This is the first in a series of articles that document my transition from running my (sole) practice on Windows to Linux.

Why do this? Frustration. Frustration at bloated software that slows down my computer, frustration at being locked in to an ecosystem, frustration at knowing my every move is tracked and sent back to Microsoft, frustration at having Copilot buttons everywhere - in my browser, in Word, on each line of an Outlook email, and frustration at paying subscriptions which increase in price and decrease in functionality.

I’m by no means unique in how I feel, or in my desire to move to Linux. There’s many videos online about transitioning to Linux. Most of them though are made by developers, gamers and content creators. These are all very different use cases to legal practice.

So, let’s talk about what it takes for a lawyer to migrate across to Linux. First, though, let’s talk about what Linux actually is.

What is Linux?

If you’re a lawyer, you almost certainly work off a computer that runs Microsoft Windows. You’ll have Outlook, Word and Excel installed as well as your practice management system software (your ‘PMS’).

Microsoft Windows is your computer’s ‘operating system’. Windows is what gets your computer up and running, connects you to the internet and allows you to organise your files and your software. Unless you’re using an Apple Mac, Windows is all you’ll probably ever use. Every non-Apple computer comes with Windows pre-installed on it.

Microsoft pretty much has the entire non-Apple computer market to itself. It owns approximately 82% of the non-Apple operating system market, with ‘Unknown’ a distant second at 12% and Linux at 3%.

Linux is also an operating system. It also provides a way for you to connect to the internet and manage your files and so-on. Linux is ‘open source’ - that is, its source code is also freely available for anyone to download and and run. This makes Linux free (or ‘free as in freedom’). No licence fees are required, much less any ongoing subscriptions. The Linux operating system is free to use, as is much of the software that accompanies it.

Compatibility

Linux and Windows are incompatible with each other, much like Apple and Windows computers are. This means that ‘regular’ Windows software won’t run on Linux unless the software vendor develops a separate Linux version.

Microsoft is not one of these software vendors - at least not for its O365 products. That means that Outlook and Word, which us lawyers use a lot, will not run on Linux. Some Practice Management Systems are the same. For example, LEAP and Smokeball only run on Windows and will not run on Linux.

What do Lawyers Need?

Day-to-day we live in three software programs - Outlook, Word and our Practice Management System. Most of us, especially small practitioners, use some form of what most of us know as ‘Office 365’ (and is now known as Microsoft 365 Copilot Business, and which I will call ‘Office 365’ or ‘O365’ throughout these articles). I suspect nearly all of us subscribe to O365 for emails and for Word and Excel. Hopefully, many of us are using OneDrive to store our documents as well.

As for practice management systems, many of us will have one of these too. Many of us will run ‘fat clients’, such as LEAP or Smokeball, and some of us may be running web-based PMS, such as ActionStep or Clio.

My Use Case

These articles are based on my personal experience. So, here is my what I use and what I’ll need:

• I have an O365 subscription. I don’t want to give this up. I like Microsoft’s privacy regime (!).
• My emails are on O365. I currently access them and my calendar and address book using Outlook.
• All my files are on OneDrive. OneDrive is my ‘source of truth’ for file data, and I want to keep it that way.
• I write documents using Word and spreadsheets using Excel.
• I use Teams for video calls.
• I use Clio as my PMS.

My Migration Experience

I want to summarise where I am and use that as a springboard for the upcoming articles.

I have been running Linux, or specifically Ubuntu Desktop, on my desktop and laptop for about a month now. I have replaced Outlook with Thunderbird and Word and Excel with LibreOffice. My files are still synchronised to OneDrive and I continue to run Clio.

In short, I’m pretty much where I want to be. However, the journey hasn’t been easy. Moving away from Outlook has proven to be a significant challenge. Setting up OneDrive also was not for the feint of heart. In comparison, using LibreOffice for document editing is just fine, and in some ways more pleasant than Word. And my choice of Clio for PMS made my PMS a non-issue.

I am considering substituting Teams with Brave Talkor Jitsi. That said, I can also continue to use Teams via a web browser.

In short, I’m pretty much where I want to be, but it’s taken quite some effort. What I get for it though is no more nagging, no more telemetry and a desktop and laptop that run much much faster than they used to. I have to say that I’m happy with where I’ve landed and I’m not looking to move back.

In the next few articles I’ll discuss my migration in more detail. We’ll start with Outlook/email as that was the most painful.

As always, feel free to contact me if you have any questions about this post or if you need any legal advice.

Mark