Some Thoughts About Alternative (Computing) Lifestyles ⭐

Today, we can effectively de-enshittify Windows 11 and remove its worst behaviors. But what if that changes? The post Some Thoughts About Alternative (Computing) Lifestyles ⭐ appeared first on Thurrott.com.

Today, we can effectively de-enshittify Windows 11 and remove its worst behaviors. But what if that changes? What then? I write this looking over at my MacBook Air M3, now nearly two years old, which is an ideal laptop in so many ways and yet, to me, so much less than ideal. I have multiple laptops here on which I can install whatever flavors of Linux I want, or at least try to, given the complexities.

And just yesterday my mind drifted back to the fact that one thing I don’t have here in Mexico is a Chromebook of any kind; I was just going to start seeing whether I could buy something inexpensive locally or online when it occurred to me that I should at least try Chrome OS Flex first. Last year, I described the iPad—when combined with a Magic Keyboard or similar add-on—as perhaps the perfect laptop for most people, and, separately, the perfect computer overall, thanks to the gains in iPadOS 26.

And while Android is lagging in this regard, sort of, I do have a Pixel 10 Pro Fold that can function as a DIY laptop of sorts with a portable keyboard and mouse, both of which I did bring to Mexico for that reason. And Aluminum is on the way, the Androidification of Chrome OS that may or may not transform that platform into a contender, similar to the iPad and iPadOS 26. Put more simply, we are not lacking for choices if an alternative is where your brain is at, now or in the future.

But those alternatives are all problematic in some ways, a clear example of “the grass is always greener” that I try to keep in mind every time I see some shitty new behavior in Windows 11 that I instantly want to exorcise from the system. Depending on how you use a computer, and which apps and services you need to be productive, you will likely find yourself trading one set of problems for another in switching platforms.

For me, at least, those new problems are even more problematic than the problems I face each day using Windows. And that’s the crux of this problem. Anyone reading this is smart enough to figure out a way forward if the choice becomes leaving Windows. Most reading this have PCs or other devices on which they can, for now, experiment with at least some of these alternatives and see for themselves if any make sense to them.

Where you land will depend on, well, you. You and your needs. You and your workflows. You and your ability to change. It’s all on you. This year, I’m trying to have a big picture topic focus each month. In January, it was security. February was de-enshittifying Windows 11, and as I write these words, my next book, the imaginatively titled De-Enshittify Windows 11, is not in any way complete but is close enough that I can publish it publicly on Leanpub soon, and later on Amazon, so real people can purchase it.

March and April will be vibe coding with AI and Windows alternatives, though I’m not sure which will be first. Which is part of the point of all this. I can’t cleanly move from topic to topic on a monthly basis, not really. I’m not done with the security-related topics I started writing in January, and I will finish that, but I’ve been nicely obsessed by the February topic, so I want to get that done quickly.

And I would like to be flexible. If it makes sense to write about Windows alternatives for March and push vibe coding back yet again—it was originally my idea for February—then so be it. But I also don’t wait for whatever month to begin working on whatever topics. I’ve been using AI, mostly Anthropic, for coding purposes for over a month now, for example, though not really on a daily basis.

I’ve been experimenting with different Linux distributions, and not just the few I normally prefer, like Elementary OS and Zorin OS, but also some outliers (for me) like Debian and AnduinOS, the latter of which is (controversially) made by a Microsoft engineer and is surprisingly good. These things all occur as they occur, intertwined and out of order. Because there is no order, despite my attempts to stick to a monthly schedule.

I’ve been thinking about Windows alternatives a lot lately. I can’t seem to help it. To my mind, anyone can effectively de-enshittify Windows 11 right now, using free tools and/or controls built into the system itself. And that’s true no matter where you land on this spectrum of extremes. Those who just want to remove a few annoyances can do so easily. Those who wish to tear the guts out of the thing, whether it’s Copilot and AI, Microsoft Edge, or whatever else that drives you crazy, can likewise do so too.

But in writing De-Enshittify Windows 11, two thoughts keep recurring. First, this will be a short book, where the Windows 11 Field Guide is a solid 1100+ pages of writing, this one is currently just under 100 pages, and it will never exceed 150 pages. That’s nice, especially for me, but I also keep wondering what any normal person would think about this. Why does it require this much explanation, this much work, to fix Windows 11?

Would they just be better off … leaving? I don’t know. I do know that even a short foray into most of these alternatives will be enough to cause most to give up pretty quickly. Not always. Sometimes a thing just clicks. If you’re already using an iPhone and an Apple Watch, or whatever, you may find the addition of a Mac or even an iPad with whatever keyboard cover to be a natural and even desirable transition.

That hasn’t been the case for me, but we’re all different. You won’t know unless you try. I keep trying. And with the understanding that this will likely be a topic for March or April, I have a few observations from the experimentation that I’ve done so far over the past two months that, for whatever reason, I feel the need to express now. Like many of you, I have spare PCs. OK, I have a lot of spare PCs because of the nature of my work, both here and in Pennsylvania.

I generally use them to test whatever Windows 11 issues, whether it’s for the new book or anything else, as one of my requirements is that anything I document is repeatable. But I can also use these PCs for other things. Installing Linux, for example. If you do have one or more spare PCs, you can do this yourself. But let me prep you for the annoyances that came with doing this. It’s not heartbreak per se.

But if you like consistency and things that just work, Linux most likely will be problematic. You have to create bootable USB installation media that may or may not boot on whichever spare PC(s) you choose. Sometimes it will work from one USB port but not another. Sometimes Secure Boot gets in the way but sometimes, oddly, it does not. If you do get Linux up and running, typically in a live environment that doesn’t impact the underlying PC, you may be emboldened enough to actually install the thing, in which case you may or may not then find out that it’s not actually compatible with some of your PC’s hardware.

