Hello all.

I have been lurking on lemmy.ml for a while and learning about the fediverse and recently decided to jump in. I wanted to come here to share my story on switching to linux, effectively switching my mindset in the process.

TL;DR: Around october 2025 I was going to update a system to windows 11 and opened a can of worms regarding the privacy eroding, invasive nature of it. Freaked me out for a while thanks to big techs horrible recommendation systems only making this worse but gradually learnt to escape its grasp. Learnt linux was the answer, learnt to research, aiding in escaping big techs control over me. Went with linux mint with full disk encryption, migrated to open source cross platform software on windows 10 to prepare, migrated my data. I am 90% of the way there and could not be happier with the results. Now all that remains is to convince friends and family members of the need to switch and to be confident enough in my capabilities to help. Oh, and I am a privacy advocate now.

I have recently made the switch from windows 10 to linux mint. It was around the time windows 10 support ended in october 2025 that I started looking into things.

I was looking to upgrade to windows 11 on an old system and began researching how to upgrade to windows 11 with a system that did not meet the required spec (inc tpm, cpu etc). Then I opened a can of worms. I started to learn about the privacy eroding, invasive nature of windows 11. I’ll be honest it freaked me out for a while. I struggled with it deeply. I could not believe how invasive windows had become in this new os. Youtube videos were freaking me out on this subject (thanks youtube recommendation system), and like I said, it really messed with my head.

I’d like to say at this point my journey, over time, my research led me outside of big techs grasp and I began to take back control of the content I consumed rather than being fed negative swill that kept me coming back for more out of terror. In hindsight, a terrible, addictive, negative habit that I formed. They damn well know what they are doing, to prey on the vulnerable just to make more money and I was victim to it.

Anyway, I started to learn about how linux was the way out of this thanks in part to the content creator https://odysee.com/@switchedtolinux:0. His videos did scare me at the time but they were also very helpful and informative. I finally found a good, reputable, reliable source of information whose aim was to help you regain your digital freedom. He was there to guide you from his own experience, especially his earlier videos discussing why you should consider switching. I highly recommend his content for those facing this situation and are looking for guidance. Switchedtolinux if you are reading this, thank you, you are a credit to society.

His recommendation was linux mint, so off I went to do some research. Again, at the start I was in the big tech bubble so there was much fear mongering, but I learnt over time to escape this, mainly fuelled to help maintain sanity as most content was negative screaming about how every inch of privacy will be lost, not in a decade, not in a year, nor month nor week but tomorrow. I’m sure you know the type of content.

But I eventually maintained composure and continued to look into linux mint. The more I read and watched the more appealing it became. I started to learn about open source, free as in freedom and the more I learnt the more I realised I had found something quite special. A digital life designed by the people for the people. I realised it was quite beautiful and wanted to be part of it.

It was around this time, due to the research, I started to exist outside of big techs control and started to research and control the content I was consuming. I went back to big tech to consume content such as youtube, but I had specifically done my research and come to the conclusion that I wanted to consume the content instead of just being fed it.

I decided to buy a new desktop computer however during that time I was unfortunately still under big techs influence, it was done in haste as it was around the time component prices started going through the roof and all the content was “buy it now before you can no longer afford to”, it was unknown how high the prices were going to go and what component was next. In hindsight more research should have been done to ensure linux compatibility but at the time I was freaked out with windows 11 et all and pressured by component prices going to unknown heights. Thankfully I did enough research to get an AMD gpu over NVIDIA. Very glad I figured out that much at the time. I am ashamed to say it but it was the result of a hasty AI query, but I am glad I knew enough to pose the question.

So, I got the new computer and because I’d had no experience of linux I wanted to test the components so installed windows 10 but kept it offline along with disabling TPM in the bios as I had learnt about how microsoft were using that as a unique identifier if ever it were to go online. I used my existing windows 10 system for drivers and stress testing software etc to transfer over. I eventually settled on OCCT and hwinfo for stress testing the system which I did for several hours at a time along with h2testw for testing storage. Also ran memtest86+ overnight a few times. All looked good so, time for linux.

