Let us not forgot a few other great points about Linux.

Resilience.

Windows always throws a hissy fit if the power dies or is not shut down properly.
Hours wasted with scandisk or repairing a registry.
You don't get that nonsense with Linux.
One great example is the Raspberry Pi.
Runs from an SD card with Debian, with a Pi flavoured skin on it.
These devices don't even have an off/off button.
Just apply the 5 volts PSU to it for a boot up, or yank it out when it's time to go to bed ;-)
Same on PC if you want.

On Windows you have an ever growing registry that want to register every file for every application.
It grows, it takes longer to boot.
You try removing software or cleaning up the registry, but it never seems to shrink - why ?
Not a problem on Linux.

Most Linux kernels include a fast off mode, ALT+SYS REQ + O(ff).
Nice fast close down if you need it.

Lots of open source software, ready made or with source so you know what you're getting.
Free compilers, no silly licences or restrictions.

No silly drivers issues, plug in and get on with the job.
Windows just makes a real mess of trying to decide what driver to use, or what comport number to assign. What a waste of time.

Alan ZFQ:

Libre Office will do xls files.
The only things that may catch you out is if you used some specialised MS Office function in a cell.
It pays to just use standard functions, even if you might need an extra step or two for the calculation.
But Libre Office has most of them sussed anyway.

And then there's being able to just write simple BASH scripts to perform custom tasks.
MS Powershell is terrible and often calls for a GUI program to do things.

And there's another feature of Linux.
Pretty much all Linux app functions can be done on a command line without even opening up the GUI, even for apps that include a GUI.
All those mouse clicks saved.

No spyware, no calling home, no registration, no restrictive licences.

Personal preferences.

Linux Mint. Best desktop Linux with excellent software management. You can choose different desktop versions to suit your taste or hardware resources.

Debian: Fast, stable. Slightly more basic package manager. Not quite as pretty on the GUI but so what.

AntiX: Ultra lean Debian based Linux. Trimmed so that it can run on really ancient PC's. Not too pretty and a bit geeky (not really suitable for XYL's) ;-)

But each to their own, there's LOTS of variants with a groups personal desktop project added. They're all pretty good, just comes down to personal taste
sometimes.

If you have a few old Windows apps then WINE will often run them.
I have things like HAMCAP and RFSIM99 through WINE.
Even that old Veroboard designer from years ago (can't remember it's name) will run on it.
I've even had Electronics Workbench too.

At last, owning a computer is fun and useful again.
It's an OS that does what I tell it.
Windows tells YOU what to do :-(

TIP: Wanna try Linux. Make a bootable USB stick first and see that you don't have any odd hardware issues. Don't uses DVD's, they are painfully slow.

Another tip is is you have a slow loading app, then you can have it (or ANYTHING) loaded and held in RAM if you wish.
It stays there (so it uses a bit of your RAM), but it means that once booted everything loads in 3 picoseconds when you go to use it.
Slow swap file on a  disk ?
You can easily configure it to never use  swap file and use a ramdisk instead, mega fast.

Sorry for the group bandwidth on this subject, but Linux has exactly the same ethos as our own amateur radio hobby, plus it allows
us to do stuff easier for our hobby.

Just look at the the aggro Windows makes to program an ATMEL controller for a QRP Labs product.
Dead easy on Linux, none of this rebooting Windows and funny set up menus to allow unsigned drivers or system files for Extreme Burner (for example).
One command line or an executable BASH file (BASH = .BAT in Linux) and the job is done.
I think Hans does the same now.

73 de Andy

I will not tell anyone to switch, its their life and time.  I jumped as my life and time was 
not being helped by dealing with the all to often winders issues and needing to run
elaborate software to protect it due to its affinity for virus, worms, exploits, and
sundry hacks.

Linux, ha! Back in the days before Linux I got Minix to work, I think in about 1990. Minix is an open source sort of Linux produced by Andy Tannenbaum at the University of Amsterdam. I was suitably astonished to find out Minix still going after all those years. I can’t even remember what hardware it ran on when I did it. Possibly a 286  running ms/dos from floppy’s. 

Interestingly (well it is to me as I learned to code in 1972 on an ICL 1903 in (Algol 60) which had real core storage, on toroids way smaller than those in Hans’s kits) there are a number of emulations of elderly computers running on the Raspberry Pi. When I find the “round to it” Hans gave me I’ve a PDP11 front panel kit to build which has many flashing lights and switches, as proper computers had back then. The actual computing is done by a Raspberry Pi running an RSX/11m emulator (the Dec real time operating system). 

To try and wrestle this back on topic, programming back then has a lot in common with programming AVRs and other microcontrollers now. Limited code space, little operating system support and some hardware knowledge required. And loading code into hardware was often a bit tricky. I’m always amazed by the amount of functionality Hans has shoehorned into the QCX AVR. 

73s Steve G0XAR

Microsoft is letting me know that this is the end for Windows 7 support.  My choices are: (1) live without support (2) "upgrade" to Windows 10 (ain't gonna happen) or (3) migrate to Linux.
I have a lot of experience with Linux and would be fine going that way ... _except_ for logging software.

Bruce K1FFX

On 11 Nov 2019, at 20:02, Andy Brilleaux via Groups.Io <punkbiscuit@...> wrote:

Not everyone trusts Ubuntu, especially if you are a FOSS Linux purist.
The Amazon "spyware" and some other call home type stuff has made the purists suspicious.
73 de Andy