Linux

I'm 70% there. Game is 100% since i use just the Deck. Browsing and casual also 100%. As a graphic designer i still have to keep Adobe around for now, but i'm also testing out alternative as Gimp, Krita, Kdenlive, Da Vinci and more. I'll soon upgrade my ssd and use the extra room for a dual boot on my desk. On my portable i already use Mint.

I had an overwhelming feeling of corporations telling me what they are selling and that I just have to deal with it. Apple, microsoft, adobe, all subscriptions that lock you in and hold you hostage.

Maybe I am just being over the top, but I miss feeling like I OWNED something. With linux? I own my laptop again.

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.

The last Windows OS I used was XP, around 2004-ish. Even back then, it was obvious to me that, because it was closed source, that they could one day start acting against my interests, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I saw open source as an insurance policy - it prevents vendors from acting maliciously against their users. In that very quaint, old time, nobody believed that MS would ever do something like that, but it didn't matter - the fact was that they could, so inevitably, they would.

I'm quite proud of how prescient I was when I look at what they're doing today. No evil is too great to stop a greedy businessman.

Anyway, I decided to just be brave and create a partition on my main drive and install Ubuntu on it. All I needed to get my work done was OpenOffice, LaTeX, a browser, a compiler, Python.... Everything worked better in Linux than Windows so even though I was dual-booting, I practically never used Windows again after a couple weeks. Later on, I switched to Debian, and the next laptop that I bought, I just wiped the hard disk and used Linux for the whole thing. I kept the recovery partition because I was paranoid but obviously never needed it.

Today, there's no doubt in my mind that Linux is the best OS. Sure, Macs have better batteries, but if I'm doing productive work, then I don't really need more than an hour away from my charger. I could maybe agree that the BSDs are better, but I've never tried them.

It's interesting how nobody is saying "because it's free software," which is kind of the entire point of Linux.

Don't get me wrong, I didn't switch for that reason either. But it's telling how conditioned we've been to not even recognize a free culture exists.

linux just feels better, quicker, more powerful from a user standpoint. also it doesnt spy on everything you do and use it to create a profile of you that will be used for god knows what, now, or in the future.

I didn't appreciate MS's anti-consumer practices (subscription fee for an OS, invasive telemetry and tracking, fucking ads in the goddamn Start menu), etc.). I installed Mint a couple years back and have almost zero regrets.

To flex on strangers online and post to unixporn fora

I moved from FreeBSD to Linux, for GPU rendering in Blender. If it wasn't for GPU drivers, I'd still be on FreeBSD.

Linux does what I want it to do. Windows doesn’t.

I was a dumbass and downloaded a shit ton of viruses. I couldn't afford to get a tech to fix my mistakes and XP didn't have a bootable recovery menu. I followed a tutorial on how to make an Ubuntu image flash drive, and the rest is history.

I was bad at computers and priced out of being a dumbass. I'm a sysadmin now 🙃

I problem solved and tinkered all day everyday on windows, linux just worked and used less ram, I immediately noticed I had many more tabs open and no lag

got sick of trying to make Windows "more private" until I realized I didn't have to

My computer was old and crusty and windows 11 would've surely killed it. Fedora let it continue on until I eventually made my new computer that I'm currently using, and there's no way I was gonna shell out for a windows license when linux is free

I have never owned a windows machine.

And I doubt most people can honestly claim their primary computing device is something other than their smart phone.

Instability in my WIndows NT 4 development machine. I'd been using Linux as a hobbyist for several years, but switched to it at work so I had a machine that didn't crash every few hours.

I don't remember anymore (it was around 20 years ago), probably out of curiosity, like most things I do.

I have a laptop and a handful of desktops between my office and home. Some run Windows and some run Linux. I simply choose which one matches my task best.

Systems where I'm writing server-side code are going to be Linux. Systems that run jobs in the back end such as my self hosting stuff are all Linux. Systems where I'm doing email, documents, and general web browsing are going to be Windows.

