LIGHTWEIGHT WINDOWS ALTERNATIVES

Looking for the antidote to Windows’ ad stuffing? These might be worth a spin

Linux Mint

No, 2023 is probably not going to be the year of Linux on the desktop either. But if you’re sick of using operating systems that see you as the product, Linux Mint is worth considering.

It comes in three Minty flavours: Cinnamon is the best-looking and most fully featured; MATE Edition has the more classic-looking desktop from the noughties era; and the most lightweight of all is the Xfce Edition, which is designed to go easy on system resources and high on stability. It’s still a 2.5GB download, mind, and it comes pre-installed with a large library of familiar Linux staples that will give you most of the apps you need for day-to-day computing: Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice and Rhythmbox are all on board. It ran perfectly happily from a USB stick on our Windows 11 laptop and is refreshingly fuss-free.

ChromeOS Flex

A Google-sponsored operating system is hardly free of commercial grubbiness, but ChromeOS Flex is a less bothersome way to just get on with stuff in a web browser than Windows 11. In effect, it turns any laptop into a Chromebook, albeit one that doesn’t have access to the Android apps that full-blown Chromebooks do. Still, if you’re already embedded in the Google universe those apps won’t be a huge miss.

The one major downside of ChromeOS Flex is that it doesn’t support dual booting. You can try it out by running the OS from the USB installer without actually installing it, but to benefit from maximum performance and automatic updates, you need to have it fully installed, which you can’t do alongside Windows. Make sure you’re ready to wave goodbye to your Windows installation and all associated data before you commit to the full install.