this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2025
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Linux

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Why did you move from Windows to Linux? (leminal.space)
submitted 2 months ago by umbrellacloud@leminal.space to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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Personally, I’m not brand loyal to any particular OS. There are good things about a lot of different operating systems, and I even have good things to say about ChromeOS. It just depends on what a user needs from an operating system.

Most Windows-only users I am acquainted with seem to want a device that mostly “just works” out of the box, whereas Linux requires a nonzero amount of tinkering for most distributions. I’ve never encountered a machine for sale with Linux pre-installed outside of niche small businesses selling pre-built PCs.

Windows users seem to want to just buy, have, and use a computer, whereas Linux users seem to enjoy problem solving and tinkering for fun. These two groups of people seem as if they’re very fundamentally different in what they want from a machine, so a user who solely uses Windows moving over to Linux never made much sense to me.

Why did you switch, and what was your process like? What made you choose Linux for your primary computing device, rather than macOS for example?

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[–] BlindFrog@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

Tl;dr, bc linux is based

I got a steam deck when it came out. The desktop side was really cool, and all my games ran great on it.

Soon after, I finally bought my (former) dream pc case & decided with my next pc build I wanted linux because... it felt like the cool thing to do. With the steam deck, linux seemed just cool-new and easy to use. I couldn't imagine not being able to solve any problems on a well-established distro with just patience and google-fu.

So I had mint and two flavors of fedora on flash drives and couldn't for the life of me figure out how to enlarge my cursor on either fedora version. On mint cinnamon, I found the setting right away. I've been on mint since and haven't looked back.

Pretty rarely, I get the question, why tf are you using linux? My answer is pretty much "cause I think it's based? Plus I get to learn more about computers along the way anytime something doesn't work."