Linux

About 10 years ago a friend discovered Linux during his studies and suggested I try it out.

I haven't looked back ever since.

Back when AI models were first coming out (before..well all the worst of it happened), AMD self hosting only worked on Linux.

Spun up a few distros in a VM, picked my favorite (EndeavourOS), then installed it on a new drive so I could cleanly dual boot. Got hooked and haven’t looked back in like 3-4 years, and don’t touch Windows at all anymore.

Also don’t touch AI anymore, really.

Back in the early 2010s, I bought a new PC with Windows 8 on it. Hated the way it looked and the way it worked. I wanted my Start menu and Aero and Classic themes back. Led me to learning about Linux. But uxTheme and Classic Shell kept me happy for a couple more years.

Then I got a laptop with Windows 10. Felt my heart rate spike as I went through the settings and found out how much more hostile to user choice and privacy Microsoft had become. When the semi-annual updates kept undoing all my hard work debloating Windows, I decided it was time to begin using Linux in earnest.

At first, I had a dual-boot setup and jumped around between Ubuntu, Deepin, Arch, etc. Found myself booting into the Windows partition less than once a month, at which point I moved it out onto its own drive. Distro-hopping went on for about a year, after which I decided that Debian met all of my needs. Continued DE-hopping for about another year until settling on XFCE with Chicago95. Brought me enough joy to make a standardized setup in a VM, which I have since cloned to all of my computers except for the Windows laptop I keep around for work.

Because if my operating system is going to break in stupid ways I want it to be my fault or at the very least something I could fix if I knew shit about fuck. Seeing as I don't know that the main perk is Linux keeps getting better as windows keeps getting worse.

Tldr: GNU/Linux is easier to use than Windows.

Let me tell you, I am a user that does not want to fiddle around with my operating system. I want my operating system to be basically invisible and just run the programmes that I like to use, even though I am tech savy. I became "tech savvy" because I needed to troubleshoot my computer constantly, thanks to Microsoft Windows.

In my free time I liked to play video games, and I didn't know about Proton until 2021. When Windows 11 rolled around, I was already fed up with the constant Win10 trash, forever reinstalling and fighting the system to just behave normally. With Windows 11 and the stupid TPM, where Microsoft could disable my computer and turn it into literal e-waste, that was the final straw that broke the camel's back. That was 2021. Then I installed GNU/Linux on all of my computers, no dual boot. I once experimented with it in 2010. And ever since then it has come a very long way. In 2021, basically 80% of my games worked through proton. The nicest surprise were the programmes that I found. I got in contact with many of the "flagship" FOSS projects, and I was delighted. They worked all so well, so much better than any of the proprietary ransomware that constantly extorts you for money. I exclusively use those for work as well now. And by now, all of my games are supported by Proton. Literally every single one. Ever since installing, I haven't looked back. Because GNU Linux is so much more simple, the programs do not need to be updated individually, they can just be updated normally through Flatpak or Apt for example. The system doesn't need constant reinstalling, and it doesn't have any sort of Windows rot. The system and the programmes on it do not require any internet to function.

So in short, I love GNU/Linux because it made the computer frictionless. You didn't need to fight it in order to be productive with it and to do the things that you want. And all of those years I looked back and I thought to myself how little my computer actually worked on windows. The "worst" maintanance with GNU Linux that I ever had was I needed to install a driver for the Wi-Fi/Bluetooth card of my Microsoft Surface tablet. That's it. No registry, nonsense, with disabling bundled viruses, no forced one drive, no forced ads, no slow down of the system over time, actually being able to uninstall programs, and many more things, make GNU/Linux superior in my book.

Originally I switched just because I didn't have a Windows install available and Linux was convenient enough to just download and stick on there. But then once I got used to using it I massively preferred it. I'm the opposite of what you're describing, I don't want "problem solving and tinkering", I like Linux because it basically just does what I want it to do. Windows does what Microsoft wants it to do lol.

