I was a windows guy, like most everyone else. I got into computers in the late 1980's, and actually was part of a team that computerized a major corporation in the early 1990's. Of course this was still the "DOS" days, and I enjoyed DOS. We stayed with that through DOS 6.0 and Windows 3.1. Windows, though, wasn't my first GUI. In 1991 or 92 I played with IBM's OS2 operating system. We had built our first in house office network using OS2 on the file server and DOS on the workstations. It worked pretty good! Then came Windows 95, then 98, ME, 2000, NT, XP, Vista, (I'm still surprised I remember all these version names
). Due to the nature of my work I was married to Windows. It was required to run Rockwell software to program PLC's, and there was also other computer in my business that their programming software required Windows. I had heard of Linux at this point but I was also listening to un-knowledgeable naysayers. About the XP was getting slow (post Service Pak2), I started looking around, and actually tried Mint Cinnamon 13(?) I believe. I didn't put much effort into it and then, Windows 7 came out and they were using an "open market" way of developing the system. Of course I jumped on the band wagon, joined the "Beta Test Team" and became a fan. Windows 7 was a very good operating system for it's time, like NT and 2000. Then Win 8 came on the scene. I looked at it, tried it, said yuk and turned my back on it. Of course we all know the failures of Win 8/8.1 and that drove the development of Win 10. Of course most my friends were ready to take the plunge, they had their little white windows icon in the task bar and were ready for the release date, and it was free! That didn't smell right to me. At this point I had become a very jaded Windows user, so I chose to research Windows 10 development, and what I found out shocked me! The telemetry, the hidden switches, the right to steal your files, removing programs from your computer that weren't compatible, etc. I blocked Windows 10 from all my machines and went to Linux Mint and made Live DVD's of all their versions. It was Version 17.0 at the time. After testing them in a live environment I settled on Cinnamon again, and stuck with it. I've had very good luck too because I've had few problems and haven't had to learn as much as I should have at this point. I am now running Mint in a dual boot environment with Win 7 on 4 machines. Now that I'm retired I don't know how long I'll keep 7 on those computers. I don't use 7 except to update virus and malware software now, so it's probably going to get canned soon. I also don't update 7 because Microsoft has gone to rolling updates for 7 and 8. That means you can't select which updates you want, and they have slipped the telemetry crap from Win 10 into 7 and 8. I have always refused Microsoft drivers, I believe in manufacturer only drivers. I've seen far too many machines 8 balled in this forced update debacle.
So there you have my TLDR story of arriving at LINUX, and yes I AM a fan boy!
