Linux

When you first switch you might feel overwhelmed because you'll have to develop a sense of how things work in a non-Windows world. But, after a bit you'll realize you feel in control of your computer, maybe for the first time ever. It may seem like a small thing, but the realization that I finally "own" my computer and control the software that is installed on it, how it runs, what programs do what tasks, etc... was really surprising and made everything worth while.

As for switching, I had been exploring the idea. One night while writing an important work email on my Windows 11 pc in outlook (also work required) my pc just randomly shut itself off and, of course, outlook did not save the email draft. Deleted the windows virus the next day and my pc has worked much better ever sense.

If you make the switch you'll be able to find lots of great help with technical issues online in places like this.

Microsoft didn't stop the fuckery so I had to.

For me I just want to see Linux get more support and it'll get that with more market share so I switched. I think there should be an alternative to windows or mac. Also the terminal is so nice to have. After many years on linux I'm very comfortable in a terminal but still don't know a lot of the powerful commands, but now with ai I can just ask it how to convert videos or move files from one computer to another and it gives me the command

I switched back in 2005 (I think), because Windows XP didn't have the drivers for being installed on an S-ATA drive and SUSE could be installed without any hassle. I feel very old.

Back in the day (1999/2000) Linux seems to be a small niche, fun and novelty. I started with Turbolinux :D

I Did not want to reinstall Windows again. Switched and never looked back.

My brother pushed some buttons in Windows lockscreen, which caused assistance settings to never go away again (I still don't know how I should've fixed it), that was the final annoyance with Windows and I switched to Linux on my laptop. On my PC I switched once I didn't need Windows for work (remote desktop) anymore.

I kept having troubles with Windows 11 and I was also fed up with all the Microsoft crap and how they push they're Cortana, Edge or other bullshit.

Switching has been amazing. Yes, also confusng at first, but you'll learn a lot and rn I'm happier than ever with my machine.

I'm running Fedora Workstation.

Is faster. I don't care about the extra bells and whistles, and I want a straightforward functioning system that allows me to do what I need to do. I also like that I can customize my desktop experience to my heart's desires. I can literally change the way my system looks if I get bored of it. Most importantly, the lack of tracking/telemetry and being a smaller target on the web.

I switched to linux mostly because of privacy concerns (had to create outlook account to use windows, ads at Start Menu, proprietary software etc.). Also, I always heard that linux was a very customizable OS.

My surprise was that it wasn't that complicated. I always had that idea that linux was only for hackers and high IQ individuos. And, needless to say, it was bullshit. You can be a normal person that uses linux ^^

Leaving windows will be like leaving hell ^^

I switched because of Bejeweled ads in the Start menu, honestly.

For me it was pretty gradual. In my university research a couple years ago I needed to work with the university's supercomputer running RHEL, so I got some exposure there. At some point I put Mint on my laptop, keeping Windows on my desktop "in case I needed to do any real work", then about a year ago I put linux* on my desktop as well. I do still have a Windows dual-boot just in case there's some weird software I need to use, but I haven't touched it more than once or twice since. I switched partially out of curiosity, but largely as part of an effort to de-google and de-microsoft my stuff so I'm more in control.

*distro-hopped a bit, but now am settled on EndeavourOS

I was surprised at how much you needed the terminal, but also how easy it was to use the terminal after a bit of practice. I prefer it to GUIs for a lot of things now (like git). Also, installing software from a package manager rather than going to a website and downloading it. I didn't like that at first, but I love that concept so much more now, since I can just sudo apt upgrade and everything is up-to-date (no downloading the new version after an update).

I'm now to the point that when I do need to use a windows machine for some reason, it takes me a second to remember how things work. It's kinda a weird feeling tbh haha

For me it was a couple reasons:

1. my brother installed Ubuntu 12.04 on my desktop for me when I was in high school, and I was enamored with the different desktop layout. It got me started on the journey.

2. maintaining it is much easier than windows. Running one command/script to update a system is much faster than heading to the right window or menu and hoping Microsoft delivers you an update. Plus if it breaks it's easier IMO to troubleshoot and fix.

You may want to dual boot, especially if your classes are online. I've seen issue after issue using a Windows VM for online exams. But, for me it'd be worth asking a buddy or using the computer lab to get around an invasive OS as your daily driver.

Private, Secure, FOSS. I want something that I know is my own and not a $200 license to a proprietary POS operating system that spies on me. Run a packet tracker on any Windows system and watch that guy ping to Windows with every bit of telemetry you can offer.

crazy updates which broke normal functionality, absence of tiling window manager

W10 came out and W7 security updates was done. Had to move to W10 for work and our engineering software got slower. Moved home (older) computers to W10 and they became useless bricks. Found SUSE/OpenSUSE supported my CAD software with their linux release. Swapped to that. Speed was back for work and home stuff. That was 2017 or so. I haven't gone back to Windows except for some shared excel reports. Teamviewer, Webex, zoom, MS teams all have linux versions for work collaboration.

