➡ The article discusses the upcoming changes to Windows and Mac OS, and suggests Linux as a viable alternative. It highlights the privacy concerns with the new features in Windows 11 and Apple Intelligence. The author reassures readers that Linux is user-friendly, free, and open-source, making it a safe and cost-effective option. They also provide tips for beginners, such as starting with the Ubuntu distribution and considering pre-installed Linux computers.
➡ This text provides a guide for beginners on how to use a USB stick to boot Linux on their computer, and how to install apps on Ubuntu, a type of Linux. It explains that you can buy a pre-configured USB stick or make your own, and gives instructions on how to boot your computer from the USB. It also discusses the challenges of installing apps on Linux due to the variety of different versions, and recommends sticking to Ubuntu for simplicity. The text also provides tips on how to install apps from the Ubuntu App Center, as well as using App Image and deb files, and mentions that some more specialized apps may require more complex installation methods.
➡ This text discusses the challenges of using Windows and Linux operating systems together. It suggests using a dual boot system, where you can choose which operating system to use when you start your computer, or using a virtual machine, which lets you run one operating system inside another. However, it warns that Windows can be unfriendly to sharing a computer with another operating system and can cause compatibility problems. The text also mentions the importance of privacy and recommends using Linux for activities like social media and email to avoid Windows’ tracking features.

Many of you now know that there are several headwinds that demand to be addressed with regards to Windows and Mac OS and the solution is to use Linux. Just to remind you of these headwinds, many of you on Windows 10 are about to lose support from Microsoft and will be forced to migrate to Windows 11 starting on October 14, 2025, which is the week after this video is released. Some of you have machines that are running perfectly fine but are suddenly labeled as machina non grata by Microsoft because it does not have a TPM security chip, so they want to consider it e waste.

Now you cannot upgrade these to Windows 11 in the meantime if your machine allows it. Once you move to Windows 11, the Copilot features are now activated and suddenly you have a very invasive spy machine that that records every action you take on the computer. It doesn’t take a privacy guru like me to feel that this just isn’t right. Every new computer model is pushing the AI companion as something you need, but you know you don’t need it, nor do you want it watching you. Those eyeing Those fancy new M4 MacBooks will be subject to the same threats as Windows with the release of Apple Intelligence.

In fact, they’re already running the media analysis D spyware now. But though you know you ought to switch to Linux, many of you balk at this because you don’t know what to expect. Now let me tell you a little fact. If I hand a computer running Linux already pre installed to a non computer expert, they’ll be able to do normal things very intuitively. It’s not that difficult if you’re using Windows for some specific work application. Maybe you’re not aware of the dual boot option or the virtual machine option. It doesn’t mean you have to abandon Windows 100%.

What holds you back are fears that you will make a huge mistake and it is irreversible or fear of installation woes. In this video I’ll discuss some of those fears and tell you how to overcome them with little facts and solutions. In the last video I gave you a guide on what machines to use for $200 and up. Moving to Linux is not that big of a deal. You can jump right in and I’ll teach you how. Stay right there. Linux is free. Maybe you missed this part, so I will state it right up front. One of the distinguishing features about Linux is that the operating system and most of the apps you use for normal day to day computing are all free.

So this is the first fear to eliminate. It does not cost you anything to make a move. In fact, you can even test your computer first before you make a permanent move. So there’s even less risk. And not only is Linux free, but it’s open source. This is a product of the architecture of how Linux got started and how it has evolved. There’s an organization that focuses on this aspect of Linux and you see references to foss, which is free and open source software. The Linux you use today was actually made possible by Richard Stallman, who founded the Free Software foundation and created GNU Linux.

All versions of Linux are actually based on his work. But the side effect of open source software is that it is difficult to infect this ecosystem with spyware. Spyware embedded by manufacturers are often easily detected and removed. So this makes Linux the safest option for privacy. But moving to Linux doesn’t cost you anything, makes you safer and allows you to use even old computers. Win, win, win. Using a Linux machine Obviously the biggest obstacle to most people is that they have no tech skills to install Linux. I’ll solve this for some of you a little later, but here’s another choice for you.

You can buy a computer that’s already pre installed with Linux. In fact, I think you’ll be able to buy more used computers with Linux. Since Windows 10 support and many old computers will not work with Windows 11. Look at eBay for sources. I announced this in the last video as well. We will be starting a crowdfunding project of a Linux tablet which you can use as a computer. This will be on Indiegogo.com this October. So this is a machine already running Linux out of the box. The main point I want to discuss though is that Linux as an operating system isn’t that different from Windows or Mac os.

