Thinking about switching from Windows to Linux yesterday created a cascade of thoughts in me I didn’t expect and I would liket to tell you a bit about it, about me. I am an AuDHD cis woman (she), somewhat fluid in gender (autigender) and personality, I constantly grow and adapt.

I am a Xennial and worked as a concept developer and PM in tech during my 20s until my first huge burnout, that made me spend several months on an almost empty island in Thailand and in India and quit my job. During my 30s I worked as a yoga teacher, but I never really recovered from the burnout. Because of that and other health problems, I have been unemployed for several years by now. I live together with beagle Lumi, a rescue from animal testing.

Since I found out that I am autistic 4 years ago, things slowly improved, but I cannot change the fact that I am an autistic, disabled person in an allistic, ableist world. Because of my sensory issues and other aspects of my disability, I can barely exist in the outside world. Besides my daily walks with Lumi and very few planned activities, I spend most of my time at home, so it’s almost impossible for me to meet like minded people IRL. The fact that I live in a very conservative country, city and neighborhood doesn’t help with that either.

As an Anarchist I believe in community and mutual support, but switching to a new operating system with only the online-community here on Mastodon as support is scary. I have an IRL friend who is a sys-admin, but he is specialized in Windows and very busy. I am a fast learner and have exceptional analytical skills, but I am not a programmer, my math skills are extremely limited and the burnout affects my capacity for learning new things. I have a very monotropic mind, am very attached to objects and change can be difficult for me as autistic person.

But currently I feel the need for change, for tidying up my life, my data, myself.

I still have my information architect and project manager skills and I already have a list in my mind of all the things that will be affected by the change and I have a lot of questions. I will write about that in another post, probably several other posts.

Thank you for reading this, thank you for helping me, boosts are welcome.

#ActuallyAutistic #AuDHD #neurodivergent #Linux

@tizlit @BjornW @zompetto @LeelaTorres @20000lbs_of_Cheese @dirkdierickx @mosgaard

Thank you so much for your helpful comments. 🤗
Here’s the plan:

I will choose the dual boot option for the beginning.

On Wednesday my sys-admin friend will help me to install mint or ZorinOS (I have to figure that out until then) on my notebook. I already created an 80 GB partition for the start. With his help I will successively make it bigger and the Windows part smaller in the future.

This will give me time to get used to the GUI, find and install the apps I need and do research concerning hardware problems, that might occur in the future.

So the current task is making the decision if I want to use mint or ZorinOS.

Please correct me and my language if I got anything wrong, I really want to learn how all this works.

#linux

@KaCi this sound like such a good solution, especially since you have the sys-admin friend, helping you getting a good start.

Know that both Mint and Zorin is being recommended as good beginner-distros, so both would be a good pick in each their own way. So take your time checking out the websites and documentation for both, and choose what ever resonates with you the most.

@tizlit @BjornW @zompetto @LeelaTorres @20000lbs_of_Cheese @dirkdierickx