i have a suggestion.

Hey you, do YOU hate your stupid fucking windows install? Do you want a free open source alternative? Wanna become more tech literate? Don't want AI baked into your OS? Oh boy do I have the thing for you. YOU CAN DO THIS IN 20 MINUTES WITH NO COMMITMENT OR RISK TO YOUR FILES. Links are marked in pleasant blue. You'll need: one (1) USB flash drive with at least 10-15GB capacity

a working computer with at LEAST: 2gb RAM (4gb recommended) 20gb hard drive space total (100gb recommended) Honestly if it runs windows it will run linux better A working internet connection (5MB/s or above recommended) the understanding that you WILL have to use the terminal (it's not that complex I swear) Step 1: Choose your distro! Unlike Windows or MacOS, Linux is only a kernel, the most basic part of an operating system. Therefore, there are over thirty configurations, known as distros or distributions, to pick from. You should research some distros that you might enjoy, there's no shame in trying a few to see what fits. I personally fully recommend Linux Mint for beginners, because it has an easy to understand installer and handles most of the things for you, it's a great step up from Windows. There is no singular "best distro". All of them have specific use cases. As stated before, for first time users, Linux Mint is my recommendation. As such, this guide will presume you have chosen Linux Mint. If you ask a community full of experienced Linux users what the best distro is, you will either start a flame war or they will tell you that there isn't one. Step 2: Grab your distro's .iso file. You can typically find it on the distro's website. If you want to use Linux Mint, find it here. The file will likely be a couple gigabytes big. I recommend the Cinnamon edition. Step 3: Once you have the .iso, download Rufus. The source code is here. Select your USB drive and previously downloaded .iso file. Leave everything else to the default. Don't use Balena Etcher, it's got telemetry and it's arguably worse. Step 4: Click "start" and wait for it to complete. Step 5: Reboot your computer and enter BIOS. The instructions on entering BIOS vary between motherboards, but you can likely google it if you know what brand of motherboard you have. Step 6: Go to the "boot" section and boot from the USB drive. Step 7: You should now be in what's known as the "live USB" environment. Play around with it if you want. Step 8: If Linux Mint detects a copy of Windows on your hard drive, it will give you the option to install alongside Windows. If you want to use Windows along with Linux, do this. Otherwise, select "Erase disk and install Linux Mint." Step 9: Follow the instructions on the installer. Once it shows "please remove the installation media and press Enter", remove your USB stick and press Enter to restart. Step 10: You now have installed Linux Mint! Everything past this is optional and basically just a crash course. Step 11: Log in and open the terminal, time to learn commands. For example, sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

This command is actually two in one - it will prompt you for your password, and then update your system. It may require additional confirmations but that's typically as simple as pressing enter. Once it finishes, your system is now up to date. There aren't automatic updates to my knowledge so do this every once in a while. Hell, a fun project would be making a program to automate it. sudo apt install (package name) I didn't have the space in the paragraph to mention this before, but "sudo" is a command that elevates the following command to administrator privileges, and apt is the package manager (handles all your software for you. you will be using this a lot) for Linux Mint. In fact, here's a very detailed document on how to use apt. You don't have to understand this right away, but read it anyway. Anyways, sudo apt install, well, installs things. Typically once you install it successfully you can just type the name of the software into the command line to launch it, or view it from the start menu if it's a GUI application. Some fun packages to install to test this out are: sudo apt install cmatrix (makes a cool matrix effect!) sudo apt install fastfetch (Gives you a bunch of info about your system) sudo apt install libreoffice (Alternative to Microsoft Office. Free!) Firefox should come pre-loaded with Linux Mint.

You hate it.

It looks terrible on you and you've always thought that. When you were really young, you thought that's just what everyone thought about their hair colour. When you were a teenager, people chalked it up to hormones and wanting to be unique and follow the trends of dying your hair. It wasn't.

You've seen people with brown hair. It looks so good. You start imagining yourself with beautiful brunette hair. What if you could be that? And then you hear someone talk about you, call you 'that blonde over there' or someone telling you, 'your blonde hair looks so good!' and you're reminded all over again.

