Linux

I woke up one day, and copilot had been installed on my PC overnight. I didn't like that lack of control. This was, coincidentally, a weekend that my wife, kid, and dog were all gone. Since I knew Win10 only had a year left, and I had the time, I figured it was as good a time as any.

I downloaded Fedora and Kubuntu. Spent a bit of time with each, and went with Kubuntu. For a few days. It had issues waking from sleep, and I had to do some kind of tweaking with every one of my games to get them to work.

I don't mind tinkering with stuff, but i just don't have the time to make my computer my hobby. So, I switched to Mint. Everything just works. So, I put it on everything else. I guess the one time I really had to dig into terminal stuff was getting a wifi driver for my living room PC off git. Other than that, super easy.

Now, I'm coming up on a year of Mint. Couldn't be happier.

I learned how far gaming on Linux had come, so during COVID I decided to try it out. I wiped my Windows 10 installation, and installed Ubuntu on it (later Pop!_OS, then Garuda, and Arch on other machines), and got to work figuring things out. I didn’t know if it’d stick, because I was still unsure of it as I wasn’t sure I’d get all of my games working. But, I got settled within a week, and over time things just got better. At that time I was so used to Windows’ bloat and other… “features” that I became blind to them. After more than five years using Linux, using Windows even for a few minutes is quite the shock!

I don't like corprofascism.

Mint rules so far. Been enjoying it for several months now!

Privacy, no bloat (depending on distro), no Big Tech, freedom, no cost.

Because it is the least worst OS

I couldn't find my Windows 7 key after reinstalling.

Why did you switch to Linux? I'd like to hear your story.

I had to do a job (translations) using MS Word 6.0, on a Win 3.11 PC . It was nearly a month of work and I and my gf urgently needed the money. But MS Word kept crashing and nearly obliterated all our work the day before our deadline. It was the most stressful day of my life.

After that, I installed LaTeX for DOS on that 386 PC, and wrote my university lab reports and later my bachelor thesis on it. It was running like a charm. We printed our own christmas cards using LaTeX's beautiful old German Schwabacher font.

At uni, at that time I was working with a software called Matlab on Windows 95, and Windows always crashed after a day or two - it later became known there was an integer overflow bug in the driver for an Ethernet card. Well shit, my computations needed to run more than three days. So, I switched to a SUNOS Unix workstation which ran much better and had lots of high quality software, including a powerful text editor program called "Emacs“. I could not buy such a SUN computer for myself because its price was, in todays money, over 50,000 EUR and we did often not know how to pay 350 EUR of monthly rent.

The other day, a friendly colleague which was already doing his PhD showed me his PC, a cheap newish Pentium machine. He had installed a system on it called Linux, which I had never heard of. I logged on and started Emacs on it and I thought it must be broken: Emacs was running within less than half a second whereas on the SUN OS workstation, it would have taken five or ten seconds to start. All the computers software was free. I realized that this computer had a value of over 50,000 EUR of software for a hardware price of 800 EUR. I got an own Linux PC as soon as possible.

Yes that was in 1998. I am now almost exclusively using Linux since 27 years.

The exact shortcomings of proprietary software have changed since, and keep changing. But what is always the same is: Proprietary software does not work on behalf of you, the user and owner of the computer. Who writes the instructions for the computers CPU, controls it, and will use this power to favour their own interests, not yours. Only if you control the software, and use software written by other users, your computer will ultimately work in favour of you.

My shift was primarily ideologically driven. I was sick of privacy encroachment, enshittification, and feeling like my computer wasn't truly mine. Linux changed all that.

1. I'm a lifelong contrarian.
2. I refuse to overpay into the locked-down Apple ecosystem.
3. Windows has become worse with every release.
4. I use Arch btw.

Because I'm a fucking nerd and in '99 using Linux and LaTeX was the nerdiest thing to do. Stayed because it's fucking awesome.

because, with Linux I truly own my computer and have the freedom to do whatever I want with it

Linux porn sceenshots. I wanted to have a cool cyberpunk desktop and be Hackerman.