I had used Lubuntu to rescue an underpowered laptop back in community college. At university, I was on the campus tech support team... and ended up "the Linux guy" for the few foreigners who had installations (I knew how to run apt and that's about it). Out of uni, I ended up in a career supporting RHEL. Of course Raspberry Pis skyrocketed in popularity as well, so I got to sink my teeth into a Debian-derivative and blow up a few installs without having to worry about change management.

When time came to build a system in 2025, I figured I'd try it as an experiment. I stumbled at first and learned Debian does not play well with new hardware, but after switching to Linux Mint it's been nearly painless. Most of the software I had been using in Windows was already open source (because I couldn't afford to buy software), so almost everything migrated 1:1. Excluding Winamp... :(

When I started on windows, and even with the textual pseudo-GUI's of DOS, once you got it working you could customize the hell out of everything(or it didn't pretend otherwise), and it would just continue to work until something physically broke or I broke somethin; with a tweak I would generally just undo and get back to it.

Windows is nothing like that now. My phone is more customizable, smooth, enjoyable and stable than Windows(OOBE, anyways). Its arguably better at things like, idk, working with scanners, which Windows insists are dark magic only the manufacturers can help you with(TWAIN was literally cleaner, and still is, when you can lift the hood to find it); I'm not saying its all-that-weird to need a driver - what's weird is refusing to look for an entire device-category until a third-party app tells you how, when EVERYTHING ELSE is basically plug-and-play, including the printing functions of networked copiers or fax machines.

Rant from this-specific-day's bullshit at work aside, my first experiences were with an Amiga and some Apple ii's, OS2Warp was an experience that barely struck me as much-different than what I was used-to, and I've messed-around with Macs as much as much as anyone.

What's weird isn't moving away from Windows, basically the most overtly Black Mirror-esque OS of what's out there today. What's weird is how hung-up people are on it.

Every brain-controlling or addicting substance or species on Futurama has more to offer; Windows, like facebook, is trying to be the ads injected-into dreams. Who the hell wants that?

Curiosity at first, but now all the stuff I usually do is easier from linux ssh, sshfs etc. WSL on windows is niftyish.

Avoiding studying for exams in 2007.

I have told this story several times.

In late 2013 or so, I bought a Raspberry Pi 1B as part of my amateur radio hobby. I did all my actual work on a Windows laptop, the Pi was pretty much just a toy, and I learned a little about Linux with it.

Mid-2014, the display in my aging laptop died. I was going back to school that fall, I needed a laptop. So I ordered a high end Inspiron from Dell. And Dell sold me a lemon. That laptop would just...shut off and never turn back on again. And then I'd call Dell's tech support. They'd send a tech out within a week or two. He'd throw a part in it, and then it would last somewhere between days and seconds. After waiting over a week to get a tech to come out and fix it, it didn't finish booting before it died again. I finally got them to replace the laptop outright, with a system that lacked many of the features I had explicitly ordered.

I am no longer a Dell customer.

That whole time, I needed a computer, and the only thing I had was that Raspberry Pi in addition to my Galaxy S4. It was real fun typing up homework in LibreOffice on a single core 700Mhz ARMv6 and 512MB of RAM.

I finally got a running Dell, after an entire semester, loaded with Windows 8.1. Windows 8.1 was a total pube fire. Linux felt more familiar at that point, so I tried a few different systems, discovered Linux Mint, and 11 years later I don't have any computers that run Windows.

Productivity: once your Linux machine does what you want, it does what you want. It doesn’t ask if you’re sure you don’t want ai cloud storage telemetrics shoved up your hinders every 2 clicks.

Bloat: No explanation necessary.

I have ADHD: I get shit done on Linux. You can turn off whatever you want and it stays off. Windows (especially 11) is a bs distraction minefield by default. And it’ll actively work against you to keep it that way.

Windows said they were going to force AI into the OS, so I left.

