By Andy Valencia
This article was going to be about saving money when you need to buy a PC. I’ll write about that next month, because it’s hard to save money when your operating system is waging war on your pocket book. We need to talk about Microsoft Windows.
Most people do need a connection to email, messaging, something to play music, watch some videos, and work with electronic documents. You’ll need an OS, a web browser, maybe a media player (Spotify or YouTube in the browser often suffices), and an office suite with word processor, spreadsheet, and maybe something to do slides. It all needs to work reliably – no crashes, but also every single time you sit down at the PC, it’s ready to go.
I was amazed when I recently saw a friend’s PC with Windows 11. That home screen is a garish, distracting nightmare. Are those ads being pushed? If AI is so great, why do they need to force it upon you? And everybody has the story of having to go away when an update suddenly starts. Whose PC is it?
To add insult to injury, lots of people had to buy a new PC – Windows 11 refuses to install on many older PC’s. Better yet, some people got Windows 11 installed, only later to have an update run, and then announce that their PC was now unsupported. If this happened to you, keep that hardware until you read next month’s column.
Enter Linux. Yes, the OS that powers most of the services you use in the world: web servers, the cell network, even those machines using all that electricity to do AI things for you. Linux is free – as in beer – and lets us software types look at how it works. It is remarkably reliable.
But what’s it like on a humble home PC? Its past reputation is that it’s powerful, but not user-friendly.
A picture is worth a thousand words, and a demo video is better yet. This video from the Linux Mint project shows how far Linux has come as a perfectly usable desktop OS: “Why Linux Mint Is The Ultimate Windows 11 Replacement in 2026:” https://vashonloop.com/goto/mint
Of course there’s a web browser. You can keep using Chrome, but Firefox lets you use the “uBlock Origin” ad blocker. It has had more and more trouble supporting Chrome, make of that what you will. Try Firefox with the full uBlock Origin, and you’ll wonder why you ever lived without it. Many people install both Chrome and Firefox, then figure out which one is best for which task. I know one person who runs Chrome for banking, and Firefox for everything else.
Linux has a comprehensive office suite – LibreOffice. It has a word processor, Writer, that most long-time Word users say is more familiar than what Microsoft has done to their own product. Take a look at this demo video: https://vashonloop.com/goto/writer
Sheet is LibreOffice’s counterpart to Excel, and Impress is their slide show editor/presenter. Like Writer, they’ll be familiar to a Microsoft user, and they can even import your current Word/Excel/PowerPoint documents.
For graphics, GIMP is a very powerful editor – all the images you see here on the pages of the Loop are cleaned up, cropped, and scaled using GIMP. You might find it overkill, so of course there are simpler alternatives. Many people are happy with MyPaint.
Try one, or try them all. Install them, and use them. If you don’t like the app, uninstall it, then go look for another. Your cost to install? Free. Your cost to keep it or update it? Also free. That’s true of the OS itself, as well.
Ready to try Linux? There’s a how-to on YouTube. If you’re not quite ready to try it yourself, every family seems to have that go-to tech person. Let them take a look:
“How to Install Linux Mint – Complete Beginner’s Guide … – YouTube:” https://vashonloop.com/goto/install
Vashon Fix-It hosts “repair cafes” where people who know how to do simple repairs on tools help their fellow Islanders. Maybe something like this could help people get their old PC switched over and running with a shiny new Linux install? There could even be a few PC’s at the meetup to let people try it before making a decision. If something like this comes together, you’ll see it here in The Loop.
As inflation bites harder and our taxes take more and more, many people are beginning to question $150 t-shirts, $18 pastries – and let’s just not get started on gas prices. Software people around the world have been laboring for years to create free, affordable, and reliable software options for the average user. Maybe it’s time to let them help you.