Same as most people. OSs have just evolved to become systems made to serve their creators rather than their "customers".

Windows wants to steal all your data and then use it to shove ads in your face.

Apple also constantly tries to push their own products and services through the OS, not to mention continually pushing the boundaries of irrepairability and locking you in an ecosystem. And just being extremely expensive.

I heard two talks around 2001 or so. one by Wolfram, after which I swore never to use mathematica again. and one by stallman after which I switched completely to Linux and never went back to windows.

still on Linux 25y later. went from days when getting sound working was a challenge , to today when even obscure tablets work out of the box.

started with red hat. used Gentoo for about 5y. then debian for 10, and now arch.

went from the old "crux" and metacity, to openbox to fvwm to gnome to kde plasma

i remember the old days I was envious of Mac users for transparency and the present windows features, and I ran this utility called Skippy that would screenshot windows and present them... all these features are now built in to the wm now, so no tweaking needed

I got sick of my devices spying on me

I was not about to put up with windows co-pilot or recall and had already put up with enough ads and bugs.

I had been running Debian on my laptop for a year without a problem and then finally Windows 11 started doing this when I was trying to update:

Click check for updates? Same result. Wait a week and try again? Same result.

I could no longer trust that the OS was secure from even 3rd parties, so I pulled the trigger and installed Debian 12 - later upgrading to Debian 13 when it released.

There just is never any going back now - Linux is just waaaaaaay too good.

Now I just need something similar to happen with phones.

I really, truly, seriously hate modern implementations of AI and am willing to make concessions in my life to avoid using it. Windows 11 forcing Copilot was my last straw for using Microsoft.

1. fun, I like trying out new software
2. I love the philosophy of free software.
3. fuck Microsoft and windows.
4. It's actually just better

(I switched last year)

Commodore's bankruptcy in 1994 was the end of the Amiga, which forced me to switch to something else.

At the time, the choice of hardware I could afford and operating systems that didn't suck was extremely limited, a PC with Linux was pretty much the only practical choice and I've stuck with that ever since.

I switched to Linux because of Linux gaming. Yes, I am completely serious!

Back in 2015 I had Lenovo laptop with only 2GB of RAM. Windows 7 consumed more than half of that and DotA 2 took over 2 minutes to load the map. The game was laggy. FPS was terrible even on low settings.

On another hand Ubuntu 14.04 consumed only ~350 MB of RAM. DotA on Linux loaded map in seconds. FPS was slightly better, but the game itself didn't feel so laggy anymore.

Linux was (and still is) my only viable solution for gaming on low spec hardware.

Around 1998 in middle school that's what I thought all the 'hackers' were using.

Windows 7 support ended and windows 8 was wet hot dogshit. I stayed because I liked absolute control and ownership of my hardware and software

This feels like a fireplace for all Linux users to meet :D

Back in 1999 my windows laptop got hacked and my bank identity was accessed. On a Clean Windows I had Just Installed.That did it. I formatted my hard disk and installed first Linux Mandrake and finally settled on Debian Potato . Never looked back.

Post subject:

Why?

Post content:

Why did you switch to Linux? I’d like to hear your story.

I feel like I've been click-baited.

Was just generally annoyed at microsoft, but couldn't leave because I play a lot of PC games. Then I found out these days gaming works relatively okay in linux so I switched.

Back when I was a freshman in college, I had a regular laptop (Sony Vaio) and at the time netbooks were popular and my girlfriend (now wife) had got me one for Christmas.

Win 7 starter was garbage, XP was fine, but not ideal. I ended up trying out Ubuntu netbook remix since it was supposed to be lighter on resources. At the time I was a pre med student and wanted something for knocking out documents, and reading papers with enough battery to get me until I had to go to work. The iPad wasn’t out yet so that wasn’t an option.

