My life as a computer guy has been a total nightmare when it comes to commercial software. When I was first starting out and barely had 2 nickels to rub together, I had to fight with Microsoft's EULA's, Licensing Agreements, worn out old disks, and product keys to make my old 486 machines run great. These days, I have to deal with their nightmarish bloatware in the form of Telemetry Hosts, and their constant strongarming to use their ecosystem 100% when I dont' 100% agree with it. Same thing with Apple, who seems to assume the user is a technically challenged moron who does not even understand what the big expensive silver thing sitting on their desk is actually used for. Yes, they have their perks - like Garageband in Mac, and the widespread commercial use of Microsoft Windows on the job - but in the home, I don't want to be bending over and taking it up the butt by guys in suits and ties anymore to get things done with my computer that I want to get done.

I know I've already mentioned this, but Linux is an Open Source operating system created by Linux Torvaldes in the image of AT&T SCO Unix. It's free for anyone who wants to download and install it (at least for non-commercial use in some cases), and generally it's "versions" known as "distributions" are managed by non-profit organizations such as Ubuntu or Slackware, who manage the "packages" and "releases" of this operating system.

My takeaway from my little experiment was that Linux was the best of the three OSes because of it's ability to run a lot of the same software as Mac and Windows, and also not being limited to 64-bit (Mac OSX), and not having any data colleection (Windows and it's goddamn Telemetry Hosts!). I also am not forced to use a "cloud solution" to store my data, nor am I forced to purchase an OS Specific version of certain software to make it run on the platform - ie games in my Steam library. It also does not hound me about the default Browser (ie Edge/Safari - fuck both of those).

• CPU requirements are difficult, I've run it on as low as a 2.6GHz Pentium 4 Dell Dimension 4600 in 2003, and but pretty much anything oyu can dig up at a thrift shop should run fine. My slowest current machine is my 1.6GHz late 2015 iMac 21.5"
• You want at least 2GB of RAM for it to run comfortably. The Dell P4 I had had 4GB of RAM in it, the E6440 I'm writing this on has 16GB, my iMac has 8. Performance has very very rarely been a problem. Running The Witcher: Deluxe Edition at pretty high detail using Proton in Steam on the iMac with intel graphics barely drops frames - if that's any indication of performance.
• The minimum resolution says 1024x768, but I've seen it drop as low as 800x600 or 640x480 when running older Windows products in Wine (one of my use cases). You should be able to get some pretty spritely performance even using an Intel UHD chipset built into a Core 2 based laptop.
• it states you need at least a 20GB HDD, TBH, HDDs being as cheap as they are these days (especially SATA), there's no excuse to not have at least a 160GB HDD in a daily driver. This E6440 I wrote this on has a 512GB 6gb/s SSD in SATA, and my iMac has a hybrid 1TB HDD in it. I've got more space than I need or know what to do with these days.
• DRM/UEFI/Secure Boot/TPM OPTIONAL - all of that is supported in Linux Mint. There's even hard disk encryption of their own so you can protect your data with DoD level defense. Windows 11 REQUIRES a TPM and UEFI to work - such bullshit, and such an e-waste generator. And apple refuses to support 32-bit software anymore, which was a big reason why I swapped.

Most Linux distributions offer multiple Graphical User interfaces. At it's core, Linux is based on Unix, which is a command-line driven operating system just like DOS was. There's been XFCE, Xfree86, Gnome, KDE, and countless others since the early 1990's - trying to emulate Windows or Mac OS, or creating their own interface entirely.

SCREENSHOT	Interface & Description
Cinnamon Interface	The Linux Mint Cinnamon interface is the sleek, modern, full featured interface that is used the most by Linux Mint users (myself included). It's also the most popular one to use. This gives the user experience of a modern operating system without a lot of the pains of a modern operating system - such as required Cloud login to sign onto the Operating System (ie Windows login or Apple ID). While the other two make it sound like this is less stable, and more "bloated" (which it only slightly is IMHO), it's actually a very solid interface and what I'm running on ALL of my *modern* machines running Linux Mint, including the E6440 I'm writing this on, my iMAC, and a Dell Precision T5400 tower I have as a backup computer for those two. The "safe" route with it would be the minimum of a Core 2-era CPU like a Core 2 Duo or COre 2 Quad. I've even run this interface on Core 2 machines such as a 2012 Dell Vostro, and a 2014 Dell U240 Pentium system.
MATE Interface	MATE is a lightweight, classic-style interface for Linux Mint designed with performance and stability in mind. It's based on the older Gnome 2 Desktop circa 2006-2011, and gets updated slower and lacks some of the features the Mint interface has. I would maybe use this on much older hardware, such as a Pentium-D or a Pentium 4, or possibly stronger Embedded systems, such as these newer 486-core based machines that run at 200MHz but have SATA and UEFI.
XFCE Interface	XFCE is actually a long standing Linux interface - also known as Xfree86 (which I used in Slackware Linux 96' on my first Linux box in 2001). It's extremely light on resources and extremely stable, and intended for using Linux for critical things with a GUI. It's also far more limited in feature set. I would use this on a Pentium 4 with 2GB of RAM, or anything older capable of having that much memory.

Creating a Flash Drive installer - How I create all my flash drives is by writing the ISO image to a Flash Drive of my choosing using Balena Etcher. Basically, I download the standalone Etecher program, and write the ISO by following the directions on screen.

At the boot menu, look for an entry that says things like "USB Thumbstick" or "USB 2.0 Flash Drive" or "Kingstom Datatraveler" or "Cruizer Glide" (ie the name of the Flash Drive's branding), and then select that and boot from it.

What you will see is a little bit of the boot process for Linux mint before getting a Windows/Apple type splash screen with the Mint logo in the middle that covers over the Linux boot process - to view it you can press ESC - and it will show you the boot process in the background as it goes down the screen! Not just is this useful for impatient people like myself to see that the computer is actually doing something, but it's also useful for technical people like myself to troubleshoot the operating system's load process if something goes wrong during boot time.

You will now be dropped at the Linux Mint Desktop - but hold on - this is not a "full install" just yet. You CAN use it like this - off the USB Stick/CD-ROM - as it's called a Live Install - but you are limited to that smaller (and potentially ReadOnly) storage device rather than utilizing the computer's full hard disk. You will see a small icon in the upper corner of the screen that states "Install Linux Mint" - double click on that icon and then follow the steps on screen to setup your computer.