As you will no doubt be aware, Microsoft announced support for Windows 7 will end in just a few days time. Theoretically this leaves users open to all sorts of nasties, malware, viruses and so on.

The obvious option is to upgrade to Win10 which can still be done FOC if you have a Win7/8 serial number. I like many others had settled with Win7. Whilst not the biggest Microsoft fan, Win7 on the whole has worked for me. I do have Win10 on another PC which is used very occasionally and I'm not keen. So I started to look at the alternatives, namely a Linux distribution.

I've played with Linux over the years but nothing too serious. This time I thought I'd really go for it. Having attempted the Win10 update on my main PC which failed I thought I'd have a good go at replacing Windows once and for all.

There are many Linux Distros out there but I'm working with Linux Mint which seems to get great reviews and has fantastic support. I've built a cheap PC solely for testing on so I don't mess up my main systems! Linux can be run on very limited, older systems.

I'm writing this message on my laptop which I've just upgraded to Linux Mint. I've installed Windows 7 on a VirtualBox so it has the protection of being inside Linux but can be run full screen should the need arise to run anything Linux struggles with.

I'm playing with the alternative software, Gimp, Krita etc. and also colour management which I see can be controlled in Gimp now.

I'm still a way off replacing Windows, Photoshop etc. but have made good progress with Linux this last couple of days and I'm finding my feet on the excellent platform.

Interested to start discussions with folk considering doing the same or already running Linux and also the possibility longer term of using it for printing sublimation etc. I'm still a Linux newbie but learning daily :-)