I had a ton of fun getting it working, even the Broadcom chip was a fun challenge. Once it was working, I just really liked the look and feel. I preferred the Unix file structure to windows as well as the terminal experience, using bash vs powershell.

I ended up writing a few programs and apps for myself specifically for that netbook, and it quickly became my primary way of interacting with a computer. I eventually ported my Sony over which had the challenge of writing a couple drivers to get some things working with minimal compatibility.

Following this, I switched from pre med to software engineering and eventually graduated with a degree and I have now been working with software and using Linux ever since. Even now, I am the sole Linux system administrator in the company I work for and manage a handful of servers and deployments.

I think we used damn small linux cds to bypass computer stuff when I was in school, then I finally completely switched when steam dropped support for windows 7. I like tinkering, but I am very much of the philosophy that I just want my hobbies to work, so I never thought about linux until windows really started trying to harvest me.

I wanted to code in C. I saw some tutorials for windows and found it very complex, but I saw one in linux where the person just gcc hello.c. And since then I've fallen in love

I bought my son a cheap little computer, basically a windows version of a Chromebook. When windows needed an update there wasn't enough memory to perform it, and the computer would no longer connect to WiFi. I thought this was very dumb so I figured out how to remove windows and install Mint. Was impressed by how well it worked.

When I needed a new computer I bought a $150 thinkpad and installed Fedora. Been a fedora main ever since

I switched because Linux is obviously way better in so many ways. No brainer.

I use Windows at work and it's a joke. It's security theater. Microsoft and similar capitalist entities are paid not for actual security but for liability protection.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_theater

I switched while studying Cyber Security (it wasn't a good course) probably because I figured a more techy OS is better.

I did not switch to Linux. I simply never did Windows. I use Linux since the old days of Slackware where you really had to compile ones kernel. That was with kernel 0.97.

on my main laptop for whatever reason Windows 11, about twice a year or so, would insist on killing my wifi. Just out right disable it and not even uninstalling and reinstalling drivers would work. It would simply just kill it and pretend it never existed. the ONLY fix was to completely reinstall the OS. so almost like clockwork twice a year I'd have to reinstall the OS. It was also absolutely destroying the battery on my laptop. I would get MAYBE 30min out of it.

So after reading some threads I decided to give Linux a go. I went nuclear winter on it and didn't even bother dual booting, just wiped the computer completely and started with Mint. Stayed on that for a couple weeks until I completely messed up the install by trying to modify cinnemon a bit too much so then I switched to CachyOS and fell in love with it.

Since then I distro hopped a few times and I'm currently using NixOS. As far as the battery issue? I get about 4 hours out of it now instead of 30min.

I switched in the Windows 98/ME era, so quite some time ago. I was tired even then of Windows being an unstable mess. BSODs, headaches with DirectX and different versions, etc. I was/am mostly a console gamer so not being able to play games on my computer was less of an issue for me. So I tried then Red Hat linux which I scored some CD images of and never really looked back.

My desktop PC ran Windows 10 and didn’t have the magic Windows 11 chip. I tried to do some easy things to get it to recognise my PC as having that chip anyway, but it didn’t work, and I was a bit afraid it’d run like shit with 11 anyway.

So I just decided to try something different and install Linux. First on an old little laptop I had lying around. I tried Mint first, then OpenSUSE - the first because it was supposed to be easy to newcomers, the latter because it’s German (and I liked the way it felt when I tried it on my laptop).

After trying it for a bit, I just decided I’d install it on my desktop as I didn’t want to use Windows 10 without security updates anyway. I’ve now been using OpenSUSE Leap for about half a year, and I’m quite happy.

FreeBSD didn’t have working nvidia drivers for amd64 in 2006, so, Linux it was.

Homework.

College used linux because I did computer science.
Topic: concurrency. College then gave us a programming assignment that required adding a code library, which I had never done before or even heard of, and thus did not understand.
Since this was a library that was platform-specific, they had made one library for linux and one for windows.
Way too late I got the gist of it but still couldn't install the library.
Since the question contained the linux directory structure I was convinced that the windows library was broken and every other college student finished this task in Linux.
Thus I installed Linux.
Ten years later I understood and finished the assignment.

