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

@cybervegan
@Ralph_de_Rijke

This fingerprint reader problem you mentioned is bothering me a bit, because that's definitely a function I need.

Does anyone know a solution for that or can you recommend sources where I can search for a solution myself?

#linux

@KaCi @Ralph_de_Rijke It depends on the fingerprint reader - there ARE some that are supposed to work, so you may be lucky. There's an application in the Mint Administration menu called "Fingerprints" and it will tell you if it detects your fingerprint reader, and allow you to set it up (enrol fingerprints) if it can see it.

All the fingerprint readers seem to be made by just a handful of manufacturers, who don't seem to be particularly interested in helping make them work for Linux, leaving Linux developers with only the option of reverse-engineering them. That doesn't mean they'll never be supported, but it does slow support down.

Edit: definitely something to test from USB boot, before actual installation.

@cybervegan
Thank you for the explanation. I hope that I will be lucky with mine.

"Edit: definitely something to test from USB boot, before actual installation."

Why? What is the advantage compared to the dual boot?

@KaCi You can test it before you install so you will know in advance whether or not it will work. The Mint install is a "live CD" which means the install USB boots into an environment very much like how the installed system will look and work - the installer is literally just one of the applications you can run. This way, for peace of mind, you can run and test nearly everything before you commit to installing.
@cybervegan
Thank you for the explanation again. 😊
I decided to be brave and commit to the unknown and solve the problems when they actually occur with the help of the community. The dual boot gives me enough peace of mind, because if I understood it correctly I can always just boot windows until the problem is solved right?
@KaCi Yes, dual boot means you have a way to choose which operating system will run when you start your computer up. If you're in Linux and need to do something in Windows, you just have to restart, and choose Windows as the boot option (you will probably have to choose using your computer's BIOS boot menu, often F12 on an Acer laptop).