From email sent by Peter, 2017-01-17
Good to hear from you, Peter. I forgot about telling you that last year, I wasn’t able to read a message you sent me. I don’t remember why. I apologize for not replying.
I wrote this up in a blog, but the blog isn’t accessible right now. So I’m pasting a copy below.
The Linux I used for several years was Puppy Linux. It’s a free download. I just booted from a CD with the ISO image burned to it. It worked okay, not much different than Windows. I haven’t used Linux for the last few years, but I do stuff on my Android phone, and it has the same file structure. So if you have that Android experience then you should find Linux similar.
I guess the main thing to determine is what you are going to do with the PC. If you’re going to web browse and word processing and other office stuff (Office Libre is open source) then Linux will do okay. If you have some special apps, like Scientific or tech apps, you may not be able to find one for Linux
My problem with Linux is that many programs or apps don’t have a Linux version. Firefox, Chrome, and many open source apps were originally developed with Linux in mind. The open source Wine is supposed to allow you to run Windows apps on Linux. I downloaded it but never tried to run any Windows apps. The laptop I was using was only 32 bit, but today’s PCs with 64 bit and more than 4G of memory should be able to do a decent job of running Wine.
There are other ways of running Linux. You could run it in a virtual machine with VMware. Or you could make your PC dual boot. I haven’t done this, but there is plenty of information online and on YouTube to tell you how. You can out Linux and all your stuff on a USB flash drive and boot up with this drive.
I’m very tempted to go back to Linux. I have Win 8.1 on my desktop and Win 10 on a laptop, and I don’t use them enough to make it worth changing. I mostly use my cellphone to do just about everything I need. I have it right here, in my hand, so its very convenient.