I grabbed the latest version of linux mint cinnamon 22.3 , verified its checksum and got it installed. Everything just worked out of the box, colour me impressed. The first thing I did now as I was very much becoming privacy conscious was to install protonvpn. I did not know exactly what I was doing in the terminal but the instructions were coming from a trusted source, proton themselves, so I paid attention, followed the instructions to the letter and it all sprang into life. There were specific instructions not to install the system tray app on mint as it would install the entire gnome desktop environment. I knew enough about linux to know that this would be a bad thing for a beginner. However I was pleased to see that whist avoiding that installation step, I still got a tray icon.

So with protonvpn installed I was online and ready to go. I had researched open source disk imaging tools and settled on rescuezilla as I wanted an option to revert if I did something catastrophic that I did not know how to undo. This was a completely foreign OS and wanted to take precautions. At an early point I tested a system image backup and restore and it worked perfectly, even with full disk encryption. One issue was that the screen would go black during the backup process. I thought there was a hardware fault but it turned out it was just a power saving feature but it sometimes would not come back when jostling the mouse. I think I worked around this by booting rescuzilla in basic graphics mode which prevented the screen going black. I cannot be absolutely sure of this but I think that did the trick. It was a shame there was not an option to disable this power saving feature in the software that I could find but there we are.

I should mention that whilst learning about open source and my desire to move to linux I started switching to open source cross platform applications whilst still on windows to make the transition easier. Some of which I was already using, firefox (eventually to librewolf), joplin, keepassxc, libreoffice, freefilesync, virtualbox, vlc, veracrypt to name the main few. I should mention I did test linux mint in a virtualbox vm under windows 10 just to see what I was getting into before installing.

When I had the basics, an internet connection and a browser, I began actually using the linux computer. I was so pleased everything was just working. I started to spend more and more time on the linux system, and I know it may sound silly, I still did not trust it with credentials. But the more I learnt with research and the more I got things working, the more I came to trust it and started logging in to things. It took a while before I even opened my password database on it.

My data had not even come over at this point, I was still testing the waters. Is this something I could really trust? But over about a month linux mint earnt that trust and this is when after years of using macrium reflect for a one button blind faith backup I decided to use freefilesync to migrate data to the linux system and maintain a linux system backup. I spent a long time noting down every location my data could be on the windows system including appdata, portable apps, default user data folders, program files, different drives and other obscure locations. I still want to do a full system image with macrium at some point, not incremental but full, on two separate backup drives just in case I missed anything. I plan to wipe the windows computer completely. I’ll probably re-install with windows 10 iot ltsc as I’d like to have a windows system around still but the main thing is to get my data off of it going forwards, not just deleting it but a full re-install so there is not even a reference. The fact I used minecraft with a microsoft account I wonder if that and my data could ever be linked. Never has the OS been signed into microsoft account but I’d not put it past them to say “hey, you used minecraft with this micorosft account so we’ve logged your OS in and uploaded all your files to the cloud”. This is why I was switching to linux, I wanted control over my computer and its data. I do not want it uploaded to your cloud where any tom, dick and harry can nose around and have your AI systems use it for training. Hell, it seems that data does not even need to be in their cloud for this to occur now. No thank you.

Now, I had started to take data security seriously and contemplated what would happen if my equipment was stolen. During the mint setup I configured full disk encryption, very easy to setup and worked well. The only option was to use KVM which to be honest it is still something I need to research more, ext4 fair enough but this KVM thing sounds more intimidating. But it worked. I also booted into a linux mint live usb and verified I could access my data on from the full disk encryption system which I could, a big relief as it was something I was so unfamiliar with and wondered how I could get at my data if the system no longer booted after a kernal update or something. I was being cautious.

