Almost 25 years ago, I wrote a blog post with the title ‘jumping ship slowly’ about leaving Windows (XP was awful, it was mind boggling to me that Vista managed to make people nostalgic for XP).
-
Almost 25 years ago, I wrote a blog post with the title ‘jumping ship slowly’ about leaving Windows (XP was awful, it was mind boggling to me that Vista managed to make people nostalgic for XP). My advice remains the same:
Don’t try switching OS first. The OS is the most easily replaceable bit in the stack. Switch applications first. Most ‘Linux’ apps are cross platform. They’ll run on Windows, and the few that don’t will run in WSL2. You can switch out apps one at a time, and take the time to get comfortable with the alternatives.
Once you’re comfortable not using any Windows-only apps, changing the OS but using all of the same applications is very easy to do. Changing OS and application stack at the same time is an enormous obstacle.
I believe this is also why a lot of corporate and government Linux migrations fail: they try to change everything at the same time and that’s too steep a learning curve.
2025 Schleswig-Holstein switched to Open Xchange, Thunderbird, LibreOffice and Nextcloud
2026 Schleswig-Holstein started to switch from windows to Linux
#SchleswigHolstein #openxchange #Thunderbird #LibreOffice #linux
-
@Brett_E_Carlock @david_chisnall I've been giving similar advice. Start by installing Libre Office and learning to use that. Get Firefox or another browser. Many of the major FLOSS programs provide Windows versions. (as you note)
I'm at the beginning of the transition using Libre, Vivaldi and Firefox, Proton email and slowly migrating to their calendar (missing important stuff like tasks), but struggling to figure out what to use to replace Outlook.
As much as I hate Microsoft, Outlook's functionality still seems head and shoulders above alternatives (especially with Proton Mail Bridge not handling 3rd party calendar access). -
Almost 25 years ago, I wrote a blog post with the title ‘jumping ship slowly’ about leaving Windows (XP was awful, it was mind boggling to me that Vista managed to make people nostalgic for XP). My advice remains the same:
Don’t try switching OS first. The OS is the most easily replaceable bit in the stack. Switch applications first. Most ‘Linux’ apps are cross platform. They’ll run on Windows, and the few that don’t will run in WSL2. You can switch out apps one at a time, and take the time to get comfortable with the alternatives.
Once you’re comfortable not using any Windows-only apps, changing the OS but using all of the same applications is very easy to do. Changing OS and application stack at the same time is an enormous obstacle.
I believe this is also why a lot of corporate and government Linux migrations fail: they try to change everything at the same time and that’s too steep a learning curve.
@david_chisnall then some drone in Finance comes to you with some subscription Excel vbs macro + application that requires so many old Windows dependencies that you want to cry, and of course you can't port that. And that team gets to keep Windows and Office. Then everyone else wants it, too, because they don't want to adapt to anything new, ever.
-
Almost 25 years ago, I wrote a blog post with the title ‘jumping ship slowly’ about leaving Windows (XP was awful, it was mind boggling to me that Vista managed to make people nostalgic for XP). My advice remains the same:
Don’t try switching OS first. The OS is the most easily replaceable bit in the stack. Switch applications first. Most ‘Linux’ apps are cross platform. They’ll run on Windows, and the few that don’t will run in WSL2. You can switch out apps one at a time, and take the time to get comfortable with the alternatives.
Once you’re comfortable not using any Windows-only apps, changing the OS but using all of the same applications is very easy to do. Changing OS and application stack at the same time is an enormous obstacle.
I believe this is also why a lot of corporate and government Linux migrations fail: they try to change everything at the same time and that’s too steep a learning curve.
@david_chisnall This is exactly what made my Linux transition smooth - ever since Windows 11 came out (a bit before, even), I've been making an effort to slowly switch my Windows-only apps for open source or at least Linux-compatible alternatives - RawTherapee replaced Adobe Lightroom, Davinci Resolve replaced Adobe Premiere, stuff like that.
So, when a few months ago Windows 11 pissd me off so much that I finally decided I was done with it, switching to Linux felt like a breeze - all my apps still worked, but the OS also worked.
