Well, 99.9 % of the supercomputers in the world run some form of Linux (probably extremely customized). Not exactly a poor man's computer Yes, I agree that Win 7 is a great product. Maybe MS's best along with XP.
Maybe the distro-version of Firefox is older and you could use the latest version? Chrome / Chromium (open source) is also widely supported and pretty fast (though not as slim as before) in case you encounter corner cases on Opera. Having Linux on a laptop is a bit more work and can be a bit daunting/slower/buggy as you need more advanced features like power management, wifi etc. working correctly all the time. I run Ubuntu with XCFE on a stationary with 64GB RAM (will be Mint next time), so have less issues. We do use Linux on laptops for TV/browsing-usage as well. Using Suspend at night and have session already running/waiting for next usage, so resuming usage is quick. Hibernate (write to disk) sometimes crashes for me unfortunately, and is a feature you need to enable manually, but have used it to save my running sessions from ie. planned electric outages. The advantage over several years now has been that my setup, once I've got it to work the way I need it, works stably without much need for much maintenance, random reboots, external interferences, obnoxious popups/indications or spying (hopefully). I try to keep current on security updates, especially for internet-using applications. On the occasional reboot/power outage, my computer auto-restarts, auto-logins, locks screen and starts everything I require to run again to boot. It works so well my wife doesn't want Windows anymore on new computers (her previous Windows was Vista! ). For when we purchase new laptop, she wants me to either buy with Linux or install Linux on Windows-free computer. Installing Linux on her laptop has extended its life for many years already, and wouldn't work with Windows since it needed a reinstall that just wouldn't work.
I'm looking to switch to Ubuntu soon on my main rig at home. This is because most of my development happens in .NET which used to be tied exclusively to Windows. Now that .NET is moving more and more cross platform with .NET Core and the .NET Standard library, one doesn't need to be developing with .NET on a Windows only machine. I'm just waiting for JetBrains Rider to become a little more mature for F# as I'm using it more along with C# (Visual Studio 2017 is still SO nice). The reason for this is that I dislike the telemetry reporting thing, the fact you can't end the Cortana service, and a few other gripes I have with Microsoft and Windows in general. Linux just seems like a stronger and more professional environment, where privacy is much better respected also. They're my current thoughts anyway!
I know you have "a few other gripes," but maybe this will help (I haven't gotten around to trying it yet.): Killing Cortana: How to disable Windows 10's info-hungry digital assistant https://www.pcworld.com/article/294...indows-10s-info-hungry-digital-assistant.html
Im sorry but that is just horseshit. My wife has a macbook pro and an iphone. My son has a macbook pro and an iphone. My two younger sons look like they might have been brainwashed into this apple world. In my house I am the last bastion of resistance against the apple curse. Apple for the creative arty farty leftist crowd, linux/windows for the rest. (Hope my wife doesn't read this )
Thanks for the info I'll have a look at this. I'm vigilant of the security and privacy settings and also use Spybot Anti-Beacon. Even then, they'll tell you there's still telemetry and data packets going back to Microsoft. I'm probably more towards the 'paranoid', but it's the principle of the matter. https://www.safer-networking.org/spybot-anti-beacon/
Name something that you can do on your Linux box (if you own one) and can’t do on your wife’s MacBook? Apple might be many bad things, but there are two things it does well - it works and it has a native version of MS office. Every Linux machine i has required fucking around with drivers, my laptops could never quite fall asleep properly and sound settings just sucked. Then there is software - I need Excel and don’t say Open Office because it sucks. Don’t even get me started with Windows - oh my God. It’s double that now that it comes with Win 10. So far my Mac experience has been as good as it gets. UI is uniform. It’s a proper *nix and the shell is a normal shell. Nothing magical, but then again I only expect reasonable functionality.
I'm an Apple fan and have used their machines for decades. However, I find that problems are harder to diagnose on Macs than on Win or Linux. When Apple products 'just work' they're fantastic, but when then don't, it can be an uphill slog. Also Apple hasn't always made it easy to self-upgrade hardware (but that's another discussion).
You're probably right about Macs. I've never used a Mac simply because I never needed to. Most of my technology choices are based on what I've used at work which is mostly Linux with some Windows thrown in for email, documentation etc.