That comes with its own risks because Windows has been known to destroy dual boot setups when doing updates. Not always, but it can happen and it’s burnt people.

Dual booting also makes it harder when you decide to get rid of windows fully, because you might yourself accidentally screw your bootloader as part of removing windows.

The option I would personally recommend if you are unsure is to disconnect your windows hard drive, keep it safe, and install Linux on a separate drive. Then you can always drive swap back if you need and you know everything is safe.

You can even put the windows drive back in after installing Linux, and then just use your BIOS boot drive selector to switch where you are booting from. Each drive has it’s own boot record in that case, so there’s less risk of any accidents.

“Fuck with a company” ??

Developing a perfectly legal competing product should not constitute “fucking with a company” and the very fact that it seemingly does is the problem here.

Hehe, you might think that!

In actuality though, I’ve always been the one who had to sort the tech stuff. We got our first family PC when I was 10, and I was the one who knew the most about it. We got the Internet when I was 13, and I was the one who had the passwords, and had to set it all up. Then when we got broadband, the router was actually in my room lol.

So yeah, I’ve always been the Admin, and Dad has always been the one who needed a limited account to protect him from himself.

Yeah. When the cloud has more control over your own files than you do, that’s not a feature, it’s a problem.

I switched my Dad to Linux recently, and set his account up without any superuser access. Updates have to wait until I visit once a week, but it restricts his ability to get himself stuck in any update-related tangles.

Linux has problems, but I’m so glad I don’t have to support my Dad on Windows anymore, because that was far less predictable for me. Like the time it decided to upload all his files to onedrive (despite him having no knolwledge of this, or what it was doing or whether he’d consented or not) and made the Internet unusably slow for 8 hours by totally saturating his meagre connection.

He didn’t even know about onedrive, just phoned me like “The Internet isn’t working, what’s wrong?” and of course onedrive is the last thing I’d have suspected for causing that symptom, which made it so annoying to diagnose.

Much nicer now his OS doesn’t do sneaky things behind his back, or mine.

I bought a refurb Pixel 7 on eBay for like ~$150 and put Graphene on it. It’s not like you have to spend four digits unless you want to.

It’s important not to take things for granted, though. The same bullshit that enriches corporations (and corrupt politicians) at the cost of individuals can happen anywhere with a little complacency and a few bad elections.