It definitely was not seamless (I would describe the experience as seamful, in fact) - but not needing to replace all my applications at the same time made it 10x smoother
-
Almost 25 years ago, I wrote a blog post with the title ‘jumping ship slowly’ about leaving Windows (XP was awful, it was mind boggling to me that Vista managed to make people nostalgic for XP). My advice remains the same:
Don’t try switching OS first. The OS is the most easily replaceable bit in the stack. Switch applications first. Most ‘Linux’ apps are cross platform. They’ll run on Windows, and the few that don’t will run in WSL2. You can switch out apps one at a time, and take the time to get comfortable with the alternatives.
Once you’re comfortable not using any Windows-only apps, changing the OS but using all of the same applications is very easy to do. Changing OS and application stack at the same time is an enormous obstacle.
I believe this is also why a lot of corporate and government Linux migrations fail: they try to change everything at the same time and that’s too steep a learning curve.
@david_chisnall I like the logic behind this, but at the same time, I noticed that LibreOffice and GIMP take much more time to open on Windows and macOS. That can discourage some users, so it's probably better to communicate this with them in advance.
-
Almost 25 years ago, I wrote a blog post with the title ‘jumping ship slowly’ about leaving Windows (XP was awful, it was mind boggling to me that Vista managed to make people nostalgic for XP). My advice remains the same:
Don’t try switching OS first. The OS is the most easily replaceable bit in the stack. Switch applications first. Most ‘Linux’ apps are cross platform. They’ll run on Windows, and the few that don’t will run in WSL2. You can switch out apps one at a time, and take the time to get comfortable with the alternatives.
Once you’re comfortable not using any Windows-only apps, changing the OS but using all of the same applications is very easy to do. Changing OS and application stack at the same time is an enormous obstacle.
I believe this is also why a lot of corporate and government Linux migrations fail: they try to change everything at the same time and that’s too steep a learning curve.
@david_chisnall
You can even copy over Thunderbird and browser profiles / content / historyWord Dictionaries can be edited in a text editor (Notepad++). Remove one line and they can work on LO Writer.
Import Doc & Docx, but only save / edit in odt. Extra Save As in Word 2007 docx for export.
Some VB6 programs that won't run on any 64 bit windows will run on 32 bit WINE on 64 bit Linux.
I'd not bother with WSL2.
-
Almost 25 years ago, I wrote a blog post with the title ‘jumping ship slowly’ about leaving Windows (XP was awful, it was mind boggling to me that Vista managed to make people nostalgic for XP). My advice remains the same:
Don’t try switching OS first. The OS is the most easily replaceable bit in the stack. Switch applications first. Most ‘Linux’ apps are cross platform. They’ll run on Windows, and the few that don’t will run in WSL2. You can switch out apps one at a time, and take the time to get comfortable with the alternatives.
Once you’re comfortable not using any Windows-only apps, changing the OS but using all of the same applications is very easy to do. Changing OS and application stack at the same time is an enormous obstacle.
I believe this is also why a lot of corporate and government Linux migrations fail: they try to change everything at the same time and that’s too steep a learning curve.
very insightful
just switching from MS office to libre is a huge thing; 100x of times, you spend a minute or two looking for something odd like "where is the format paragraph thingy"
-
Almost 25 years ago, I wrote a blog post with the title ‘jumping ship slowly’ about leaving Windows (XP was awful, it was mind boggling to me that Vista managed to make people nostalgic for XP). My advice remains the same:
Don’t try switching OS first. The OS is the most easily replaceable bit in the stack. Switch applications first. Most ‘Linux’ apps are cross platform. They’ll run on Windows, and the few that don’t will run in WSL2. You can switch out apps one at a time, and take the time to get comfortable with the alternatives.
Once you’re comfortable not using any Windows-only apps, changing the OS but using all of the same applications is very easy to do. Changing OS and application stack at the same time is an enormous obstacle.
I believe this is also why a lot of corporate and government Linux migrations fail: they try to change everything at the same time and that’s too steep a learning curve.