I installed Bazzite, it was easy and just worked, but I decided I didn't like immutability. So I installed Garuda, and it was also easy and just worked, even with an Nvidia card.

So now I'm on Linux and run a bunch of windows games with proton and they also work.

Freedom. 24 years ago, I figured that there had to be something different that I could customize. I had experimented with BeOS but then I came across Gentoo, and Linux in general. I crushed and burned many times experimenting with Slackware, SuSE (and later OpenSuSE), as well as Mandrake, but Debian became my thing. I did some time with Solus, but I'm a Debian guy. Netboot, put it together as I want, and what not.

I'll admit I'm a lazy bastard who likes the convenience of things just working. I also really like using Solidworks for CAD drafting. The things Microsoft has been doing with breaking its OS in stupid and privacy-invading ways pushed me over the edge now. It's been a struggle to learn the intricacies of Linux in order to set up whatever distro I'm trying at the moment. I'd still rather struggle with a difficult to master OS at this point than go back and let Windows 11 get worse with AI bullshit and sell out my privacy for greater shareholder value though.

In my experience so far all I can say is I prefer mutable distros that make it easier for me to install and run a VPN, even if it makes it hard for me to access my local NAS because of it.

Windows 98 ate my college photos and music when a virus made my HDD take a click of death dump.

Fuck you to whoever wrote that virus. Since then I gave various linuses a go and I did so for a while each just learning how to be as lazy as possible while using linux. Later I had to run windows for some cad software. But after it corrupted my Linux several times I gave it the boot into its own drive which is only startable using grub. Grub sits on the Linux drive. My home drive is a big ass Linux formatted drive that mounts into Home/username. That way even if my Linux takes a shit I can reinstall it and boom back to where I left off....solo much further than anything windows could ever imagine. I could even have several linuses all going to the same home folder without any problem.

I moved away from MacOS in the past few years to finally full-time Linux after using it recreationally since the early 2000s. I’ve only really used Windows on work computers (or school back in the day).

I was not "techy" Jumped about 15 years ago. My (then) laptop was old and that Windows thing was very slow and needed many restarts. My much smarter work colleague showed me his Ubuntu. I installed as dual boot and in less than 12-months had stopped using Windows and installed Ubuntu as the sole OS. Since then, have tried many others, including Puppy. Now on Debian. Still not techy,or in any way competent with the terminal, but linux just works, even for me.

Curiosity. It came with a book at the library.

Also Money. You make a lot more if you know Linux.

It was 20 years ago and Microsoft was terrible and Windows was awful. Later on I used Windows 8.1 somewhat out of necessity until it was deprecated and went back to Linux because Microsoft is terrible and Windows 10/11 is awful, but now with all kinds of invasive telemetry.

I've used Linux since 1998 (red hat), along BeOS. But I went back to Windows because XP was rather good, Linux was becoming good too slowly, and BeOS was dead. Still kept my Linux partitions though, while my laptop was now running MacOSX. After a few years, with 7, Windows became even better, so I moved to it full time, including in laptops. In the 2010s I tried Linux a couple of times again, but it was having these small bug things that was breaking the overall good experience. It just wasn't ready for the desktop, sorry. My laptops became once again MacOSX, while I was doing photoshop cleanup for my traditional paintings with Windows 10. Then, in 2022, I retried Linux, and it was finally ready for how I always wanted it to be. The overall experience was good. Linux came to 100% usability for me just this year, with the release of Gimp 3, which allowed adjustment layers.

Basically, I have a baseline standard of how well I expect OSes to work on the desktop. I want the number of bad surprises to a minimum. I'm too old for tinkering, I want things to work. For Linux, this came true only in the last few years. So now I'm switched to it on all my computers. I only kept one macbook air with macos, all the other older mac intel ones are now running linux too. My main OS is Debian-Testing, while on laptops I run Mint. I have no Windows PC anymore at all.

