Linux is almost ready for prime time

Linux is almost ready for prime time Increasingly during 2025 my aim was to try and move further away from relying on the established big tech for my day to day computer use. Quite quickly I was able to achieve this for key parts of my web use.

Google was the biggest victim of this, in part because years ago I shifted a lot of my services over to Google so that most things were in "one place". This was partly due to having an Android phone (going from HTC to Nokia, to Google Pixel) so it "made sense". But, also I had been using Google Chrome for the best part of a decade at this point.

Yet, Google had succumbed massively to self-inflicted enshittification making my desire to move away as much as possible strong. It also helped that Google's services (aside from YouTube) are very easy to move away from. Chrome and Gmail were the big things to move away, yet remarkably easy to do so. Search too, but that just requires changing the default.

I would like to move away from Android, even though for the most part it does do what I want it to do. Plus, I really dislike how iPhones function. That and I also loathe Tim Cook. With the aforementioned changes though, my "Google phone" isn't actually very "Googley".

The other big tech company I've been trying to move away from is Microsoft. This has been much more difficult to meaningfully move away from. Unsurprisingly, at work Microsoft's services are baked in everywhere, so there is no escaping there. If I stop using Teams or OneDrive/SharePoint, then I'm causing real problems for my colleagues. Also, and this pains me to say it, for the most part it does do what I need it to do. Is it ideal, or the best, no. OneDrive throws a wobbly every now and then. Copilot continues to be useless. Although, that's a good thing as it gives me the very valid excuse of not using it.

For home use I have more control, but there are still major caveats. I've now pretty much abandoned Xbox. However, and this apparently angers some people, I haven't stopped buying games published by Microsoft. This is because buying these games on sale is not even going to register to the higher ups at Microsoft but it will for the smaller studios that Microsoft swallowed up. There are plenty of developers who work for Microsoft who aren't thrilled by it and who have the sword of Damocles permanently over their heads. So buying their games isn't a questionable act to me. However, paying for a Microsoft subscription - such as Game Pass (and its various versions) and/or Microsoft 365 - is something to be avoided as crucially this is the revenue stream that Microsoft actually cares about.

But, and this is where I'll seem like a hypocrite. I haven't ditched using Office. I'm not paying for it, as my employer does, but I don't really have a choice. Yes, there are open source alternatives, but they aren't quite there yet when it comes to long form academic writing. If I was still working as a videogames critic then these would be fine. But, I need something that works well with reference manager plugins without having to tweak it. I've tried the others and they just aren't there, yet. They have moved further than they were, so I'm hoping it's just a matter of time.

My main personal laptop is still running Windows 11 only. I haven't dual booted it. Partly, because for daily use it is working and doing what I need it to do. Therefore, I don't want to mess around as I used it as a tool for work and work adjacent things.

Instead though, I did use the demise of Windows 10 as an opportunity to install only Bazzite on my old - but functionally fine - older laptop. Recently I've been in the depths of marking, and because I'm dealing with student work I don't particularly like having it on my personal device. Yes, I can access a lot of it via a browser, but sometimes things still need downloading or moving around via local storage. So, I thought I would start using my Linux machine to access this work instead. This has been alongside using my main personal laptop to have my marking spreadsheet open. This approach has worked really well, not only as a marking process, but crucially showing that I can use Linux (specifically with the KDE environment) to get work done and to functional for normal daily (non gaming) tasks.

I haven't come across any issues, so now the main things holding me back from moving fully over are the aforementioned current reliance on Microsoft Word for writing long academic texts, then there are the various "little things" where there is only a Windows app available, such as SteelSeries or Tidal. I am in the process of testing these things on Linux using work arounds, but I still need to continue experimenting, such as putting "Bottles" onto Bazzite as Lutris isn't straight forward for non-gaming EXE files.

Of course, the big thing is waiting to see how tangible the Steam Machine will be. If it is a reasonable price (which unfortunately is less likely due to AI causing tech components to skyrocket in price) and if I am able to get one, then I would try to make that my daily machine. If I need Windows then I can get my Windows laptop out.