Originally Posted by BonnieLass;
Starting to consider the possibility that Windies do not like FireFox for some reason.
I've been using Firefox (and now Waterfox) since it was called NCSA Mosaic and came on a 720k floppy disk. Then after that it was called Netscape Navigator and came on 2 x 1.44 MB floppy disks. Now it's called Firefox. Firefox sells your data, so a group of programmers rebelled, saying that this was against the original concept, and started Waterfox, which is *very* privacy-driven. The interface is the same. Some sites, like the Nationwide, won't accept it, and so I use Firefox to access my bank account. Waterfox is significantly slimmer and faster than Firefox.
Firefox isn't the problem. Windows is.
The last version of Windows I used was Windows 7, which is still installed on this desktop computer. It used to be that Linux just didn't give you the functionality that Windows did, this is no longer the case. Linux can do everything that Windows can. It just doesn't have as many games. I installed Ubuntu 24.04 LTS on top of Windows 7 and the two operating systems sit perfectly well alongside each other. The laptop came (second-hand) with Windows 10 installed, and it doesn't sit alongside Linux, it kept on trying to take control, so I formatted the hard drive and made it Linux only, incidentally releasing nearly a gig of space.
There are several versions of Linux available, the most popular being Ubuntu and Mint. Try several (they're all free) and find the one that suits you. They are all 'try before you buy', you can run them off a USB stick, to see if you like them, and only install them to your hard drive if you want. They all come with Firefox, Thunderbird and LibreOffice (for Writer and spreadsheets and stuff). It's just the User Interface that is different. Ubuntu is the most Windows-like, Mint is preferred by power users.
If you want other stuff (like VLC to watch videos) these are available in the snapstore - all applications under Linux are free.
What makes you Master (or Mistress) of the Universe is Terminal, the Command Line Interface. You don't have to use it if you don't want to, but it gives you total control of your computer, which Windows keeps you from doing. Unix (of which Linux is an offshoot) has the command su for superuser, which allows you to do anything, including crash your computer. Linux has sudo, which is almost as powerful, but prevents you from bricking the hard drive. If an application you want isn't in the snapstore, you can install it using sudo apt-get install <application name>.
You can also download Tor, which is a Firefox-like browser. If you're into privacy (I am) it's the browser that MI5 and MI6 use, because it totally conceals your identity. It is much slower than Firefox.