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I realized the other day, with a little pride and a huge dose of incredulity, that it's been about 15 years since I switched from Mac to Linux as my daily PC operating system.

I've even come to think of Linux as an ecosystem unto itself, an alternative to the lock-in that Big Tech companies purposefully try to cultivate in users with a mix of hardware, software, and services.

Since switching, my personal IT strategy has been to use Ubuntu as my daily PC driver and an unlocked Android phone for mobile. Android is based on the Linux kernel, a core component of the operating system, so that pretty much ensures compatibility between my devices.

From that foundation, I just make sure that any other tools I add to the mix are also Linux-compatible, and I'm good to go. Yes, there is sometimes a bit of additional hacking involved to integrate various parts of my setup by tweaking things like settings and permissions — a downside Linux is often derided for. But at least I find that I'm working against the real technical constraints of the tools themselves in these scenarios. I can live with that — and troubleshoot accordingly.

What I'm not working against — and what I simply no longer tolerate — are products that don't work together solely because two trillion-dollar tech companies hate each other. Thus they effectively cripple the products that people pay them good money for in proprietary ways that are often unfixable, all because of the makers' economic interests.

Of course, Linux comes in many different flavors, unlike corporate-controlled operating systems like macOS and Windows. These varied "distros," a shorthand for "distributions" favored by Linux fans, are the subject of heated debate about which is better, which has a nicer interface, and so on. It's also common for Linux users, especially longtime ones, to switch from one distro to another.

For the first time, I'm now doing that myself. My beloved desktop PC running Ubuntu just died, and I'm replacing it with Debian.

To be more specific, I've bought a high-end Acer 516 Chromebook that includes both the default ChromeOS operating system (itself a Google-modified version of Debian) and a virtualized Linux machine that runs a "pure" version of Debian.

About two years ago, I began to warm to Chromebooks as a vehicle to popularize Linux. But, wow, has that capability grown even more over time.

At this point, I find that my new machine's virtualized Debian environment is a truly full-fledged Linux experience, including the ability to customize to my heart's content and install all sorts of apps, Google-approved or not. So far, that includes the open-source photo editor GIMP and multiple non-Chrome web browsers like the pro-privacy Brave and (gasp!) even Firefox.

On a Chromebook! This is surprising stuff if you knew the bare-bones early versions of Chromebooks and/or are still invested in the narrative that they're all just subpar computers.

There are still cheaper, underpowered models out there, to be sure. But it's probably time to at least broaden our view of the product line beyond that.

I wrote this blog post on my new Chromebook, of course, working in the editor Visual Studio Code running on Debian. I also just provisioned a new cloud-based webserver (also running Debian), and I pushed this post to that server via SFTP transfer.

So, yeah. This new machine is definitely doing everything I need so far. Essentially, ChromeOS is working for me as a layer for hardware integration, user interface, and firmware updates. And the Debian virtual machine gives me all the functionality I need.

Nothing against Ubuntu, mind you. Maybe one of these days I might even switch back, if I run into unanticipated issues running Debian in a virtualized box. Then there are always Mint and Fedora options as well... 🙃