Dual Boot Scoot Boogie – Part One
When Microsoft first announced their upcoming Recall feature, I was like yeah, nah. My immediate gut reaction was that this was a security nightmare, and it didn’t help that it came wrapped with the AI nonsense that shareholders are pushing to get greater returns from a moribund industry. Microsoft quickly paused the rollout to make it more appealing, but there was no question that they were going to release some version of this thing along with their bullshit AI, so I began thinking it was time to look at alternatives.
Granted, Microsoft and every other member of the tech oligopoly has collected information for at least the last 30 years, but there’s something about what’s happening now that crossed my own personal Rubicon. Maybe it’s the obnoxiousness inherent with the AI push. But it’s more than that, I think. It’s the culmination of turning everything into a subscription, putting ads everywhere, and increasing the cost of services without providing much in return. Topping off this shit sundae with an inherent security risk in a world where leaks are so common that I’ve probably banked a lifetime of credit monitoring, while the companies responsible for them face zero accountability, is a bridge too far.
I suppose the biggest difference is that it’s in my face now. All this stuff used to be in the background where I could barely see or even be aware of it. But now they’re rubbing my nose in it, asking whaddya gonna do about it while rifling through my wallet.
And I’m like, Okay Linux, where you at?
I did briefly consider buying a new Macbook. I had one awhile ago and I generally like the Apple ecosystem, but spending that kind of money for what’s essentially the same experience as 10 years ago isn’t all that appealing at this point.
It was Linux. It was always going to be Linux.
I haven’t messed with Linux in the desktop space in years. Back in the 2000s, I dicked around with Red Hat and Debian, and even rolled my own distro at one point. But the main problem was that it was janky and felt like it wasn’t quite ready for prime time. It was great if you wanted complete control over your operating system, but at a certain point you have to stop dicking around and start doing things, and that’s where it fell apart. It always felt like I was fighting the limitations of the available software and eventually, after hours of figuring out how to do something that was effortless in Windows for the umpteenth time, I threw in the towel.
But I’ve heard good things about where Linux is at these days and I looked at various distros to configure a dual-boot set-up. It also helps that contemporary Windows is pretty janky itself, so I guessed that it’d be an equivalent experience.
I quickly discovered that there are major differences in the distros that’ve developed over the last 20 years. After doing some Facebook Mom research, everything seems to have split into three major distro families: Ubuntu, Fedora, and Arch, with each using different software repositories, display managers, and varying levels of centralized control over the OS.
I was left thinking, Can I at least just do apt-get and still be good?
I settled on Linux Mint, which is by all accounts a stable and respected distro that people seem to like. One of my major requirements was that I didn’t want something that I was gonna have to dick around with. I’m not in my 20s anymore. I’m very aware of time and how I want to spend it, and my computer is a tool for accomplishing things, rather than an experimental machine. Mint looked like the one that would allow me to get up and running with the minimum amount of fuss, while still allowing me the ability to customize things if I felt like it.
In the next part, I’ll cover the process of configuring the PC to dual boot and my thoughts on using Linux Mint as a desktop alternative to Windows.
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♻️ Tech Cyborg