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?
Windows from 3.1, MS DOS before that
Come W 8 I was getting grumpy, started dual booting Ubuntu.
Not able to overcome my own apathy, dual boot as in 95% of the time Windows
Come the W 11 announcement some time ago I grabbed another NVME, installed Linux Mint and said fisk it and never went back. Only distro hopped to LMDE haha
Fuck Terminal :)
Here are the following reasons why i switched to Linux:
- feels Sluggish to use,especially starting with Windows 10 and it got worse with 11 (And this is on a i3 12100f + 16/8gb ram + gtx 1650 and i only used 7,10 and 11 )
- Shoving AI Slop with copilot.
- Forcing/nagging a Microsoft account (ik I have one but why can’t I sign in later or whenever I want to)
- Little flexibility and portability.(side note: i like how i can use Linux on my RPI5 Backup pc aswell :D)
- Buggy,especially with Vibe coded Windows 11.
- Bloat,especially with preinstalled apps you cannot remove .
And that’s what I can remember
Not all the way there yet but working on it because the problems I’m having with Windows are reaching a tipping point where they outweigh the problems I’d have with Linux. I would never buy an Apple product. Their bullshit walled garden ecosystem disgusts me and they are leading the charge that’s showing all the other tech companies just how much the average consumer will let them get away with.
Privacy and freedom. Some developer tools are already installed or if not are easy to install. Also I don’t like bloatware, the price is nice and the performance is great.
I tried to break from Windows back in college after Windows 8 was such a disaster. Set up an Arch dual boot over a weekend and tried to use it whenever I could. Unfortunately found myself using the Windows partition far more often mostly because of gaming compatibility. Shelved it and suffered through MS’s bullshit ever since.
10 years later on the dot, I went on a huge degoogling/de-MS push this past winter/spring. Set up GrapheneOS on my phone, moved away from as many big tech services and tools as I could, changed my email, and eventually said fuck it and installed CachyOS on my brand new desktop to give it a go. It’s been my daily driver ever since. The whole degoogling push also got me to set up a home server and go down the entire selfhosting rabbit hole but that’s a discussion for another day.
The Steam Deck is what really reintroduced me to it and showed me how insane Proton is for compatibility, and with all the garbage big tech and fascists want to throw at us, this year was definitely time to make the switch.
Which reminds me, I should probably wipe that Windows partition that still gathers dust.
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
would disagree. there are plenty of casual user friendly distros, like ubuntu or bazzite. there are immutable distros
i personally work on linux and like linux but used windows for gaming at home. switched this year after realising all the games are play run fine on linux
Also, Windows doesn’t “just work.” I’ve yet to encounter anyone who gets a Windows machine and has no problems at all.
My mother-in-law got a new laptop (didn’t consult me first) and it refused to even acknowledge her printer when plugged in. I plugged in my little transformer pad running an old Ubuntu and it printed in literally one second flat. She ended up having to get a new printer. Why? Because the existing one she had, the manufacturer didn’t pay their protectsia to have it in the included drivers base. And no, even a downloaded driver didn’t help.
So Windows has its own shit aplenty. That’s just one example of many. I think the idea that Windows is easier is a myth. Linux just happens to have a lot more to offer that requires a little learning, and most people are just too lazy or scared.
Anyone who takes the plunge and is willing to learn seems to be happy for having done it so… that should be enough testimonial.
These posts are funny, literally everyone has an answer so you get like over a hundred replies.
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 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.
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.
Windows 8 was an abomination, I was still using a flip phone and so I was extra grossed out.
I used Linux in a VM and WSL for several years, and I occasionally used it on an old laptop. It was in 2022 on the week I installed Cygwin that I thought, “I do more Linux stuff than Windows stuff. Why don’t I just straight up use Linux?”
I created a test install on a secondary drive, which has now been my main install for years and has been moved to a bigger drive twice.
I got very used to Linux, and Windows gave me no reason to come back.
Windows was becoming increasingly bad for people that use mainly keyboards, and my laptop’s HDD nearly dying and me having to use a Linux distro to recover files I couldn’t lose gave me an window and interest to try out a distro closer in UX as Android, thus I found Ubuntu almost 5 years ago.
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.
My dad played (and still plays) heavily modded Cities Skylines. After upgrading his RAM to 32GB, he’d run afoul of Windows 7 Home Edition’s 16GB limit. I offered to check out Linux on my own computer to see how well Cities Skylines played. I never went back.
