Hi all, newbie here.
Newbie to Linux at least. I got into computers 30-odd years ago when I did a higher level course in Mechanical and Computer-aided Engineering back when the only viable operating system available to me was MS-DOS. I've been using computers on a daily basis ever since but (thankfully) have forgotten everything I ever knew about DOS. I've built my own PCs ever since, the latest being a few years ago now. I've stuck with Windows 7 because I'm familiar and comfortable with it despite MS withdrawing support, but lately I've been getting warnings of impending doom due - they say - to a failing system disk. I've been using a 160Gb SATA disk as a system disk and a 2Tb disk for data to mitigate any damage incurred from the kind of failure MS is predicting so even if the system disk is toast I *shouldn't* suffer too much apart from the loss of some of the programs I use.
I've bought a 240Gb Kingston SSD SATA disk on a Black Friday deal for 17 of our UK pounds with the intention of replacing the system disk sooner than later, but I'm thinking about installing Linux Mint instead of Win 7. I'm pretty sure my CPU and memory will cope with the change - I'll post a screenshot to show what I've got.
I've been reading up on Linux Mint a bit to see if it will run any of the programs I use. I already use Libre Office under Windows so I'm familiar with that, but I do like Irfanview for image editing so I'd like to be able to use that. I also use Garmin Express to update my satnav, and Any Video Converter to manage YouTube downloads and video conversion.
Can any kind person tell me if I'll be able to use these programs under Linux, or what alternative programs are available for Linux? I'm asking because I'd like to make a clean break with Microsoft.
TIA
Newbie to Linux at least. I got into computers 30-odd years ago when I did a higher level course in Mechanical and Computer-aided Engineering back when the only viable operating system available to me was MS-DOS. I've been using computers on a daily basis ever since but (thankfully) have forgotten everything I ever knew about DOS. I've built my own PCs ever since, the latest being a few years ago now. I've stuck with Windows 7 because I'm familiar and comfortable with it despite MS withdrawing support, but lately I've been getting warnings of impending doom due - they say - to a failing system disk. I've been using a 160Gb SATA disk as a system disk and a 2Tb disk for data to mitigate any damage incurred from the kind of failure MS is predicting so even if the system disk is toast I *shouldn't* suffer too much apart from the loss of some of the programs I use.
I've bought a 240Gb Kingston SSD SATA disk on a Black Friday deal for 17 of our UK pounds with the intention of replacing the system disk sooner than later, but I'm thinking about installing Linux Mint instead of Win 7. I'm pretty sure my CPU and memory will cope with the change - I'll post a screenshot to show what I've got.
I've been reading up on Linux Mint a bit to see if it will run any of the programs I use. I already use Libre Office under Windows so I'm familiar with that, but I do like Irfanview for image editing so I'd like to be able to use that. I also use Garmin Express to update my satnav, and Any Video Converter to manage YouTube downloads and video conversion.
Can any kind person tell me if I'll be able to use these programs under Linux, or what alternative programs are available for Linux? I'm asking because I'd like to make a clean break with Microsoft.
TIA