Hi, I recently installed LinuxLite on my old laptop and on my desktop computer. I was looking for an alternative to Windows 7 for the laptop in the wake of the recent ransomware scare. My laptop was pretty old and had some issues (like not applying Windows updates). If not for Linux, I would have had to get rid of the laptop since it had no protection from ransomware. That's what prompted me to make the switch to Linux when I did. It worked out so well for my laptop (now faster and better than it was under Windows 7) that I decided to make the switch for my main desktop PC too.
I first heard of LinuxLite from
@RandomBoy on Diaspora. There is a very active Linux community in general there, and everyone was very helpful with some of my newbie questions about which distros to try etc. LinuxLite worked out wonderfully for both my machines. I actually tried out other distros for my desktop PC also (a full install of one different distro, and live media of another) since the desktop PC was higher-specced than my laptop and could handle a heavier load. But even though my desktop could handle other distros just fine, LinuxLite was the clear winner for me in terms of a) overall looks, b) UX, and c) performance. Also, a huge factor for me that removed a lot of other distros from my consideration was the fact that many of them if you want to keep up-to-date will have to either a) go with a rolling release distro (a decent solution) or b) do a complete fresh install of the OS every year or so. The latter seemed rather silly in 2017 and beyond, so I love the longer support period of the LL releases. The release roadmap on the website was also a positive factor for me in deciding on LL.
It was also intuitive and easy to set up a custom disk partitioning scheme for my desktop PC the way I wanted with LL as compared with the other distro I tried. Both of my machines are Linux-only, no Windows anywhere on them.
I'm pretty much a total newbie to Linux, although at a previous workplace I used Unix because that's the system they had. I was just an end user like most of us working there, not a dev and not an admin. We used it via command-line because that's pretty much all it ran on at the time. I hated the Vi editor with a passion, and I remember many of my files ending with Zzq from my attempts to quit the Vi editor(!) I don't remember much of the commands anymore now, I mainly was just handling spreadsheet-type of long files doing cat, grep, piping to other programs, etc. Although I'm comfortable looking up commands I need, I'm 100% new to the idea of admin-type tasks like installing software and applying updates like I need to know here for my own PC. I am slowly figuring out most of things I need to know bit by bit.
I'm glad to be here on the forums and learn from what others are saying. I'm open to input, so feel free to mention any words of advice you may have. Thanks.
