I used Windows as my primary OS until early last year, but stopped once using XP was no longer practical and 7 EOL'd. I refuse to install Windows 10 for a multitude of reasons including: the in-place upgrade every couple months that you can't disable, resetting of draconian privacy settings during said upgrades, the "metro" replacements of the start menu and included utilities, and the lack of a "classic theme" that disables all the unnecessary bells-and-whistles.
Since Linux is so customizable, I was able to set up an almost-exact recreation of the Windows 2000/XP "classic" desktop environment. Therefore, I can retain my old workflow while still keeping the system and all its software up to date. It has been a side project for me for a while, and I intend to publish the results online when it's done. Of course, this is only one of many options you have with Linux. I've seen close recreations of classic Mac OS, OS X, NeXTSTEP, CDE and AmigaOS to name a few, and there are a plethora of original desktop environments.
Edit: I might add... my PC specs... 2x Xeon E5-2670 (8 cores each), 32 (soon to be 48) GB of RAM, GTX 970ti (I don't game), and at one time Windows XP x64 ;) I still do have 7 installed for certain things that I can't do in a VM.
I tried to get into Linux via ubuntu 15 years or so ago but that’s about when I started getting more into cars vs. computers so my interest petered out. I still run XP via virtualbox on my macs though if I need to run older software.
The crazy thing is on these old intel based macs installing an SSD took them from being worn out and slow immediately to fully booting up from a cold shutdown in <20 sec. That was on my $100 2006 macbook. The same could probably be done with any PC as well, but having the SATA HD interface 10-15 years ago on these macs helped me extend the usefulness by another few years.
Linux is the answer.
I used Windows as my primary OS until early last year, but stopped once using XP was no longer practical and 7 EOL'd. I refuse to install Windows 10 for a multitude of reasons including: the in-place upgrade every couple months that you can't disable, resetting of draconian privacy settings during said upgrades, the "metro" replacements of the start menu and included utilities, and the lack of a "classic theme" that disables all the unnecessary bells-and-whistles.
Since Linux is so customizable, I was able to set up an almost-exact recreation of the Windows 2000/XP "classic" desktop environment. Therefore, I can retain my old workflow while still keeping the system and all its software up to date. It has been a side project for me for a while, and I intend to publish the results online when it's done. Of course, this is only one of many options you have with Linux. I've seen close recreations of classic Mac OS, OS X, NeXTSTEP, CDE and AmigaOS to name a few, and there are a plethora of original desktop environments.
Edit: I might add... my PC specs... 2x Xeon E5-2670 (8 cores each), 32 (soon to be 48) GB of RAM, GTX 970ti (I don't game), and at one time Windows XP x64 ;) I still do have 7 installed for certain things that I can't do in a VM.
I tried to get into Linux via ubuntu 15 years or so ago but that’s about when I started getting more into cars vs. computers so my interest petered out. I still run XP via virtualbox on my macs though if I need to run older software.
The crazy thing is on these old intel based macs installing an SSD took them from being worn out and slow immediately to fully booting up from a cold shutdown in <20 sec. That was on my $100 2006 macbook. The same could probably be done with any PC as well, but having the SATA HD interface 10-15 years ago on these macs helped me extend the usefulness by another few years.