Almost 25 years ago, I wrote a blog post with the title ‘jumping ship slowly’ about leaving Windows (XP was awful, it was mind boggling to me that Vista managed to make people nostalgic for XP). My advice remains the same:

Don’t try switching OS first. The OS is the most easily replaceable bit in the stack. Switch applications first. Most ‘Linux’ apps are cross platform. They’ll run on Windows, and the few that don’t will run in WSL2. You can switch out apps one at a time, and take the time to get comfortable with the alternatives.

Once you’re comfortable not using any Windows-only apps, changing the OS but using all of the same applications is very easy to do. Changing OS and application stack at the same time is an enormous obstacle.

I believe this is also why a lot of corporate and government Linux migrations fail: they try to change everything at the same time and that’s too steep a learning curve.

Remember how I had my students rewrite a scene from Macbeth as if they were live-streaming it?

Y'all, I am F U C K I N G D E A D reading these. 😂

So, you didn't get the long form census? Same. 😡

That's why I've made The Long Form Census We All Wanted.

It asks the REAL questions that Statistics Canada was too afraid to!
70+ questions across 9 categories.

And yes, I will publish the full results.

❌ Don't answer in the comments...
✅ Take it at https://census.todmaffin.com

Y'all already heard that Canada has decided that Canadian citizen can pass, retroactively, from parent to child for more than one generation -- so that if your parent, or grandparent, or great-grandparent was Canadian, you can get Canadian citizenship. (And if you didn't know that, look at https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/dual-citizenship-eh-under-new-law-millions-of-americans-may-now-also-be-considered-canadian and https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/canadian-citizenship/become-canadian-citizen/eligibility/already-citizen.html)

But the NEW news is, Canada is moving citizenship applications from transgender USians to the top of the queue. So -- if you're trans, you have Canadian ancestry, and you think that you'd like to be Canadian, get that application in!

More about the trans part: https://www.cicnews.com/2026/05/canada-is-fast-tracking-citizenship-certificates-for-trans-americans-0575258.html

EDIT, 14 May 2026: Many folks have posted to me to clarify that there isn't special processing specifically for trans US citizens. Instead, anyone can apply for "urgent" processing, and there are many reasons why an application might be considered urgent. Applicants need to explain why they need urgent processing. (It's not like there's a check-box to say "trans in US".) But trans people with Canadian ancestry have applied for, and received, urgent processing of their citizenship applications.

Buffalo Sabres fans finish singing Canadian National Anthem after the singer's mic stops working.

🇨🇦 🥹 🇺🇸 🏒 ❤️

https://youtu.be/PdFvUMesJzA?si=Dsm9qwu6NmJJBuPk