Because Apple stopped delivering updates to my MacBook that I bought in 2016.. The hardware is still working and I want a secure OS on it.. =>Debian

I switched when my old Windoz XP install deflated in a blue screen of death. I didn't even know there was a difference between an OS and the computer as a whole, but a friend gave me four live CDs with linux distros on them (Ubuntu 12.04, Bodhi, PClinus, can't remember the fourth).

What made me stay was the FOSS ideals that make software available to all. I was so broke at the time that I didn't have the money to buy a new $100 windows install. Without Linux I wouldn't have had a computer. Since then it's always been the ethos that has kept me with Linux. That being said, here are the unexpected benefits:

• Entire file system is stored as text files. Super easy to back up and administrate.
• Support communities (Arch wiki, ubuntu forums, etc...) are filled with highly educated members who have very often asked and answered the questions I had.
• The app repositories. It blew my mind when I found out I didn't have to hunt around on the web for an .exe file that might be coming from an insecure source. Linux apps (distro repos, flatpaks, snaps) are centrally available from your terminal just for your distribution.
• Lastly a more overarching meta-point, the software respects thr user. Windows and MacOS don't respect you and make it difficult to maintain freedom in the way that you use your computer and manage your files.

For me, it was much like iPhone vs Android. I've twice been back to owning an iPhone and have kept leaving because of the more closed ecosystem. The freedom to explore, take apart, modify, hack, learn, etc. I don't do a lot of that, but it is nice to try things out. So in summary for me its the philosophy behind it, and I can install it freely across all computers, Pi's, etc in the home.

EDIT: I forgot I'd also bought Vista at the time, and it was not great. I vowed after that not to pay for another Windows OS.

Critical last straw for me was having shit Internet and windows updates eating literally all my bandwidth. Other reasons include privacy, ownership, etc. I was already familiar with Linux when I switched.

I hate all of the spying that Windows is engaged in now. What really pushed me over the edge is that Windows started opening a full page Office 365 add in my browser every time the computer woke up from sleep. I couldn't find any information about how to stop it and eventually just said "fuck Windows" and installed Linux. That was about 3 years ago. I still have Windows as a dual boot because I need it for Fusion 360, and the piece of shit still does the O365 add that I can't get rid of and now constantly tries to trick me into upgrading to Windows 11, despite the fact that I've already said no about 10 times. Fuck Windows piece of shit spyware/adware masquerading as an operating system.

sick of windows. spyware, forced updates, no customizability... ect

Better privacy, control over the operating system, fully free and open source, practically impossible to get a virus (you still can but Linux viruses are rare), less system utilisation and I was surprised by how easy it was to use. My first reaction when I installed my first distro was "Wow it's almost as easy as Windows". That being said I did run into a bunch of problems early on but there's extensive guidesout there. My first distro was Manjaro but recently, since I started getting angry at the fact that even the smallest system update broke my install and I had to run timeshift restores very often, I had made the switch to Nobara and so far I'm really enjoying it

I've been growing increasingly frustrated with how much my computer felt less and less like my own with every Windows update. They have been steadily removing control away from the user and putting me in frustrating positions. I've used Linux for a week here and a week there over the last few years so I thought, screw it!, and made the switch about 3 months ago. I don't feel any need to go back.

The last straw was when using the Xbox app. For some reason I didn't have ownership of the folders where the games were installed. I couldn't see how much space they were using and I couldn't access them to troubleshoot an issue I had. Well I could, but I shouldn't have to manually give myself ownership of non-critical files on my machine while using an admin account. In addition, after uninstalling a 100GB+ game, it for some reason just left the files on my drive (That I also didn't have ownership of to delete.)

The Xbox app also one day decided that it couldn't update any games, the error codes are shit and don't lead to any usable information or the copy/paste responses from their troglodyte community helpers telling you to run sfc, chkdisk, Windows repair then they just tell you your RAM is bad. (This applies to most of Windows' generic ass error messages) To top it off, the Xbox app now launches THREE other launchers by itself... without asking (Ubisoft, EA, Riot). Whoever decided that needs to be fired, ideally into the sun.

I don't want to use anything from a company that hires brain-dead morons that make and/or allow those kinds of design choices.

I saw a post from r/unixporn on all and thought it looked really cool.

It was easier to set up than Windows. Windows took longer and had more missing drivers. Linux Mint worked almost perfectly out of the box--all I did was change the video driver for my dedicated graphics (and that was done easily by picking one from a provided list).

When I was at uni a professor asked the class to raise their hands if we were using Windows and then MacOS. Then he asked who was using a REAL operating system. Everyone looked confused. He proceded to order all to install linux if we were to follow his class. My First distro was Ubuntu for about a week... I distrohopped for a couple of years and eventually I use arch btw.