Your parents talk about something. Something you've never heard of before. "All those young kids, dying hair everywhere," they say. You ask them what it means. "Oh, that's when someone with one hair colour thinks they're better off with another hair colour." Your heart lights up. There's more people like you. You're not insane. And then- "Fucking insane. They just want to feel special. All this ridiculousness over trends." It hits you in the heart. You say nothing, just mumble an 'okay' and turn your attention back to your food.

That night, you're scrolling on your phone, and one video pops out. It's talking about dyed hair. You see people not just with natural-coloured dyed hair, but blues and greens and so many other colours. It looks beautiful. You remember your blonde hair. Could it finally be brown? These people are like you. They might be able to help.

You do research. You reach out to people online. And finally, you have your hands on a box dye from a store. it's not the highest quality, but you have it. At midnight the next weekend, you do it. You dye it brown. It's messy and tricky, but your heart is swelling with joy the entire time.

You expect people at school to be happy. Your hair is beautiful. You're beautiful. You finally feel comfort in your hair, confident in the way you look. Instead, you get side-eyes. People whisper and glare. One of your friends pulls you aside. "What happened to your hair?" You tell her you dyed it. Asks her if it looks nice. She grimaces. "Yeah... it looks fine.... but your blonde hair was your natural hair colour and it looked fine as well." You tell her the truth. How you've always hated it on you. Found brown to be so, so much prettier. Looked so much more amazing on you, and felt it too. "Yeah... but blonde is still your natural hair colour, right? No amount of dye is going to change that." Your confidence starts to sink. Will everyone think this?

Turns out, they will. You hear people still refer to you as "that blonde there". New people express confusion. "But her hair's brown? It's very clearly brown." "Well, yeah, but she dyed it. Her natural hair colour is blonde." "Oh... okay."

Your parents don't like it. "Your blonde hair was so beautiful," your mother sobs through her tears. "Why did you have to ruin it? My beautiful blonde child is gone! Gone forever! Why did you do it?" And you tell her that her child is not gone, her child is right here, just with different hair. She doesn't listen to a single word. Your father is mad. He yells at you to get out of his house, that you're a fucking disgrace, that you're mentally ill and brainwashed by trends and so many other hurtful things. You can only leave.

You try to go to another friend's place. She answers the door with a scowl. "Why are you here?" she seethes. She's angry. Why? You tell her about your situation. "Serves you right," she spits. "You're incredibly offensive to everyone with blonde hair." You ask her why, puzzled. "You clearly hate blonde hair. Why else would you dye it? Do you find blonde people disgusting?" No, no, that's not it. Blonde people are fine, you try saying. It just didn't suit me. I wish it did, but it didn't, so I changed it. "Stop twisting everything," she says. "I don't want to see your face." The door closes and you're left there on the steps.

You don't know what else to do. Were you truly lying? No, blonde hair has never suited you. Brown looks better. Brown makes you feel secure. You feel it's what makes you feel like yourself. But why can no one grasp that?

You search up more on your phone, and you find a community for similar people. People thrown out, disowned, abused for dying their hair or expressing wants to. When you get there, you find that they accept you with the warmest smiles and the coziest hugs. You find people that bleached their brown hair to blonde and dyed their blonde hair to brown, just like you, and they look so amazing. You find people with all sorts of coloured hair too, red, blue, yellow, purple, multicoloured and hair that gets redyed differently depending on the day. They all have similar stories. You've finally found a place you belong.

Outside, people are still outraged. They scream at the community that they're brainwashing their kids, that they're grooming every kid to dye their hair until there's no natural hair kids left. You don't feel hurt anymore. You know now they make no sense. They push out their own children, and this is the result. They don't want people with dyed hair banding up together.

Brown hair has always suited you. You're rather tired of people trying to pretend it doesn't.

> disables a new AI feature that was turned on by default

> opens my email

> disables a new AI feature that was turned on by default

> launches a software