest problem Windows users have, when migrating to a Mac is that they over think things... The OS simplifies a lot of tasks, which makes you question things un-necessarily, wondering how you managed to get things done with the minimal amount of fuss.

M

[Whataguy]

camel_landy said:

The biggest problem Windows users have, when migrating to a Mac is that they over think things... The OS simplifies a lot of tasks, which makes you question things un-necessarily, wondering how you managed to get things done with the minimal amount of fuss.

M

Yes, I've spent time initially trying to work out how to do something from windows - eventually finding it was really easy on Mac.

Even just simple things like copying some information from a pdf, on Mac it knows that's what you are likely to want to do and suggests it.

Mac OS saves so much time compared to windows, I wouldn't go back.