@david_chisnall I’ve been a Windows user since '95, but I never made the jump from 10 to 11. Instead, I switched to Fedora, and I haven't regretted it for a single minute. I leaned on AI to help me navigate a few setup hurdles, but now everything is running flawlessly. I get your logic, but I personally preferred just jumping into the cold water.
-
Almost 25 years ago, I wrote a blog post with the title ‘jumping ship slowly’ about leaving Windows (XP was awful, it was mind boggling to me that Vista managed to make people nostalgic for XP). My advice remains the same:
Don’t try switching OS first. The OS is the most easily replaceable bit in the stack. Switch applications first. Most ‘Linux’ apps are cross platform. They’ll run on Windows, and the few that don’t will run in WSL2. You can switch out apps one at a time, and take the time to get comfortable with the alternatives.
Once you’re comfortable not using any Windows-only apps, changing the OS but using all of the same applications is very easy to do. Changing OS and application stack at the same time is an enormous obstacle.
I believe this is also why a lot of corporate and government Linux migrations fail: they try to change everything at the same time and that’s too steep a learning curve.
@david_chisnall People in my part of the world ( #Pakistan) cos how easy it was to run a usb flashdrive there and the somewhat flashy and modern GUI (compared to Windows 98)
-
Almost 25 years ago, I wrote a blog post with the title ‘jumping ship slowly’ about leaving Windows (XP was awful, it was mind boggling to me that Vista managed to make people nostalgic for XP). My advice remains the same:
Don’t try switching OS first. The OS is the most easily replaceable bit in the stack. Switch applications first. Most ‘Linux’ apps are cross platform. They’ll run on Windows, and the few that don’t will run in WSL2. You can switch out apps one at a time, and take the time to get comfortable with the alternatives.
Once you’re comfortable not using any Windows-only apps, changing the OS but using all of the same applications is very easy to do. Changing OS and application stack at the same time is an enormous obstacle.
I believe this is also why a lot of corporate and government Linux migrations fail: they try to change everything at the same time and that’s too steep a learning curve.
FWIW, Window NT was (and it's descendents remain) a serious OS. It was a reimplementation (with improvements) of the widely respected VMS.
The Mac folks didn't have a protected mode multitasking OS for another ten years, when they finally ported a version of Unix. Prior to that port, MacOS was as bletcherous a disaster as all of the pre-NT Windowses.
Nowadays, all the OSes are protected mode multitasking. so which one you use makes no difference.
-
Almost 25 years ago, I wrote a blog post with the title ‘jumping ship slowly’ about leaving Windows (XP was awful, it was mind boggling to me that Vista managed to make people nostalgic for XP). My advice remains the same:
Don’t try switching OS first. The OS is the most easily replaceable bit in the stack. Switch applications first. Most ‘Linux’ apps are cross platform. They’ll run on Windows, and the few that don’t will run in WSL2. You can switch out apps one at a time, and take the time to get comfortable with the alternatives.
Once you’re comfortable not using any Windows-only apps, changing the OS but using all of the same applications is very easy to do. Changing OS and application stack at the same time is an enormous obstacle.
I believe this is also why a lot of corporate and government Linux migrations fail: they try to change everything at the same time and that’s too steep a learning curve.
@david_chisnall For many corps and orgs switching from proprietary microsoft office format to ODF would be a manageable step that would take them most of the way towards FOSS
-
The need for an Internet connection to register and the linking of the license to a motherboard were the deal breakers. My 2K machine had gone through four motherboard upgrades by that point and was often updated somewhere where the Internet was flaky to nonexistent. The tellytubby UI was awful.
Yes, that was what finally got me to leave Windows, too. I'd been using #Linux full-time at work since mid-2000, which helped a lot.
It must be twenty years since I last owned a machine running #Windows. (The work laptop doesn't count.) If it hadn't been for #Microsoft's intrusive anti-piracy measures, I might be running Windows even now.
-
@david_chisnall For many corps and orgs switching from proprietary microsoft office format to ODF would be a manageable step that would take them most of the way towards FOSS
@turbulent @david_chisnall I've been trying to convince people of this for a while now. Mostly, I got blank stares.
