I initially switched because I heard about Windows planning to drop support for Windows 10 and I knew that Windows 11 was slow as hell so I jumped ship. I stayed because I really like the customizability and all the options Linux affords me as well as being able to just... switch distros if one company does something I don't like. Being able to update when I want to is also amazing.

Because it's my system and not Microsoft's system. Also I find Apple products extremely expensive for what you get, and that's coupled with how anticonsumer they are.

Adverts, telemetry, bloatware, and I don't look good in a turtleneck.

Because it's an honest system

I use it for my servers and for remotely programming for over a decade. Using it on a desktop setup for work or games? Fuck no!

It's my criticism of the Linux community: They don't understand what "being productive" really means. I need to do work during the day, and produce results. I don't have time to deal with my docking station not working, monitors settings breaking, and tinker with them every day... not because I can't, but because I SHOULDN'T NEED TO.

It was cool when I was a teenager... now I need to make money.

As frustrating as it sounds. On windows and mac, literally plug and play. Every time I get the exact same setup. On Linux... dear Lord... every day a different problem and a different tinker until I swore that I'm done, and went back to remote use of Linux. Linux terminal is perfect, and that's probably all I'll need. Linux desktop through VNC, if ever.

I always wanted to learn. I had a number of failed attempts with Linux back in 2000, 2006, etc. I always gave it a shot every 5 years ago just to see.

I fully made the switch with pop os a couple years ago and it ended up sticking. I was in a better place to learn linux and pop os is just easy and noob friendly. This last time was also spurned on when the rumour was going around that windows 11 was going to have ads right in the explorer. I don't know if that ever happened but it was enough to get me to give it another shot haha

I bought a new laptop, and it was lagging more than my old PC. I was enraged by this fact. My old pc had 4gb RAM, my laptop would freeze playing games like osu. Yeah, 8gb was the limit in 2016, but not like to get random freezes. I installed Ubuntu and then never went back, now using Arch. Performance. No random things going under my nose, making spikes happen. Now, it's not about performance alone. It's about control and privacy. I study psychology and I wish my peers realized what it means using Meta services everyday, Microsoft, etc, and how these are connected with our everyday life, decisions and lack of control, thus worth to get the psychology field to debate and put the everyday services under discussion.

Linux systems are usually laid bare for people to tinker with, which for me is specially good if I see something I don't like, be it software, UI or UX.

Plus, most PC's I've seen from at least the past ~20 years can run Linux, so if I get my hands on a working PC, Linux becomes an easy choice.

Plus², Linux can be made very privacy friendly.

Steam seems antithetical to all of these. The software in the first place became popular as a form of DRM,

It's annoying when games require Steam in order to run, but let's be clear: it's not DRM.

In most of the cases I've seen, it's nothing more than a library dependency, for features like Steam Input and achievements. Here's a Steam client emulator to satisfy that dependency without Steam being present at all:

https://gitlab.com/Mr_Goldberg/goldberg_emulator

I use Linux because it's the better platform for my workload. Knowing that I'm using and supporting FLOSS is great, but ultimately I will choose to use the best available tool for the job. For playing games Valve has made the best platform to manage my library and run it on Linux, so it is the only option for the vast majority of the games I would like to play.

The last version of windows I could tolerate was Win 7. I could find a webpage something like "how to unbloat Win 7" after a fresh install and happily use it.

Linux was a hobby I learned slowly but gaming hold me back and best I could do was dual boot.

I hated everything about Win 8. Win 10 was too demanding hardware-wise. So when Steam bridged the gaming gap, Linux as the only OS was a no-brainer.

I'm interested in the philosophy of open source and I use open source when there is a viable option. But at the end of the day, I prioritize convenience and practicality and Steam is convenient.

I work in science and at university, I was noticing that increasingly often, the kinds of computational work I was doing worked better on Linux. Often, there'd be software that would ostensibly run in Linux and Windows, but the Windows documentation and community would be pretty sparse.

