Moving on from Windows

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I can't be the only person here looking at the so-called "operating system" Windows 11 and wondering how to get out before I'm trapped in its glitchy, AI-spyware-ridden hellscape. I'm still using Windows 10, but the security updates end next October. Meanwhile, 11 regularly bricks my elderly parents' PC, and is causing major problems for my best friend as she works from home in a role that handles confidential data.

Options:

1. Linux. Probably the best bet for getting away from all this "you are now the product" crap once and for all, but one hell of a steep learning curve to install it and use it safely. I am middle-aged and not particularly computer-literate. I don't even know where to start.

2. Mac OS: has the advantage of being plug-and-play for clueless drones like me. Has its own AI issues, but they seem to be far less aggressive about turning their computers into machines that harvest your data and then crash when you try to do anything. Macs be costly, tho.

3. Try to live with Windows 11. The more I learn of other people's experience, the less of a real option this seems. Sure, I could use non-Microsoft alternatives for stuff like Office, but I'll still have the OS itself constantly messing me about and spying on me. And all indications are that they intend to make it even MORE dependent on dodgy chatbots in future.

4. Chrome OS is apparently a thing? Nobody takes it seriously though, I'm hearing it's basically just a web browser masquerading as an operating system.

As a musician, the main piece of software that's giving me pause is Sibelius. It's a very expensive and extremely high-quality piece of music notation software (it cost nearly as much as my laptop). I have a one-time licence for Windows - there is also a Mac version, but my licence is not transferrable, and I'd probably get stuck on a subscription that will end up costing me several times the one-time price. Musescore 4 is the closest equivalent that works in Windows, Mac and Linux - it's free, but more limited in its abilities, and converting 150-odd music scores will be a major time commitment.

Anyone else worried about this, or have any advice? I'm not even sure what to suggest to my parents. Ironically, my Dad used to work in computing, but he's decades behind the curve by now.

I have an offline Win 7 running a paid for Microsoft Office suite. Is that something you can do with your old Win 10 computer?

I run a Win 11 mini computer that reminds me to complete my installation every month so my files be backed up.

I surf the web with a Chromebox.

Zorin OS and Mint Linux are quite good and easy if you're used to windows. I run a laptop with windows 10 and a desktop with windows 11 but I've disabled all AI from it that I could. Thus far I've not run into many issues that have borked my system. I've come close a few time when my restore points didn't work at all and I was forced to reinstall stull I had on there and the reset computer seems broken on 11.

I plan on switching partly to Linux (laptop won't run it, but my desktop allegedly can't run Win11 ). Most of the programs I use are open source, but I've been using Windows my whole life and switching is so intimidating.

Does anyone have any pro tips for beginners using Ubuntu? Honestly I can't even remember why I picked that one over all the other distributions, lol, but as long as it runs Morrowind and Krita it doesn't really matter too much.

A $200 mini PC runs my Nikon camera software for my 20year old D70 digital camera.
I was busy doing other stuff so I never downloaded the versions for Win 7 or Win 10.
Luckily they still support their old camera with new Win 11 software.

I plug in a nice gamer keyboard, mouse, and 24 inch screen. When Win 11 becomes obsolete I can swap in another mini PC!

I have two computers that run Linux (One Raspberry Pi and one AMD PC that can't run Windows 11), and a laptop that I use different distros in a VM as a test bed. While it isn't perfect for certain things, it is definitely getting a LOT better. My AMD PC can run roughly 3/4 of my Steam library without any problems, and I don't see much difference between Microsoft Office and LibreOffice nowadays, aside from the collaboration features.

Chrome OS is more like Android for PCs than 'a web browser masquerading as an OS'.

The web browser is no more involved than it was for Windows 98.

I'd probably switch to proper Linux though, instead of Googlinux (Android/Chome).

Looks like you may have to abandon Sibelius. Or keep a cheap Windows machine just for it.

At all costs, escape the evil empire of Microsoft. I’ve used Ubuntu many times, and my 20 year old iMac currently runs Linux Mint. You don’t need to know the deep tech stuff. They're comfortable for normal humans.

I've been on and off with linux since the 90's, but never fully went away from windows. At best during that time I had a dual boot going on and mostly used linux except for a few games in the days before steam was a thing and few games were made to be cross platform. In many ways I prefer linux, but it there has always been some issue to tends to screw that up; either you want to install a program that isn't part of your distro's software library and you end up with 20 different conflicting library versions that are never going to match up to get that software to work, or weird graphics/boot issues that pop up occasionally and especially during distro upgrades. At the moment, windows going to hell with all its AI, trashing notepad, spying, etc is making me want to push more towards running more daily ops on linux. However I'm only using a linux vm in hyper-v off my windows desktop at the moment, and no matter what I do it, any boot to a recent kernel is just giving me a black screen with a mouse pointer and no ability to switch to a terminal and do any troubleshooting at that point. So its up to settling with a much older kernel or don't use at all. For non tech people, a lot of linux can end up being very frustrating. I can see why it hasn't gone as far as it could have for desktop replacement usage.

The big issue seems to be updates and installing new programs.
This can be avoided by using an older offline computer dedicated to an expensive program.

Sort of like a toaster that is only used to make toast.

^^^that is what I do with my audio restoration suite. they won't run, any of them, on windows 11.

^ Thanks for all your advice and comments!

Linux Mint is starting to look like a goer. I don't think it's practical for a noob like me to convert my only functioning PC to Linux without a fallback, though. So I'm going to have to suck it up, buy a new Windows 11-capable PC and spend some time working on the project of converting my old one. I also have an old, tiny Windows 7 laptop which might be worth doing an initial test run on with a really, really skinny Linux distro.

Mint is apparently able to read and write both the NTFS and Fat32 data formats, which should make transferring data easier. It's not been easy to find straight answers on data format compatibility though - any time somebody asks that question in a Linux forum, everybody goes off on a rant about how that isn't the native Linux file format, when that is not the question the OP was asking. And they wonder why it hasn't gone mainstream....