Back To MS Windows For The Time Being.

Back on Windows

Looks like I'm back on the Windows OS again. The new computer came with Windows 10. I'm a Linux guy but I'm going to keep Windows on here for as long as I can take it. So far I'm enjoying it and it's running great on the new computer I bought.

I bought a gaming computer for trading crypto currency. It has lived above and beyond my expectations of what I wanted. Honestly, the system is a bit of overkill for what I'm using it for. Still, as I've stated in previous posts, I'd rather have too much power than not enough. On that note, Linux is not known as a very good gaming platform and unless you get real creative and run programs like WINE which is a Windows Emulating Environment, your gaming capabilities are limited.

With that said, now that I have a gaming capable computer, I may pick up a couple games. We seem to have a come a long way since the Duke Nukem days. LOL just discovered they've updated that game. https://www.dukenukem.com/

Another game that's caught my interest is Cyberpunk 2077. I'll probably be picking both of these games up and give them a try. It'll give me something to do besides guitar when trading is slow. Another reason I'm considering sticking with Windows for a bit is because I'd like to check out some of the VR capabilities. I still need to research VR though because I refuse to get an Occulus if I have to get a Facebook account. If there are alternatives to Occulus though, I'm open to checking them out. Something else to research I guess.

The other thing I'd like to do now that I've got the computer for it is Decentraland! It's been great following that project from the very beginning. I haven't had a computer powerful enough to play and there and now that I do I'll probably start getting a little more involved. Pretty much sold all my MANA though when Binance kicked out US customers. That's a bitter pill to swallow. I think I sold them around 5 cents and last I looked they were up over a dollar :( https://www.decentraland.org

This is the second time going from using Linux full time to switching to a full time Windows user. The good news is, most of the software I enjoy using with Linux is now available on Windows. My three favorites being GiMP, Kdenlive, and LibreOffice. I don't know why, but GiMP has a completely different feel to me in Windows for some reason. I think it's because in Linux it's split up into several different windows and in Windows its just one big window or UI. For some reason I think I remember having some other issues with GiMP for windows too. I'm sure I'll remember as soon as I install it.

The other thing I'm looking into is WSL 2 or the Windows Subsystem for Linux. Currently it gives you a working terminal and BASH shell, but I've already seen work arounds to get it to connect to a GUI. I could then have a working version of Linux in my Windows computer. I'm still not sure which route I want to take. Currently GiMP, LibreOffice and Kdenlive are available in Windows versions.

Surprisingly, windows has a lot of basic features not supported before that were long overdue IMHO. No more need for WinZip as Windows10 will extract your zip files for you. The photos app will allow you to do simple edits like crop images or draw notes on them. Notepad still sucks but I can use Atom IDE. All the other programs I use regularly are still free like Filezilla for FTP, and the various web browsers I like. My two favorites currently being Opera and Brave.

One of the main reasons I'm a Linux guy is because it runs great on older computers. I've always been able to seriously extend the life of a computer for at least a couple more years when it can no longer handle Windows. I also like that Linux is opensource and doesn't cost anything to run on your computer. Besides that, there really is a certain amount of freedom with all the cool stuff you can do with it. You can't customize an MS Windows experience the same way you can customize a Linux user experience.

So I'm going to spend the next few months seeing if I can get acclimated to MS Windows again. I don't know what it is but it seems my workflow has always been better on a Linux machine with the KDE desktop. With the additional power of this computer though, I haven't felt that way yet! I guess I'll see how long that lasts.

This is post 12 of 31 for this months #HiveBloPoMo