Of course, my Windows systems have WSL, and my Linux systems can run Windows apps in virt. These days the line is super blurred and it would no doubt be possible to use only one if I were willing to give up some native app running.

Started 20 years ago. It made sense from the first time I had to buy a pc and deal with windows. Previously had been Mac person, and just hated Windows. Linux felt different and had potential for flexibility and options.

Did Linux week every year since then. Shame it took 18 years for linux to get to where I could game on it and not feel like I was having a 3rd rate experience compared to windows, performance wise.

Been running EndeavourOS (aka Arch btw) with KDE plasma for 2 years. Still have windows on a smaller disk but Linux is my primary OS.

Happy to share my build guide (just a text file and some backed up configs).

I just had a Plex server die on me because I dared to use ReFS and storage spaces 10 years ago.

The performance uplift I got moving to Proxmox and ZFS filesystem was STUPID. And way more stable.

Lots more command line stuff, but in the age of AI assistants and things I don't feel that hampered by my lack of syntax knowledge.

Obviously this is about a server though, not my gaming rig with is still on W11. But that's said Steam has moved things along to a point where I feel like gaming on Linux is within reach.

I grew up with Windows and I switched, because my installation got broken (updates didn't work), it later got hacked, (I use there is nothing to lose mindset for piracy), and I was too annoyed with Windows. I wanted more privacy and performance from my device, so Linux experience was a nice surprise as it turned out to be so much better.

Windows ME happened. At the same time Debian was getting decent and then Ubuntu was released and that seemed to take over the world.

I wanted computing to be fun again. IMO XP was the last version of Windows that was actually fun

Curiosity I guess, but I have pretty much dabbled with Linux for different things since the early 2000s. Maybe even the late 90s.

I like solving problems.

I enjoy customization.

I hate Microsoft.

Windows makes me angry

Self-respect. I'm not going to tolerate my property being sabotaged against me in service of some other entity, and I don't understand why anybody else would either.

As soon as Windows 10 "telemetry" (read: spyware) started getting backported into Windows 7 almost a decade ago, I was gone.

Windows users in 2025 are nothing but cucks and simps for corporate abuse. They don't "just buy, have, and use a computer;" they are part of the problem.

Windows users seem to want to just buy, have, and use a computer

That's just not how I would describe Windows. It's more like a digital bilboard with spyware that also runs programs. It actively prevents you from just using "your" computer.

it ran like shit, I never knew what was going on, trying to read the logs was a pain in the ass, I had to edit the registry for basic shit, they crammed ads into everything, I didnt use one drive, it eventually just stopped updating - it would try then fail without any useful info and say try again.

what a dumpster fire of an operating system and company. how they still have market share and are successful blows my mind.

I barely knew what linux was before I watched pewdiepies video on it a long time ago. Just knew that some people on steam would complain about games not running on it, so I never bothered to look into it, since that is basically all I use my computer for. However, over the past 2 years I have been becoming more aware of my individual footprint. Something I noticed was that I will complain about things I think are "wrong" with the world, and then not do anything about them. One of those things was Microsoft (or big tech companies in general). I hate them, yet I would be using their product/service. Literally giving money to something I don't like.

I honestly have never enjoyed learning about computers and coding, I've tried and it's never felt fun to me. I'm definitely not the "target" of linux I guess. When I turn on my computer, I just want to play some games or do homework/work with no fuss.

However, Linux is at a point to where I, someone who has no want or need to learn computers, can switch and mostly use it out of the box. So I just switched, because if I'm gonna sit here and shit on Microsoft for not doing what I think is right, then I need to stop using their product. Capitalism means as long as they make money, they aren't gonna change a damn thing.

Enshitification of Windows was my reason, I was quite patient, I let it slide when they backported telemetry to Windows 7, Windows 10 was still quite usable but the amount of bloat was getting on my nerves already. When I saw what shitshow 11 is becoming I jumped ship. I'm glad I did it early and didn't wait for Windows EOL.

Windows is terrible.

