And you probably weren't even a gleam in your daddy's eye when I started programming computers. I am in general agreement with "131dbl". I initially started way back with the IBM 1400 series systems (starting 1961 until 2000). I bought my first PC circa1980, a Radio Shack Color Computer (CoCo). Besides being considered a "game playing" machine, it could also run OS/9, a Unix clone and had a lot of nice S/W, an Office Suite (Telewriter, etc.), Basic09, a C compiler, and other useful tools. I started using PCs initially at work, being with DOS and later when I bought my first x86 PC. Since then I used Win. 3.1, 95, 98, XP, Vista, & 7 and now 10. I skipped 8 and never installed NT (bought at a clearance sale for $5, still in its shrink-wrapped package). As for my first x86 PC, I installed System Commander for multi-booting and ran PC-DOS, Win. 3.1, later 95/98, Slackware Linux (with X windowing) and OS/2 all of a 250MB HDD (later upgrade to a 2GB HDD). When that system finally crapped out, XP had come out and came with my new system. I was able to re-install all the OSes I had in multi-boot. I replaced Slackware Linux with Ubuntu 6.04 with Wubi which was much nicer compared to the Slackware (allowed Ubuntu to be installed as a Windows app and booted within Windows). As for Vista, that was on a laptop my son gave ,me when he bought a Windows 7 laptop. I stayed with Ubuntu until they dropped Gnome 2 (Gnome 3 was had come out) and switched to Linux Mint (and the new Mate desktop). When my XP system finally crapped out, my new system came with Windows 7. IMO, it was the best Windows system MS produced, even better than Windows 10. At that point, I started using VirtualBox instead of multi-booting. I found Linux ran nearly as fast in a VM as it did native and even faster than Windows 7 when it started to get slower over time, in spite of weekly "maintenance". I took "advantage" of the "free upgrade" to Windows 10. It ran slower than Windows 7 and I was finding more problems doing weekly maintenance than I did when using Win. 7. As for Security patches, they seem to be as frequent as they were in Windows 7 and both were much more frequent than Linux Mint security updates. The only good thing I found with Windows 10 over Win, 7 was the app store had some nice apps, like OCR and a few others. The Win. 7 Home edition came with Office Starter, which I used the Excel to view an occasional spreadsheet sent to me, but I preferred OpenOffice Writer to MS Word. They were kept when I upgraded to Windows 10. Last June, after another bad update, I not only ran into various problems, but also lost the MS Office Starter package.
Every system has it faults and good points. However, the only advantage Windows has over Linux is more apps that are more polished than corresponding comparable Linux apps (but most have to be purchased). Those that are free, I find to be virtually identical in both environments. However, one thing I find is I still have old "exe" files that ran on XP, and many on Win. 7, will not run on Win. 10, even in "so-called" compatibility mode, I can run them on Linux, using WINE and most run with no problem and a couple with a an occasional glitch. For those who complain that Linux is still "command line", they don't know what they are talking about. Maybe true 15-20 years ago, but not so today. I find I use the command line as much in Windows, maybe moreso, than I do in Linux. I also find installing S/W packages just as easy with Linux than Windows. The only reason I still use Windows is because their a are a few things that aren't available on Linux that I still use on Windows, but as that stuff stops working on Windows, as some already have, I will find a Linux alternative.
