Frustrated with Windows? Try Linux Mint

I’ve been a Windows user ever since Windows 2.0/386, which to my knowledge was the first of the Microsoft Windows iterations to support preemptive multitasking. I know Windows 3.0 and later on Windows 3.1 were the versions that slowly began to take over the world, but I started a bit sooner with Windows 2.0/386. It was magnificent in that I could multi-task DOS and Windows applications and run them side by side. I had ̶d̶b̶a̶s̶e̶ Foxbase running in a DOS box in one window, the Borland C++ IDE compiling in another window, and Microsoft Excel on top of that.

Along my technical journey, I’ve daily driven (Unixware, OS/2, Ubuntu, Fedora, MacOS, Windows) and developed for (OS/2, Windows, Linux) many operating systems along the way, but whatever their merits might be, subjectively speaking, something always made me keep a Windows build handy, despite there being some impressive operating systems along the way (I’m looking at you OS/2 Warp; I heart thee).

Well folks, I’m having an affair with Linux Mint, and it feels like it’s going to last. I’m running the Cinnamon desktop version of Linux Mint, and Windows users will feel right at home. It is certainly not a clone of Windows in any way (and I wouldn’t want it to be), but it’s very intuitive.

What’s winning me over is how fast and crisp it is. I have it running on a decently capable system: an AMD Ryzen 5950x with 64GB of low-latency RAM. My Windows 11 machine is more powerful. It’s running an AMD Ryzen 7950X with faster DDR5–6000 RAM. The Linux…