Put simply, I know what I don’t know.
This means I am aware that there is a whole lot going on behind the scenes that I am not privy to and, furthermore, can do little to change. Crypticism aside, what it all boils down to, at least for me, is trust.
Major Trust Issues
I have trust issues, and rightfully so. I have hacked and been hacked. I have gained and I have lost. My journey toward taking security seriously, on a personal level, went far beyond the methods I employed and trained in while working as a network engineer for the better half of my career.
If you are a Windows user, then you know, as well as I do, that you can’t leave your desk to use the restroom without returning to another update. Every time you boot, reboot, start, or unlock your computer, there always seems to be an update that needs to be applied, a reminder for later, or a notification informing you that a reboot is required for these updates to take effect.
Viruses, Malware, & Tracking…Oh My!
The features we have now are what used to be called spyware, back in the early days of computing. Now, sold to us as features in order to help our every day lives. More reason why I trust the system less and less with each passing day. Having Windows means having a good anti-virus program, anti-malware program, browser addon for security, daily background scans…fear. We all live in fear while using Windows. Every one of us is terrified that we will lose our data, our bank accounts, our entire lives. It is no longer a matter of if, but instead when it will happen to us.
I spent my career locking out the bad-actors. Bigger firewalls, stronger software, I could go on… but in the end, every action taken in every company that I worked for, was built out of fear. The one thing I learned throughout my career was no matter how much work you put into locking your front door, none of that will matter if end-users are not trained on security.
Our Digital Life
But at the end of the day, what made me turn to Linux full-time—instead of just for work-related duties—was peace of mind. I lived in a state of perpetual worry because of uncertainties that were out of my control. Like many people, I realized that I had kept years of my unpublished work scattered across systems, backup folders, and a multitude of cloud providers. The single thing that every piece of software and online platform shared was a single point of failure: Windows1.
All it would take was a patch installed one day too late, or years of historical passwords saved in a freshly compromised hash, for my life’s work to be lost—no matter how diligent I thought I was being.
Time to Say Goodbye
Thus began my quest into what became the greatest tech decision I have made post-career. Now, I can sleep at night knowing that I am no longer riding shotgun in a vehicle surrounded by thin, plate-glass windows made of vulnerabilities. And yes, Linux can also be hacked, but let’s face it: I am not on anyone’s radar to justify a targeted attack with specially hand-crafted exploits designed for my kernel.
But I digress.
In a future post, I will list the countless benefits of using Linux over Windows as a daily driver—not to mention how much damn fun I have had just with the learning process alone.
The transition was not as difficult as I had feared, and there are several Linux distributions tailor-made for users switching directly from Windows to help ease the growing pains of the learning curve.
I hope you make the switch as well and free yourself from the confines of fear.
Related posts
- 5 Linux Shortcuts That Changed How I Work
- The One Windows Feature That Solves Everything: A Public Service Announcement
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Truly, I understand that the common denominator with nearly every computer mishap, issue, virus, etc., is myself. ↩︎