It’s a crapshoot, basically, but you (or will not) push forward. Either with a different distribution or even a different PC. And you will have mixed results. You may get lucky. If so, God love you. And God help you if and when something goes wrong. There is a lot to learn here. I am not afraid of command lines, if anything I find myself leaning on them more and more as I get older. But Linux is different, and arcane.

You will need to learn. You have to embrace this. You also have to embrace things not working. The apps you need. The services you rely on. One of the attractions of the Mac is that Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, and even Synology Drive all work exactly as they do on Windows, with files on demand and seamless offline usage capabilities. But none of them work like that on any Linux, and so you will need to adapt.

Either by lessening your expectations completely or by finding a third-party utility that gets you partway there. Either way, it’s on you. If my experience is any guide, you will fail more than you succeed. But the appeal of Linux remains. It’s free. Some version of it will likely work on some extra PC you already own. It doesn’t hurt to try. I mean, it does hurt in the sense that you will be frustrated again and again.

You will fail sometimes. But if you believe that these experiences will at least be instructive, you’ll be OK. (The notion that “that which does not kill you makes you stronger” is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard. More accurate: That which does not kill you almost kills you and often leaves you weaker for the rest of what is now a shortened life. But that’s not what this is.) So you will persevere or you will not.

I was busy not persevering the other day when it occurred to me that I wasn’t solving the problem. There are so many distributions out there, too many, all with their own display managers, GUI shells, app packaging schemes, and whatever else, and one could easily spend a good chunk of your life obsessing over any or all of that. That’s what enthusiasts do, I guess. Anyway, failing to bring up whatever Linux installer on whatever laptop the other day, I mentally took a step back and thought to myself, what is it that I’m trying to achieve here?

Yes, successfully bring up this Linux on some hardware, yes, of course. But what happens if that works? What’s next? Why am I doing this? And so I thought about the point of all this. Which, at some vague level, is to achieve some semblance of the experience I have on Windows. That is, a familiar system that provides me with live access to my documents and other data and has the apps, or something like them, that I need to get work done.

More specifically, I need this thing to work with some cloud service, meaning Google Drive, OneDrive, or Synology Drive, ideally in some native fully functional way, but also perhaps using some quirky third-party sync service that gets me to a good place. I need a web browser, which will not be an issue on any platform, Typora or some other Markdown editor, Visual Studio Code or some other basic developer editor/IDE, some way to edit photos and images, and a few other apps, like Notion.

This feels possible with Linux, but the cloud storage service need is a problem. It’s a solvable problem, assuming I don’t mind workarounds. But I keep thinking how nice it would be if any of the services I do use just worked on Linux. If only there were a way. That’s when my mind drifted to Chromebooks and then Chrome OS Flex, which can sort of run on any computer, but really only works properly on a range of certified PC models, none of which I have with me here in Mexico.

I know that Chrome OS Flex doesn’t support Android apps, and while that was once a concern I find myself caring less about that over time. But I couldn’t recall whether it supported the optional Linux environment that provides access to a command line and to GUI apps. It does, of course, as I rediscovered when I looked it up. But what about Google Drive? I had some memory of that working in Chrome OS, that one could mark files and folders to be available for offline use, similarly to Windows and the Mac.

What if … hm. What if I could bring up Chrome OS Flex on a laptop? What if I could use my Google Drive storage on that laptop and make the folders I need available offline? And what if I could also install Linux and then use that to access some key apps, like Typora and Visual Studio Code? Well, that does work. I didn’t get Chrome OS Flex successfully installed on the first laptop I tried, but it did work, and fully, it seems, on the second one I tried.

So, the same issue with Linux there. But I can sync certain folders in Google Drive into the local file system and access them from the Files app. And I can enable the Linux environment and install and run the few apps I really need. This is all good. This is not news, either. I wrote about doing just this almost two years ago. This is what it’s like to be me. I write too much to remember it all, and if I don’t repeatedly do something regularly, I have to search my own site, many times, to remind myself of how that thing works.

Ah well. But in the past two years, not much has changed regarding Chrome OS Flex, Linux, and Google Drive. And though this is itself surmountable, there is one little catch to this scheme: Linux apps like Typora cannot “see” the Chrome OS file system. So there’s that. But there’s also an aesthetic here that I find attractive, a simplicity that is perhaps lacking in many Linux distributions, even the mainstream ones.

Chrome OS Flex, in this case, provides what I’ll call a web browser-first UI, which is good for a lot of what many of us do each day. And the Linux environment can help fill in the gaps in ways the Android app compatibility in Chrome OS does not, at least for me. This is vaguely interesting to me. Aesthetics do matter. This also makes the iPad intriguing, though my 11-inch iPad Air is too small for day-to-day work, at least to my old eyes,and its Magic Keyboard is too small for my giant hands.

A bigger iPad of any kind would be better for that work, and Apple doesn’t even make the iPad I really want, one with a 14-inch or even 16-inch display. I don’t see that happening. But I do have a 15-inch MacBook Air, and that should sort of satisfy my needs. It doesn’t, but I finally reinstalled Parallels Workstation so I could access a handful of Windows apps. And a few utilities that make macOS multitasking less tedious and illogical.

And I don’t know. I still prefer Windows, a sentence that sounds dumber and dumber every time I utter it. But I do. And I keep trying with these alternatives. I have the vague notion that one day, something will just click. And then we’ll see what happens. But meanwhile, all I can do is try. And I will get more specific when this focus month does kick in. Either in March or April. Probably. Thurrott Premium delivers an honest and thorough perspective about the technologies we use and rely on everyday.

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