Windows is such a horrible experience and MS is such a horrific company.

Combination of three things:

Windows XP. What a pile of shit that was. The enshitification began here. This is where microsoft ID's started. Where music downloads only worked with Internet Explorer. Where microsoft began data harvesting, and they started lying about being able to remove applications you didnt want.

The second reason was indirectly due to Quickbooks shitty software requirements.

Quickbooks, and windows wanted you at a specific computer. I thought this was bullshit. I realized with Linux I could work anywhere, and deliver my applications via x forwarding. No one "seat" rule.

So I added a linux server to work, and quickly started using Linux full time.

Funny about what you said though. I use Linux because I do not want to tinker, I want everything to just work. Windows and the applications for it go against you, change on you, require licensing of you, and generally are a pain in the ass.

Through a MSDN I have free access to all windows software. I have free use of an Azure node and Virtual Desktops. But I won't use them for anything personal, only if someone will pay me. MS just sucks that much.

I am willing to remote into, push code to, admin any window device for money. But I do it all from a linux machine.

I've been absolutely seething over Microsoft's bullshit for years. Over the years of having less and less control over my own fucking computer, the parasitic privacy invasion, the dumbfuck constant bloat, the cartoon level evil of Microsoft in general, the constant degradation, forcing unnecessary features and ads, and generally just the sheer audacity. Honestly, I've just kinda been putting up with it for not much more than "it works for now and I'm just tired, man". However, then Microsoft started pushing ai and some updates that were literally bricking systems so I could no longer justify having a switch from windows being such a low priority; it was now a liability. I'm now running CachyOS and I'm quite happy with the switch. Everything just fucking works, not to mention the very noticeable performance boost. Fuck Microsoft.

Windows 10 decided to update a machine in a client's office. The update took 4 hours and the employee could do zero during that time. A few weeks later a Win 10 machine at the same office crashed and would not start. I was left googling error codes from the BSOD. Nothing worked and I had to reinstall. I decided I needed to get my own work stack off of windows. I installed Kubuntu. 2 years later and I like KDE, I like the Debian base, I hate snap, but mostly I'm working and productive.

Privacy, freedom to choose whatever I want, focus on FOSS (I hate/dont trust proprietary software), and security features for hardening Linux (Landlock, SELinux, Bubblewrap, sysctl, hardened_malloc).

i switched to Linux in 2013ish to get away from my gaming habit and go all in on programming and computer science. that may not work these days as all the games i play work on Linux ha

Linux became so much less work to keep running than windows, even for gaming (if you've got an AMD gpu at least). I don't play competitive gaming in any capacity so I'm not missing pretty much anything.

I simply hate being spied on. I also can't logically understand, why to pay for a product, while still losing privacy at the same time. Then I came to linux, and it does the best of both worlds: It can be used for free, while respecting privacy. I still donate to my distro though, but it doesn't force me to.

I didn't move away from Windows, Windows moved away from me.

I would have been happy to stay on it if it hadn't continued to get shittier and shittier.

My computer wasn't compatible with Windows 11, and it's not that old, dammit. The thought of throwing it out because of some arbitrary push for Windows 11 from Microsoft made me angry, so I finally installed Mint since it's the one I kept hearing is easiest for people who don't know anything about Linux. I've been using it almost 3 months now and I don't find it difficult to deal with at all, and the games I play work on it. The biggest hurdle has been compatibility with some school stuff, but I've been able to use LibreOffice and Google Docs when all else fails.

Computers aren't my hobby, running into errors when I just want to get shit done pisses me off. I've been dealing with a minimal amount of that on Mint, I imagine mostly because I'm not tinkering with a ton under the hood (mostly aesthetic changes so that it looks how I like). If you have basic troubleshooting skills for Windows then a lot of that transfers to Linux, even though the actual solutions will be different.

If something better than Mint came along I'd probably switch to it, but I don't know what that would look like, since Mint is doing exactly what I want: running my programs and not popping up with a ton of useless AI crap or ads.