My PC shat the bed, I needed one RIGHT NOW for university, and a roommate gifted me an old tower with OpenSUSE installed.
I hated it and couldn't figure out how to install anything. But I was broke (as in, couldn't afford to eat every day). So I was stuck.
When I found out how the package manager works and how much software was available, I was blown away:
No hunting for software on the internet?
Everything is free?
No limited functionality or nagging reminders to upgrade to pro?
No searching through installer submenus to find all the checkmarks that install spyware?
Never looked back after that. The next year Ubuntu appeared, and blew my mind again.

I was a Windows user since 95, but I was increasingly feeling that my Windows PC was not my PC. That my personal information was being sent to some MS server. Then they started pushing recall and shoe horning in copilot. The sledgehammer that broke the camel's back was when my perfectly good PC was deemed not good enough for an upgrade to Windows 11. I went Linux and am never going back.

Office 365 in my face 24/7.

I've (mostly) moved over from macOS.

Generally I actually prefer macOS to Linux (I've settled on Kububtu mostly), but I've become increasingly dissatisfied with Apple over the past few years. The cost of their services and products creeping, being able to see business decisions that falsely cripple cheaper devices, and general all round shittiness that I no longer wish to be a part of.

I had a series of iPhones from a 3GS in 2009 up to a 13 mini, but grew tired of having to jump through hoops to make iOS do what I wanted from it - a feeling exacerbated by using iPadOS on my iPad mini. So last February I grabbed a Pixel 9 and put Graphene on it. hell of a learning curve, but one that showed me that there were better, more equitable ways to achieve what the interconnected Apple ecosystem can do. It might not be as polished, but it's significantly cheaper, and uses equipment that won't be rendered obsolete and unable to be upgraded or used in some way.

Then Tim Apple pulled that stunt giving Trump the big gold trophy and I knew that Apple was no longer a company that shared the least of my values. Not that I really believed that before, they're a multi-trillion dollar company, after all, but of the available options they seemed the least shitty. But not any more.

So now I only use macOS on my M2 Air. When that eventually falls apart I'll replace it with something I can put Linux on.

poverty; i couldn't afford a windows license.

Multiple reasons. Performance issues, bloatware, bullshit system requirements, forcing unnecessary and often times useless features on it's users, restricting how much control the user has over the OS, and a lot of smaller issues that just ruin the over all user experience.

While I will admit that Linux isn't perfect, the experience I've had with Linux overall has just been so much better. There are also a lot of small benefits to Linux that Microsoft will never offer. For example, if you have a computer with an older GPU, not only will it still work with newer Linux distros, it may also support newer versions of OpenGL and Vulkan. The first computer I ever used Linux on had an Intel HD Graphics 3000, and on top of getting surprising performance on Linux compared to Windows, the supported version of OpenGL went from 3.0 to 3.3, which doesn't seem like much but, at least at the time, a lot of applications had OpenGL 3.3 as their minimum required version.

As for why I didn't use MacOS or ChromeOS. I've heard that MacOS is mostly fine but I'd have to buy a brand new computer to run MacOS and their computers are just too expensive for me. And as for ChromeOS, I am aware that I could have used ChromeOS Flex but in addition to the fact that it still has some of the issues I have with Windows, I have concerns about how much I actually be able to do with it. Google is very vague when it comes to explaining the differences between ChromeOS and ChromeOS Flex.

If ChromeOS Flex allows the use of android apps just as much as the main version of ChromeOS, then I do think that might be a good choice for people who want to drop Windows but don't want to use Linux. I do have limited experience with ChromeOS because my mom owns a Chromebook and it seems fine and they are pretty cheap, but I'd imagine that most people don't want to buy a new computer just for a different OS.

Let's just say that ME deserved its "Mistake Edition" moniker

I was always curious but never moved over completely because I had this idea that it was difficult to run things (games, etc). I had a laptop with dual boot with Ubuntu for the longest time, then I started to use WSL to code.

The thing that made me finally switch was the steam deck. It showed me it was possible and now we don't have a single machine with Windows at home.