After using win 11 for about a year I got tired of that shit. Every version since 98made the settings menu harder and harder to find whatever I was looking for and this is true for everything in that OS. Save a file? 5 clicks at least just to be able to pick WHERE I want it. Wtf.

It was driving me insane. Bazzite, easiest OS for what I use my computer for and not looking back.

I saw fvwm in a magazine and it had a really cool 3D look to it and I wanted that. I had never seen anything like that. We were very poor and I only had an old computer, a 486, so it was either pirate software (and there was no version of Windows in our language) or use Linux.

I ended up on Red Hat from a magazine and then later Slackware. I liked Window Maker so I stayed on that for two decades. Learning Linux gave me a constructive hobby, introduced me to free software philosophy, and gave me technology skills. We moved to the United States. When I was 15 or 16, I helped a college math professor install hardware on Linux. When he found out that I was dropping out of a very racist high school, he provided support and I ended up graduating from their college. Those Linux skills came in handy and helped start a career.

I have only ever used Windows to upgrade firmware on a laptop or to download an ISO so I could replace Windows. Like everyone else, I was enamoured with macOS back in the 2000's but couldn't afford one and when I finally could, it couldn't do sloppy focus and that was a pet peeve of mine so I just returned it and got a used ThinkPad.

I moved back to Asia. Now I use sway on Debian and get to ride my bicycle to work and my kids grow up better than I did, so life is good.

Windows 95/98 sucked shit. I liked the games, but the kernels were terrible.

I dual booted or ran two machines Linux (RedHat 5.2 to 6.2, wtf was up with 7?), then whatever worked (usually Debian based) for a while. Mostly used Linux alone for years, but used Win7 for a bit. That one was okay, but Microsoft can't build dev tools on their own OS to save their lives.

It's been Linux Mint for a long time now on desktops and Debian/Armbian on servers.

Basically, I've been mainlining Linux since about '97 and it's doing me just fine. Works great for my kids and wife. We're a mostly Linux household. It saves me a ton of headaches. Easy to install, patch, and almost no other maintenance.

I was using windows 2000 and suddenly got dozens of popups in internet explorer. I didn't even use internet explorer, I used Netscape for all of my web browsing. I had dabbled a little with BSD and Linux so I just took the plunge. My local bookstore had a SuSE book with CDs so I bought it and never looked back. I've distro hoped a few times but keep going back to Suse.

When Microsoft announced the sunset of Windows 10.

I was still in uni at that time. Started with Ubuntu, disliked snaps and moved to Pop. Stayed there for last 5-ish (?) years. It does what I want it to do, I don't care about switching distros now.

My first contact with Linux was via amateur radio. I didn't want to hook my radio up to my main PC in case I wired something wrong, so I got one of those newfangled Raspberry Pis, circa 2013. Raspbian Wheezy was my first distro.

Not long after, my old laptop died and I needed a new one. Bought a Dell, it came with WIndows 8.1. Holy shit what an unusable pile. I hated that OS a lot. And then the laptop outright died. I was going back to school, I needed a PC to do school work on, and I've had flesh wounds I was satisfied with more than Dell's warranty support. It took them pretty much an entire semester of "We'll fix it in three weeks or so, when the one guy who does field repairs in your state will look at it", "it's fixed" it breaks almost instantly, before I finally demanded they replace the entire machine. Which they did, with a different, lesser, model. I am no longer a customer of Dell.

This left me doing all of my school work on a Raspberry Pi 1B, and then a Pi 2, for about 3 months. So I got a bit of a crash course in managing a Linux system.

Once I finally got a working laptop, Windows 8.1 felt more alien to me than Linux Mint did. It would actually have been more work to learn Windows 8.1 than Mint Cinnamon. So I became a full time Linux user.