-
Almost 25 years ago, I wrote a blog post with the title ‘jumping ship slowly’ about leaving Windows (XP was awful, it was mind boggling to me that Vista managed to make people nostalgic for XP). My advice remains the same:
Don’t try switching OS first. The OS is the most easily replaceable bit in the stack. Switch applications first. Most ‘Linux’ apps are cross platform. They’ll run on Windows, and the few that don’t will run in WSL2. You can switch out apps one at a time, and take the time to get comfortable with the alternatives.
Once you’re comfortable not using any Windows-only apps, changing the OS but using all of the same applications is very easy to do. Changing OS and application stack at the same time is an enormous obstacle.
I believe this is also why a lot of corporate and government Linux migrations fail: they try to change everything at the same time and that’s too steep a learning curve.
@david_chisnall this is very good advice for anyone doing a major shift in their environment.
-
Almost 25 years ago, I wrote a blog post with the title ‘jumping ship slowly’ about leaving Windows (XP was awful, it was mind boggling to me that Vista managed to make people nostalgic for XP). My advice remains the same:
Don’t try switching OS first. The OS is the most easily replaceable bit in the stack. Switch applications first. Most ‘Linux’ apps are cross platform. They’ll run on Windows, and the few that don’t will run in WSL2. You can switch out apps one at a time, and take the time to get comfortable with the alternatives.
Once you’re comfortable not using any Windows-only apps, changing the OS but using all of the same applications is very easy to do. Changing OS and application stack at the same time is an enormous obstacle.
I believe this is also why a lot of corporate and government Linux migrations fail: they try to change everything at the same time and that’s too steep a learning curve.
I switched basically full time to Linux in 2008, after vista blew up two months in a row and I'd spent time rebuilding my install.
But I'd already been using only open source cross platform available tools on windows for several years at that point.
Before windows XP, all our machines ran OS/2, with star office on them - so openoffice and later libreoffice was something I was already comfortable with.
-
Almost 25 years ago, I wrote a blog post with the title ‘jumping ship slowly’ about leaving Windows (XP was awful, it was mind boggling to me that Vista managed to make people nostalgic for XP). My advice remains the same:
Don’t try switching OS first. The OS is the most easily replaceable bit in the stack. Switch applications first. Most ‘Linux’ apps are cross platform. They’ll run on Windows, and the few that don’t will run in WSL2. You can switch out apps one at a time, and take the time to get comfortable with the alternatives.
Once you’re comfortable not using any Windows-only apps, changing the OS but using all of the same applications is very easy to do. Changing OS and application stack at the same time is an enormous obstacle.
I believe this is also why a lot of corporate and government Linux migrations fail: they try to change everything at the same time and that’s too steep a learning curve.
@david_chisnall That's the exact strategy I took back in 2007 while managing my own IT business. I was a "certified Microsoft everything" but had been working with pretty much every OS out there at the time because my clientelle was diverse. I switched to open-source software first, one here, one there, and eventually had replaced all things MS. I then ran a dual-boot system until I was comfortable with using my new open source OS. 19 years later, I've almost convince my wife to give it a up
-
Almost 25 years ago, I wrote a blog post with the title ‘jumping ship slowly’ about leaving Windows (XP was awful, it was mind boggling to me that Vista managed to make people nostalgic for XP). My advice remains the same:
Don’t try switching OS first. The OS is the most easily replaceable bit in the stack. Switch applications first. Most ‘Linux’ apps are cross platform. They’ll run on Windows, and the few that don’t will run in WSL2. You can switch out apps one at a time, and take the time to get comfortable with the alternatives.
Once you’re comfortable not using any Windows-only apps, changing the OS but using all of the same applications is very easy to do. Changing OS and application stack at the same time is an enormous obstacle.
I believe this is also why a lot of corporate and government Linux migrations fail: they try to change everything at the same time and that’s too steep a learning curve.
@david_chisnall I would love to get my workplace off of Windows just so I wouldn't have to use Teams. We could easuly do a slow rollout of LibreOffice and other productivity platforms, we have so many niche software platforms that sell maybe 1,000 very expensive server licenses per year so they never bother to release anything other than Windows and the niche is too small to have any sort of well-supported Linux alternative.
-
J jwcph@helvede.net shared this topic