I just want to show you these as an example. This is the way Ubuntu shows up when you start it. And it’s a bit different looking than Windows. But I went to Settings and modified the appearance so it looks more like this in my daily use. Frankly, it is so similar to Windows that I hardly think about it anymore. In Windows, Control Panel is a little harder to access. Actually. More clicks on Ubuntu, it’s always on the top, right? Less clicks. It has a lot fewer options than Windows. To be honest, it’s a lot less complicated.

Occasionally you have to use Terminal in Linux, so I have Terminal on the bottom taskbar ready for use. I also use Command on Windows all the time, so that’s the same. It isn’t true that Linux stuff has to be all done Command line. Casual users rarely have to do that. That’s more of a power user thing. Okay, next let’s talk about accessing files. You have File Manager in Windows and Files app on Linux. How different are they? Well, Linux doesn’t use drive references like C drive or D drive. But even on Windows nowadays everything is centralized into a home folder with documents, videos, pictures and downloads.

Same on Linux. Now as apps go, the one thing that distinguishes Linux from Windows is that the apps are free. So you can do your documents using LibreOffice, which does the same thing as Windows 365. The browsers are the same. You have the usual options from Chrome, Firefox, Brave, Chromium and so on. Email is usually done using Thunderbird, which is what I recommend on all platforms anyway for privacy and security reasons. So media consumption is pretty much the same. If most of what you do is what I just mentioned, then there’s really zero learning to be figured out.

You can just learn how to organize Linux according to your preferences. And for ease of transitioning, I always pre install certain apps a certain way. And I do have a much more complex setup because I’m a software developer. These are just the basics. If you have a lot of fear, then this shows you that once you have Linux running, it’s not really that much different than anything else. In these modern times there are so many Linux distros, although there’s only one real Linux, and that is Linux.org which is headed by Linus Torvalds. There are now many variants of Linux, or more specifically GNU Linux, and these are called distros.

And I said earlier that all these GNU versions come from Richard Stallman’s GNU project. We don’t need to engage the Linux police in distinguishing GNU from Linux, as that just turns people off. So we will just call everything Linux and ignore the police. So Linux as you know it is a combination of the Linux kernel and gnu. I do want you to know that there are many versions of Linux distros or Linux distributions where people modify GNU and add custom stuff. And you will need to know which to choose. In general, I advise brand new users to always try the Distro Ubuntu first.

And you find this on the site ubuntu.com and the reason for this is device compatibility. Canonical, which makes Ubuntu, is a huge company, and because they’re big, they have the resources to certify computer models and test new devices. So when a new computer model is released, the biggest incompatibility often arises via the need to support new drivers to to support some new feature. Those drivers have to be submitted to Linux.org and Linux Store Valves has to personally approve those and it takes months for it to arrive at your particular distro. Old computers will tend to not have driver issues, but new computers do.

And from personal experience, if some distro doesn’t work on my device I try Ubuntu and it usually works. So this is the supreme test in my opinion, that Linux will support your device. Once you get Ubuntu running, by all means try out some other distro. But here I caution you again as you will learn later, the choice of distro means it affects how apps are installed. So for newbies please listen to me. Stick to Debian based or Ubuntu based variants or you will just find it difficult to install new software. This is again another big reason I just stick to Ubuntu.

I don’t really have time to tweak installing Linux 101. I’m not going to go into full detail into installing Linux as there are many videos that do that, but I will give you a quick way to do this if you’re more of a beginner. First, Linux is typically available in a try or install kind of mode using a USB stick. I have to admit that after helping so many people in my community, the big setback is is at this very initial point creating a USB stick. Yes, it takes a long time to give a newbie instructions on how to make a USB stick.

So just to provide an option you can go to Braxme store and just get this USB stick pre configured. It is $20 including shipping. Obviously you can make your own USB stick. You download the image from ubuntu.com and you flash it to the USB stick using Balena etcher app. But for some people this is scary so I will help you out. This is not for me to have a profit as it costs time and money to make this, but this is just a community service. Assuming you already have a bootable USB stick like this, you have to learn how to start the machine from usb.

This again is another one of those technical hurdles for people. So I compiled a list of common computer models and laid out the instructions for booting a USB stick. This is in the description of this video. I have a PDF file that explains how to boot from usb. Basically what this instruction is is to interrupt the startup of your computer so it will boot from USB instead of the hard drive which it does by default. This requires you to hit some key during startup and then select an alternate startup drive or called the boot device. For example, on lenovo this is F12, for Dell it is F2.

