I've felt compelled to post; it just works!
I've got a pc which is over a decade old; I've only ever used Microsoft with my main OS on that machine being windows 7 and then windows 10. With the new requirements for windows 11 being what they were I was considering installing it anyway with some workarounds. My computer appeared to be getting slower, I was annoyed with all of the bloat which goes along with the Microsoft OS, the constant reminders to "finish setting up my device" and use one drive. All of this was a bit too much for me.
I figured I'd have a go at installing a Linux OS. I'd ran Ubuntu years and years ago as an experiment on an evening older pc and it was very much sub par, it looked nice, it was a pain to do anything and didn't play any of the games I wanted at the time.
A little bit of research told me that Linux mint may be a good option. I also read that dual booting can be difficult. So I just backed up my data, and installed it on the hard disk.
It was mostly seamless, I had issues with my graphics driver, which meant I couldn't click the buttons to install mint & crashes, when running off the live disk to see what the os was like. This was part of the reason I just installed it on the hard drive and didn't go through with a 'testing' phase.
Once that was resolved by installing the Nvidia driver I could use mint. This was made quite easy as it was just a few clicks in the gui and made really obvious to see. And the Mint does everything I need it to!
Gaming appears to have come a long, long way, I ran Civ V to test and it worked.
My Bluetooth mouse and keyboard connected without issue.
The libre office suite is great to use and I've found it similar to the Microsoft equivalents.
My computer appears to be faster. I now realise that it was actually just the additional demands of the Microsoft OS on my machine which slowed it.
I have a multi screen set up, this simply just worked, the only tweek I made was selecting my main monitor.
To top it all, and perhaps the most surprising thing for me (and the reason for the post) is the printer just worked. Like, printers never just work. It's just plugged in, recognised and I could print. No additional set up needed.
I'm short, Linux has progressed so much over the years. I thank all those who have worked on it to make it such a great option. It will be my main OS going forward and I'll advocate for it. I'll also ensure that my kids are running a Linux OS when they have computers of their own.
So, if you're reading this and unsure about Linux, don't be. It's great and easy to set up, works flawlessly.