I used veracrypt for the backup drives, thankfully I have had experience with this software before and it was my first experience of an appimage (that I was very careful about running), I knew to verify checksums and found the gui tool gtkhash very useful for this but gpg was new to me (still is really) and required terminal work. But the main thing was knowing to verify that I downloaded from the official domain, like with windows. Once I learnt how to make it executable it was off, the gui was a little bugged and took a bit of a long time to dismount after a backup but later versions fixed that. Also, when playing around with appimages I learnt how to make them run in portable mode as this is something I like from windows using this documentation: https://docs.appimage.org/user-guide/portable-mode.html.

I was getting well underway and using the linux system more and more. I have yet to log into sites that use payment systems switching back to the windows system for this as I have been quite nervous about this part. No anti-virus, going off of only that I had done things correctly based on the research I had done and not contracted anything in the process. I think it is sensible until I am sure I have done everything in the correct manner, others may disagree. But this is a completely foreign system to me, it is taking a while to earn my trust, but it is most certainly coming slowly over time. It is not too far off now I think.

I have yet to get into gaming as I want to limit closed source applications on this system. The only closed source application I think I have run on here thus far was OCCT. I think it had some telemetry but this was literally one of my first experiences with software after installing mint as I wanted to check hardware stability under linux and for me, it was the only option at the time as I was familiar with it from testing in windows and GUI stress testing applications appeared to be more complicated than just firing up OCCT and I wanted to test my hardware under linux as soon as possible. In hindsight, I could have handled this better but there we are.

Steam has closed sourced components, as do games. This is something I plan to learn more about. For now I dabbled with hedgewars and luanti to test some open source games for system stability.

So I am in the position now where apart from online payment systems and gaming, I am fully migrated over and loving every minute of it. Just getting everything setup so I can use it for 90% of what I need at the moment, even down to rhythmbox handling my music, adjusting the GUI to my needs. Tweaking things to my liking within the main confines of mint and the cinnamon desktop environment but at the moment that is more than enough. Also, finally having some freedom, true freedom. I am almost free of windows, I’ll not be completely satisfied until I wipe the old windows 10 system along with my data on it in the process to fully get it out of microsofts reach. Yes windows 10 iot ltsc will likely go on but my data will not.

However, with the new encryption systems at play on linux it is taking a little getting used to in order to fully trust them from a reliability standpoint but I am getting there the more times I actually use the full disk encryption and veracrypt for backups. Trusting the encryption software to always work when I present the password, reliably. It is taking some getting used to the fact that I’ll never be able to access that data if the password is forgotten. But at least I am in control and not having windows 11 lock the system drive after a bad update and find I have no recourse. I know the passwords here, it is under my control as to how I remember those. No surprises.

I hope to learn more leveraging this platform to ask for help on the newer more complicated stuff that I struggle to understand with just research alone. Something I have not done thus far, just taught myself everything. I’m not really a very social person so even online I struggle with this, but lemmy.ml looks like a good, caring community that shares my values and I think I will be happy to be a part of.

I hope to be able to convince friends and family that moving to linux is something they should seriously consider. I have a multitude of reasons and am already finding much resistance because windows works for them and they do not care enough about privacy and/or do not really understand that their privacy is at risk and the implications / future ramifications of that. I am being called paranoid etc and and am at a bit of a loss as to how to help convince the majority of them.

For those that want to make the switch I hope to learn enough to be able to aid them in the transition but at the same time do not want the responsibility of being blamed if something goes wrong or does not work as expected. For example I plan to help with locating their data and how to make backups following the 3-2-1 rule but make it unmistakeably clear it is their responsibility. If they loose anything / forget some data it is on them. I must make this so very clear.

So, to end on a high note I am so thankful the open source community exists, it is truly a beautiful thing, a system built by the people, for the people. One day I hope to contribute however that may be, and I think it will simply be in helping others transition and use the software as I learn how to do so myself.

This is my first post on lemmy.ml, my first post on the fediverse. I thought I’d detail my experience not only of switching to linux but a switch in the way I think now. Woken up to the sobering truth of that state of things. I am now, most certainly, a privacy advocate.

Thanks for taking the time to read. I hope it was informative, maybe helpful to others, and I look forward to your responses.