On Macs it is the option key. Typically you just keep tapping on this key until a menu comes up and then you select your USB device instead as your boot device. Once you do this, it will start Linux. Then you get the option to try or install Linux. If you’re new, use try first. Trying means it doesn’t overwrite your computers. You can get to test out the interface and see how things work. This is when you check if you have Internet access, if the files can be accessed, if your headphones and speakers work, and so on.

When you’re doing a Try Linux option you are not affecting your existing computer. So once you remove your USB stick, your computer will run like before. So this is the best way to eliminate that fear. Once you verify that everything works, you can proceed by selecting the install option during startup and this by default will override Windows and you will be full time on Linux. This is the same thing with old Intel Mac, so no difference there. Handling the pain of app installation Now I will expose you to the fact that Linux isn’t perfect. This is where the fragmentation of all these Linux distros causes so many complications.

The main difficulty for a new user is knowing how to install an app. You will realize later on that when you go search for Linux instructions you might be provided with multiple options and you don’t know what’s with this terminology. Like Arch, RPM, Debian, Flatbacks, AppImages and snaps are all about. And I’ll be honest with you, this is in fact a real problem. The solution is that we will stick to one distro and that’s Ubuntu. You may not like Ubuntu because you’ve heard something that someone said here or there about it. Stop. Ignore that. Our goal is simplicity.

Unless you’re an expert, let’s stick to the simplest instructions possible. Use Ubuntu 24.3 or the new long term version of this. If you watch this in April 2026, which hint hint will be 26.04? I’m avoiding the fragmentation by sticking to one thing. When you search for an app to install, you can specifically look for Ubuntu installation instructions in. Absent that, you can look for Debian installation instructions since Ubuntu is based off Debian. Again you can ignore me if you’re an expert, but dealing with beginners you’ll have to trust me on this based on experience. Ubuntu App center so first the good news.

Many apps, especially the common ones, are found in the Ubuntu App Center. The this is what they’re calling their app store and here it is on your Ubuntu installation. This is the first app source you should use and I found most of the apps I need at least 75% on here. But just so you know, sometimes third parties prepare these app packages so they may not be up to date, so you may be forced to install it some other way. But they do have a rating system here to avoid that risk. If the app is rated very good, then you’re usually okay with using it from here.

If not, it usually means the version is too old, so you’ll have to find an alternative installation method. For example, these apps were all in App Center Chromium, Brave, Firefox, Thunderbird, Signal, Steam, LibreOffice, KeePass, XE, VirtualBox, OBS, GIMP. If you can find them in App center they will get update notifications automatically and there’s normally no special thing you have to do after installation. Just click on the app to install and you will find the apps in the Show Apps area. After installation I usually put my favorite apps in the taskbar or it’s called Dash so my dash always has my quickly access apps.

Just right click the app from the Show Apps area and select Pin to Dash. By the way, OpenVPN is built into Linux in the network settings so you never have to install that. So as you can see, no special instructions needed for the majority of apps. Apps and raps can be in a variety of formats and fortunately you don’t need to concern yourself with that. And there is an option in App center to manage apps where you can update and delete apps app images Some apps will still need special attention. The simplest format of installation that I will recommend is to use App Image.

So if multiple options are given to you, if you want to keep things simple, this is the one option to select. When you select this option you will be given a single file as your app. In my case I have organized myself so that I put apps like this in my home folder where I created a new folder called Apps and I just drag these app images there. Now there are some one time instructions I will tell you to get app images to work on Ubuntu 24.3 today and this requires you to use Terminal. This is your first foray into using Terminal and you do this step only once in the lifetime of your ubuntu install sudo apt install lib fuse 2 then hit enter.

Maybe this will be fixed in future versions, but as of today, this version of Ubuntu will require it. Don’t worry. Like many things in Linux, this stuff is done only once. Then from here, to run the app image, just go to Files app. Find the app image file, right click on the file and select Properties. Then select the executable as Program checkbox. That’s it. From here on, clicking on this app will run it. The advantage of an app image is that it requires no installation, it is self contained and is easy to move around. The disadvantage is that it has no app icon by default.

You can search for instructions for making an icon once you’ve graduated to being more of a power user. Deb file the next most common app installation format is a deb file. Deb stands for Debian, which is the Linux family that Ubuntu belongs to. All the popular beginner friendly Linux distros like Mint, Zorin, Popos are all Debian based, so they all will accept a deb file for installation. An example of an app requiring a deb file that is not in App center is Chrome. So if you go to download Chrome it will give you the option of a dev file to install this.