My AMD graphics card had atrocious driver support in Windows, and every time windows forced the half-yearly big update on me, my PC would go into a BSOD loop and I would not be able to run windows. It was becoming a massive annoyance and a humongous time waster.

So I switched to Linux Mint. No hardware problems at all. With the graphics card working, I played a video game that literally worked better in Linux than Windows.

Then I bought a new laptop and dual booted different distributions. But every time I log into Windows after doing something in Linux (Fedora KDE spin), my windows clock would get messed up. There are professional softwares I have to use that only work on Windows, so completely switching to linux was not an option, and windows boots up Much faster than linux.

So when I needed some space for an online multiplayer game, I got rid of the dual boot. Now I run everything using WSL2.

Windows remains the default platform for small developer teams, and large video games. So it takes a large incovenience to abandon it. And just a little bit of friction is enough to make me switch back to windows. Sorry if I disappointed you guys.

Forced Windows updates bad. Gaming on Linux good. Also Windows 11 not installable on perfectly good hardware.

Privacy concerns and a growing view of closed source software as malware.

I made the switch when windows ME was released, right now I'm using win10 for work because of some software that really doesn't have an alternative in Linux but I do run it on all of my other computers. Benefits:

• customization: If you want a desktop environment there's KDE, Gnome or XFCE, if you want just windows or a tiling window manager there's tons of them too
• package managers: update all your software on your own terms while you brew some coffee.
• scripting capabilities: you can automate lots of stuff with bash.
• scalability: do you have a potato computer, no problem, do you have a nice one, even better.

Edit: I forgot to say that I run Debian on most of my machines.

Why did I switch to Linux ? I pushed Windows XP as far as it could go (skipped Vista altogether), and after that I became so frustrated with Windows 7 being so bad that I switched to Linux and never looked back since.

Getting personal, are we?

Well, the year was 2006 and I had a tank of a Dell D610. Never failed me

until it did.

One day it did the BSOD thing. I thought it was neat. After having used computers for more than a decade I finally saw the infamous BSOD. So, reinstalled Windows and got everything set up jus... BSOD.

Curious.

Another BSOD.

So, I reinstalled (for the second time) and very cautiously rebooted...BSOD.

Well, fuck.

I happened to have a Knoppix LiveCD laying around. I got that up and running and managed to download Ubuntu and burn that and installed Ubuntu and never looked back.

I didn't stay with Ubuntu for long, though.

I don't have a technical job either. I am just a teacher. Linux serves me well.

I really didn’t want to install Vista. I didn’t like how it looked or felt so I swapped out XP for Ubuntu. I stayed until Win7 and switched back to windows, but windows 8 rolled around and I went to Fedora. I’ve been here ever since.

I really enjoy copying URLs / bash scripts off the internet instead of downloading a file and pressing enter on it.

I was on windows 10 without an SSD. There is only so much dog slow you can handle before you want to change it. I was amazed by how much faster linux was. Windows 10 was the first windows I noticed that struggled this much. It's like they gave up on performance and just relied on the hardware. I dual booted from there with linux mint and over time, I started windows less. I haven't used it in months.

Windows is cancer with the telemetry. Also the updates, which is the reason I hate Ubuntu

I need tools that powerful and less memory hungry on old device, especially thinkpad, WSL2 with Windows kills the HW, so in the end I ends up using fedora... because it's near EL standard (I work with Red Hat Enterprise Linux), and it's useful to be near the workflow I need.

Linux KVM with Windows better than WSL2 on Windows.. so.. I use Linux in the end.. and never looks back..

Back in the days of Vista, I had been dual-booting and using Knoppix (Live CD) as needed for a while. My main daily use outside of games was all open source that was available on Windows and Linux, OpenOffice (would recommend LibreOffice now), Firefox, Thunderbird, etc.

Windows used to get dreadfully slow, unless you reinstalled. Or maybe I was fixing something. Reformatted the hard drive, set up the Linux partition (Ubuntu 6.06 IIRC), Synaptic, tick all my usuals, apply. Come back a little bit later, fully up to date, do some logins, Linux is fully usable. Even installed Battle for Wesnoth in case.

Boot over to Windows, update, reboot, update, reboot, install drivers, more reboots. More drivers, more installables, more updates, more reboots

It was bedtime, off finish off later, and I ended up using Ubuntu as my main for a week.

After that week, I found I only booted to Windows for games. Never looked back. That week is the week I flipped from 60%/40% Windows/Linux to 60%/40% Linux/Windows. Since then Linux only gets better, and I use Windows less and less.

If something is happening, you know it does and you might have made it happen yourself.

Also, you are in full control. Use your machine (here OS specifically) however you want, and make it yours, and not a company's (Micro$hit im talkin about you mfs).

You use what YOU want to use, and not what they want you to use (cough edge, just accept that you're dogsh... cough, please).