Replacing Windows? (Premium)

I've been using and evaluating Windows for over 20 years, but I've always tested its most important competitors as well. This provides a perspective that I find lacking elsewhere. After all, how could I know that Windows was "better" if I'd never used the alternatives?

But yes, I've strayed.

In the 1990's, I began using various Linux distributions, and this was so long ago that when I first downloaded this system, I did so using 1.44 MB floppy disk images. For Slackware.

I also used various versions of IBM's OS/2, and was convinced it was superior to Windows until, of course, Microsoft yanked the key feature---Windows application compatibility---that made this system viable in the first place.

I tested BeOS when it was ported to x86 in the late 1990's, positive that Jean-Louis Gassée was onto something. (I still wonder about this.)

I tested OpenStep, briefly, and then the first and only x86-compatible versions of the Rhapsody Developer Preview after Apple purchased NeXT. (I soon after tested Windows NT for the first time on the same PC, a Dell laptop.)

When Apple started dual-booting Mac OS X with its Classic Mac OS, I purchased an iBook specifically for testing purposes. And have spent the intervening 17 years purchasing and using more Macs than have most Apple enthusiasts.

During the 2000's, I also continued testing various flavors of Linux, and for many years I regularly maintained at least one PC specifically for this purpose. Later, I purchased at least two netbooks that came with Linux.

Most recently, I've tested Chrome OS on various Chromebooks and other PCs. And I've tested Apple's iPad Pro to see whether the company's vision of the post-PC future was fact or fiction. (It's a bit of both.)

And that's just the PC-like platforms. I've obviously spent a lot of time testing various phones, tablet, and other mobile devices, and tons of home-based digital media solutions of all kinds. I used proprietary PCMCIA-based wireless networking cards before the Wi-Fi standards were a thing. MP3 players of all kinds back in that era. And much more. But let's stay focused here.

Windows.

It occurred to me this week that it seems like I've been actively seeking to replace Windows ever since I first started using it. That's not strictly true, of course. But in many ways, this testing has been like speed dating, a chance to peek off to the side and see if there was anything interesting out there.

And heck, I hated Windows at one point. Did not respect Microsoft at all.

When I was an Amiga user in the late 1980's and early 1990's, right when Microsoft was moving comfortably into its industry dominance with Windows 3.x, I had nothing but contempt for the company. It was second rate, and so were its products. Especially MS-DOS. And especially that hack that ran on top of it.

But there were little things that drew me, in time, to Microsoft and to Windows.

Windows for Workgroups 3.11, for example, was an early p...

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