Right click on this file, then select Open with and then from the list of apps choose App center and this will then allow you to install the App Terminal methods. You will find that most of the common apps are installed as I’ve described before. But here we get to the advanced installation of more specialized software and there’s where we get into more complex instructions, often all command line. But this is no different in Windows when apps are very specialized with minimal distribution, or if the app is a server app running in the background, it is not worth it for the developer of the app to spend the time worrying about how to package it.

So often there are manual instructions for installing apps. Again, let’s bear in mind that even in Windows you have to do this for such specialized apps. Thus this is not necessarily something something that impacts non power users and in many cases this is just cut and paste stuff. As a programmer I have to do a lot of this specialized installation, but I just got a new Linux computer, I’m using a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 carbon and I’ve yet to use the command line to install something. So as time goes by this is becoming more rare. Do you have to worry about this? If you do, you’re already an advanced user and in most cases it’s just cut and paste of the instructions onto Terminal.

But you do have to pay attention that the instructions are for Ubuntu specifically. This is where it really benefits to stick to a commonly used distro to avoid issues. Advanced work uses the most significant use of Windows and which is why often we have to support multiple operating systems, is that some specialized apps only work on Windows. This of course is because complex business software like CAD software or Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Photoshop or other video editing software or programming for Windows applications using Microsoft Tools or some rare Ham Radio app or gaming apps are not always available on Linux.

We also have productivity reasons for wanting to stick to a particular application, and that’s perfectly fine. Understand the problem we are trying to solve. Windows 11 is not completely a spyware OS. It watches everything you do and records it. OK, so if everything you do on Windows is solely related to work activities like in my case, video editing, then I don’t need to care if it watches. What I need to partition is the rest of my life. Social media, email communications, web browsing, photo libraries, documents and so on. Those I don’t part do on Windows. That’s where I don’t need the spyware.

So the solution in my case is dual boot. When I start my computer I get the choice of what OS to boot into. I have a two terabyte hard drive and then I have it divided into Windows, Linux and a shared drive that I can call from either Windows or Linux and that’s where I share the documents and videos. Dual boot setup is more advanced. I will link the old dual boot video in the description, but I need to update that as new complications have arisen and needs to be addressed. So watch out for a new video on dual boot.

Dual boot is complex. The reason is that Windows is very unfriendly to sharing a computer with another os. So I’ve ended up with a wipe Linux partition, but since I’ve kept the data in a separate partition it has not caused a crisis since Windows is causing more compatibility problems every day like BitLocker overriding the boot instructions or destroying Linux partitions or affecting boot totally sucked up. But I will discuss that in a separate video as it can get very technical. Windows as a Virtual Machine Another option for you to still have Windows access is to use a virtual machine.

The most user friendly method is to install the app VirtualBox. VirtualBox can be installed from Ubuntu App Center. If you’re more advanced you can use KVM and it will run faster than VirtualBox but but it requires more tech skills to use. I have some old videos on how to use VirtualBox and KVM. This gives you a way to have a virtual Windows installation and then you can use some old version of Windows even if it is not supported like Windows 10. Now for apps that are not performance heavy, this will work fine. This is not a solution though for things like gaming or video editing, since those apps require maximum power.

But for the occasional app that runs only in Windows, this avoids the dead ends because the VM is just a child of the Linux host. Windows cannot spy on the host, it can only spy on itself. And by limiting when you use Windows you basically counter the spyware threat. I caution you not to do the reverse. Do not install a Linux VM on a Windows host as Windows can see what you see. The VM cannot hide if it can be seen on screen then Windows Copilot can track what you’re doing. Summary this is more of an eliminating your fears video in an attempt to get you started.

There’s a monstrously large number of people that need to move to Linux, especially the 44% of Windows users that cannot move to Windows 11. I will have more videos tackling more advanced topics like a refresh of the dual boot approach, and I’ll specifically address Windows 10 upgrades in the next video. Folks, thank you for watching my videos. As many of you know, this channel does not have sponsors and we primarily sustain ourselves by just creating products and services that we use to defend our privacy posture. I’d like to invite you to visit our community site Braxme, which has a growing community of privacy enthusiasts.

There are people from various walks of life and beliefs and they converge together in a mutual support of privacy issues. We have a shop there with products ranging from the Brax virtual phone service, BraxMail, BytesVPN, and other services like flashing and OS. All these are tools used by the privacy aware and you can even talk to the actual users of the products directly. Join us. We’d love to have you there and you don’t even have to identify yourself to be part of the community. The very successful Brax 3 phone is also available for pre order on its second batch.

The first batch has been sold out. Information about that is on braxtech.net thanks also to those who donate to us on patreon local and YouTube memberships. You are all appreciated. See you next time.
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