I've been dual booting Windows 10 and Zorin Linux for several months now. As Microsoft's impending support cutoff for unsupported hardware looms, I've worked on adapting to Linux as a daily driver again. My last run was back around 2008. Before that, I was using Red Hat on an old desktop PC to self host the USL website in 2003. And before that I was using Mandrake Linux around the turn of the century. I've been using Ubuntu for my home file server for over 15 years, but Windows has been my day-to-day OS since Windows XP.

But Windows 11 has changed that. I can't afford to upgrade all my home machines. And I don't feel like messing around with here today, gone tomorrow workarounds to get what feels to me like an AI/Spyware/Bloatware/Adware delivery platform than an OS installed on hardware that just meets minimum system requirements.

So I turned back to Linux. Why did I pick Zorin? It looked clean, it's based on Ubuntu which I've been using peripherally for some time, and the desktop is Gnome based - which again I'm used to. The distro choices today are honestly rather overwhelming.

"But how has the experience been?" you might be asking.

Well in a word, fine. And that's a good thing. I like that the OS stays out of my way for the most part. It just works. have there been hiccups? Sure, it's Linux. I've never not had hiccups with Linux, but overall it's been mostly minor stuff. It used to be be deal breaking stuff like fundamental driver support. Thankfully, I don't play many games, but what I do play is usually old stuff like Diablo II, but I've found ways to get that going through Lutris. My battery life is better, my cooling fan rarely spins up to audible levels, and so far software installs have been painless. And the software itself has been good enough for what I want to do.

It's been good enough that I find myself thinking "Linux is pretty good, even good enough for most people." And I've seen that sentiment for many years, usually expressed as "Is [insert year here] the year of the Linux desktop?". And the answer I've come to is sure. maybe. kinda. but probably not.

I read Why Linux is not ready for the desktop, the final edition by Artem S. Tashkinov via Hackaday and it outlines the potential issues pretty well. The gist of the article is that it isn't, at least not from the everyday user standpoint, and I largely agree. I think how often I've had to turn to the terminal and goofing around with config menus to get certain things working. Mostly running old Windows software. I've been able to get most things running in Wine, or by implementing a Windows XP VM in VirtualBox. And I think how possible it would be for the average person to set that up? Answer, not likely. But then I also think, would the average person be in the position where they would need to implement those kinds of workarounds? Answer, again, not likely. For example, I use 20 year old Coreldraw 12 to run an old k40 CO2 laser in the workshop. And I wanted to run Diablo II from my original install CDs, not buy a new version like Diablo II Resurrected. I still use an iPod that needs iTunes to sync music.

But for every other day-to-day task, Linux has been entirely sufficient, and with no ads, no AI services, and no un-opt-outable telemetry. I think the users that will have the most problems are old nerds like myself that have 25 years of software and data baggage they want to drag kicking and screaming into the 21st century, gamers, and hardware nerds that want support for bleeding edge devices and graphics modes.