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?
I just felt increasingly like I didn’t have control over my system. And Gnome 2 was looking sick to me at the time, I loved the look. 👌
Started with Ubuntu for a few years and now I’ve been on Arch for over a decade I believe.
Ubuntu is great, I’ve heard good things about Arch. Arch people are similar to vegans: they’re really annoying, they announce themselves, they preach to people… they tend to have good opsec and own some sort of mask and bolt cutters… they like taking pictures of their pets…
ideological reasons. windows creeps me the fuck out. i’ve been using linux since the slackware days. sure i’ve been on win 3.1 and all the way up to XP as my OS because of gaming, but I have dual booted with linux since around 2003. I haven’t had Windows installed on any device since 2013 - and frankly, I am so fucking happy with fedora and the steam deck finally kicking the door down and making linux 100% viable for everyone.
But yes, I’m too old now and I really can’t be arsed to deal with the constant patchwork of the olden days and there is no way I would ever look back at anything since switching to fedora 2 years ago. It’s insanely good (finally). Not even mint could deliver an equally flawless experience after all these years in comparison. I actually just dropped mint from my last holdout device earlier this week, replacing it with Fedora.
The Year of Linux Desktop is finally here!
Microsoft wants to have its cake and eat it too… they want to become Amazon while having a full head of hair and a stable marriage… its not going to happen…
for a long time i had a lot of windows machines and linux machines, but as of late ive fully committed to linux. i started doing linux back in like 2002 or something, and i mostly liked it for keeping old machines working on low specs and while remaining fairly secure (i wasnt the richest kid growing up so i was constantly trying to squeeze juice out of everything i had available). i still use old 2003 hardware for simple tasks like displaying pdfs for cooking in my kitchen.
these days, it can more than handle being a daily driver, i think that started around 3-5 years ago. there are no issues in the vast majority of applications and games, open source has caught up to many closed source applications in many contexts, and proton is so absurdly good at what it does now. the only thing it lacks are games that rely on excessive kernel level anticheat, which frankly you shouldnt play ever for security reasons. and soon enough, through lepton itll be able to run android apps as natively as possible, which will make it fundamentally the most versatile desktop operating system.
Hey even if you’re a rich kid, it’s a good idea to ‘squeeze juice’ out of things, waste is a sin you know… there are starving people in the world, its always a good idea to use what you’ve got
Windows Updates
Got an update while finishing a large project for work. Tried to postpone updates, Micro$oft said no and reboot anyway. Rebooted and waited 2 hrs for the “Please Wait” to go away.
Oh yeh and also the in your face OneDrive adware. I swear, every single time I update, the laptop keeps asking if I want to sign into onedrive.
Irritated enough to learn
Basically, im getting old and weird and less willing to abide corporate fuckery.
So that I’d have a clever answer to this question
Because I hate MS CEO
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.
I’m sorry for whatever I did to personally offend you so much. This must be so hard for you. I hope you’re doing ok.
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.
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.
Because Windows customization was too hard and weird. To install a custom theme, I had to browse DeviantArt for some god forsaken reason(???) and trust this random person’s theme, which could contain malware for all I knew! I just wanted to choose colors and change transparency!
Stupid default software: What’s up with Micro$oft Edge? Why do they push it so hard? Just let me set Firefox as the default browser for everything! I want to be able to uninstall things I don’t want on my system, and use whatever apps I want.
So, around 2022, I tried Linux Mint and fell in love with it. I’d heard Apple devices were pretty locked down so the thought of buying a Mac hadn’t crossed my mind (I could not afford one anyways).
I then went on to, over time, try other distros, such as: ArcoLinux (now discontinued), Debian, Artix, KDE Neon, Void, and nowadays I run NixOS on my desktop and Arch on my laptop. (I did try Fedora Sway for a few hours before installing Arch on my laptop though).
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.
2001 first introduced to Fedora (1?) A friend installed on my laptop. Used it for a little; but it didn’t do the things I wanted. A little while later I was back on XP.
I tried Ubuntu 6.04; it wasn’t ready. Back to XP.
I tried Ubuntu 8.04; it was really close. Back to XP.
I tried Ubuntu 10.04; and have had Linux ever since. I have jumped to various distros over the years, I kept coming back to Mint though. I currently have a couple of computers running Bazzite and the rest on Mint.I do keep Windows VM’s around; XP, 7 and 10. But they barely get turned on these days.
I haven’t had Windows installed on a machine in 16 years; even in 09 it only lasted a couple of months till I got time to replace it.
Because I can tell it to do whatever I want. I get to control the device I own. Pretty basic. Same principle for my others devices, so deGoogle Android phone, earbuds with open source firmware, keyboard with open source firmware, Zigbee for IoT, etc. My stuff should do what I want.