Thinking about it now, I don't know why everyone kept recommending to use Ubuntu, it was probably one of the main reasons why it took me so long to switch.

I worked with windows and their servers for a long, long time. Fully delved into that ecosystem as it was between 2000-2019 or so.

In 2019 i quit the job I had then and went on a short sabbatical, severe burnout. I had played around with knoppix circa 2003, slackware as well, but I didn't "get it".

So the image of linux, in my head, were those experiences until 2019, when I took another look. I had a 500gb sata ssd that I was using to test out every distro under the sun, including a relatively successful install of BLFS. For 2 years I had tried all I could get my hands on, until I settled on my distro of choice.

Nuked my nvme, cleaned out almost all windows remnants from my homelab and went balls deep in linux.

So now I am off windows for about 5 years and I feel like I did when I quit smoking. I keep an install around on a spare ssd because I need fusion360 and a few games that only work on windows so I can keep up with the few friends I have.

But home is on my linux installs and every day, I enjoy the shit out of it.

Windows XP had been out for quite a while, and I did not want to use it. Staying on 98SE was not going to be possible forever. Ubuntu was quite new, I had recently started uni, and some friends helped me get started. There was one thing that absolutely amazed me: package repository. Just the concept. Windows at the time, to install stuff was finding random pages, sifting through ads, locate download button, hope it is not a virus. Linux had it solved. So far superior it there was no way I'm going back after that.

My desktop is too old to run Windows 11.

Have used Linux for work (desktop and server) for 15+ years. At home I've got Linux for my servers but desktop had stuck to windows because of gaming and audio production software.

The experience in gaming is amazing now on Linux for me and while audio is still quite iffy it's workable.

I have never liked Microsoft so binning them off at home completely is something I've always wanted to do

I also wanted an OS that "just worked", and Windows was no longer delivering that. I was constantly having driver issues (usually wireless and Bluetooth related), which required messing around in the registry to fix. I suppose I could have wiped everything and started with a fresh install, but how long would that have worked for?

If I was going to have to tinker and tweak things to get it to work anyway, I figured I might as well do it with an OS that I was in control of, that didn't shove ads in my face constantly, and that I didn't have to pay to unlock all the features. I already had a little experience with Linux in VMs, so I tried dual-booting. I found I didn't really need to boot into Windows except for the most niche cases, so I just stayed on Linux.

When I built a new computer a couple of years ago, I switched over from dual-booting to just Linux. I've been running EndeavorOS ever since.

I was using ubuntu during my internship and I like and never looked back

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.

Can people please just stop with these terrible generalizations? Lots of windows users consider themselves "computer people" and tinker with their computer and solve problems. Plenty of Linux users aren't doing shit but using it as it comes. It feels like a terrible rip off of the old apple ads "I'm a Mac", "and I'm a PC". It's crap.

1. Instantly preferred Linux, but thought it was not feasible.
2. Learned that dual booting is a thing and set up a Win+Xubuntu Laptop.

Nowadays, my PC is dualboot and all my laptops Linux.

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."

wiped a windows partition with grub while trying to install an iso to a usb stick (just woke up and thought that was a good idea to be doing), realised my mistake, had bad ram at the time and so i bit the bullet and installed linux cause windows wouldn't get past the initial install screen, 2 pcs later and i'm still rocking linux. switched in the tail end of october 2018 and i laugh at the state of windows ever since then.

Irritated enough to learn

"It's only going to get worse." - Me when Windows 8 didn't come with the start menu

I switched because of a strong dislike for Microsoft and their spyware. I didn't even bother dual booting, I ran baptism by fire right into Fedora and it was way smoother than I expected it to be. I enjoyed Fedora so much that I decided to try Arch. Very different experience, but now I've learned so much that I dumped Fedora and I use Arch for almost everything. I do keep a machine with Debian that way I feel like I'm getting the most well-rounded experience in case I ever need to help a friend with a Debian-based distro.