The more I learned, the clearer it became that switching over properly to Linux was the way to go. It just provides better infrastructure. As an example, an area of science I feel passionately about is FAIR data principles, a list of guidelines on how we can make scientific data more Findable, Accessible, Interactible and Reusable. In practice, for me, this means I've gotten very good at using containers, which I found much easier on Linux

i had a dream about switching to linux, then woke up to a windows update

Switched from Arch to Endevour cuz the icon was prettier

I use it in some similarities to you such as owning my own OS and supoorting FOSS but as well as not having my OS spy on me. Since I got into the realm of Linux maybe two years ago I have found out about GoG and have been slowly rebuilding my library there and not playing Steam anymore. There are a few games I'll miss such as Snow Runner but I'll live. Ultimately I want to own what I have and not be spied upon by so many things now a days.

I like to tinker with it and the lack of restrictions on low level stuff. The ability to completely change anything about he system that is restricted on other platforms. No data is sent from the system unless you actively enable it. Its stable, I have a raspberry pi that can run for months without error whereas windows bluescreened once every 2 weeks with regular usage. Its free.

Because I wanted to use a computer and OS is needed. When I got a first computer, I didn't even understand what OS is. Then researching further, I thought Windows is just another distribution. I tried it, and it was confusing. Linux Mint I immediately liked, so that's what I stuck with.

No special reasons, I am just used to Linux.
I guess this would be the case for more people if Windows wasn't the default as it usually is.

1. Ownership: I don't worry about windows or Mac doing something behind my back with my stuff

2. Huge system, full homelab with a lot of self-hosted stuff and linux let's me use everything securely and transparently wherever I am.

I hate tech and computers in general now, I find myself constantly fighting bugs and issues in general.

this is why I use arch, it allows me to minimize junk that constantly and neverendingly breaks on me, so now i have a system that just works with fairly little pain points

Because I own my PC, not Winshit

I fucking hate Steam. Screw forced updates, DRM, not being able to choose where each game gets installed, or the "we assoooome that you're always on lol" mentality. I use it mostly due to a few games, but I don't buy shit from it, and I'm seriously ~~considering to pirate~~ pirating right now the games that I own just to get rid of Steam.

And even if I weren't getting rid of Steam right now, I'd rather use a small proprietary blob over a free system than a full-blown proprietary system.

Privacy

Yesterday I couldn't log into my session. The password was correct, yet it wouldn't work. I had to reboot and lose whatever I was doing.

That was a first. And it feels like every week since I've started using Linux forever ago I discover a new very annoying bug

For a long time I liked tinkering, customizing, and tolerated fixing bugs... but this time is mostly gone

Were it not for privacy, (and the feeling my computer is truly mine and not rented from a giant corporation) I would switch to something more stable

I'll try and keep it short with a bullet list, as I can tend to be long-winded about everything.

• Helped recover files on an old laptop in the Win XP days (how I got started).
• Breathed new life into older hardware that was too crappy for Windows.
• Thought it was neat, novel, fresh, etc.
• Free. Why pay for or pirate Windows?
• FOSS and, specifically, FOSS alternatives to paid software I'd otherwise have pirated.
• Less targeted for malware.
• Windows 11 says no to my aging, but plenty capable, computer (the last holdout on Windows til Win 10 hits EOL).
• Reasonable, optional telemetry.
• Not having to reboot (possibly more than once) during updates.
• Fun to learn.

There are some reasons to like Windows, but it's harder to justify with the direction Microsoft is, and has been, moving.

EDIT: To actually answer your question about Steam and Linux... because I have a Steam account that I've had for many, many years with 1000 games that predates me moving to Linux in a more serious capacity. While I could move to GOG (and have), I'm not just going to throw away my game library. But also, Steam working to make gaming more mainstream on Linux is a net positive for Linux in general. That was always the reason many people gave for why they wouldn't switch - that, and proprietary software that won't run on anything other than Windows or maybe Mac.

Did Steam finally get rid of the skin option in the recent update? I know a majority were kind of broken towards the end there even before the major UI change.