About 10 years ago I swapped my home computers to Linux. My first go was with Ubuntu which worked well. It was a big learning curve as I had only ever used Windows products.
After about a year I found Linux Mint. This is built on Ubuntu but has a much friendlier layout and it looks a bit more like Windows. It has a “start” button in the bottom left hand corner and everything flows from that.
So for the last 9 years I have been using Linux Mint on my laptop. I use this for all of my preaching preparation and for building and maintaining my websites. It has worked really well. So much so that I installed it on my new refurbished laptop I bought this week!
One of the things I was concerned about when I switched over to Linux was how would I replace my programmes I used. In a short time I realised Linux Mint comes with many products similar to what I already used.
For Microsoft Office programmes like Word, Excel and Powerpoint you have Libre Office already included. It opens all the Microsoft programmes and you can save them as .doc, .xls or .ppt after editing. They even have a built in PDF creator which is handy.
For surfing the web it comes with Mozilla Firefox included. For email it has Mozilla Thunderbird. Both of these are preinstalled and easy to use. For website building and maintenance you can install Mozilla SeaMonkey for free.
Another cool feature of Linux Mint is the “app store” called the software manager. This has over 30,000 of free apps for all your needs. I found I could replace all of my Windows based programmes from there and they cost me nothing. No more yearly fees for using products I already own!
Computer experts say that Linux is generally more secure than other operating systems. Mint has a built in firewall called UFW. UFW (Uncomplicated Firewall) is a user-friendly interface for managing firewall rules in Linux. You can also install ClamAV for free from the app store which takes care of viruses and malware.
One of the best features of Linux (apart from being free!) is that it does not have a lot of bloatware that slows down your system. It often brings an old computer back to life as the system requirements are much lower than other operating systems.
If you are interested you can visit the Linux Mint website here. Or if you want to watch an introduction video, I found this just now on YouTube.
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