Linux

I switched for good in 2019, when I realized that I was wasting more time getting windows into a usable state than the average arch user.

Privacy and usability were the biggest reasons for me.

I didnt leave because I was tired of windows, i stayed because it was better for development. I learned about other benefits later once I started using it

...Windows me... Iykyk

It was always obvious to me that as long as I was using closed source software that any day could come when the vendor would screw me over. In fact, it could have been running it with bundles and bundles of spyware already and I had no way of knowing it. So I pledged to start using open source software only, to make sure that wouldn't happen. First, I migrated all my desktop applications to open source alternatives. Then I finally made the switch.

Bought a Raspberry Pi back in 2019 or 2020 with the intention of making a little handheld emulation game console. I tried Ubuntu on it and thought it was neat enough to install on a secondary drive on my main computer to tinker with. At that point, I didn't care so much about the FOSS/Unix philosophy, I was just fascinated by the technical aspect; my computer can run an entire other OS besides Windows, which was the only thing I knew for almost two decades.

Now I exclusively use Linux and would only use Windows if it was an absolute necessity.

Back in the early days of Win10, an updated messed up my system and I ended up with duplicated icons. Wasn't happy, but didn't feel that it was that big of a deal to warrant a full reinstall.

2 years ago I built myself a new desktop and decided to try installing Linux straight away. Haven't looked back since.

Software dev was nicer & easier + digital art tools being more than servicable (where Adobe had just moved to a subscription service in 2013) while the philosophy matches my own for privacy & freed. I don’t like compromising on that philosophy unless absolutely necessary or being cost-prohibitve (where convenience is a low priority). In 2016 after seeing the Nvidia 10 series GPU numbers (still primary GPU ha), I built a new PC & vowed that this wouldn’t be a dual-boot machine, & the rest was history.

Windows 8.1. I switched to Linux because of Windows 8.1.

Many reinstalls of windows 10

Something in windows was causing it to be impossible to run docker containers with ease without needing to mess with some virtualization setting in some deep hidden windows settings paanel

Wal-Mart had redhat 5 on sale and the xplane screenshot on the back handled the rest.

I've been on Mac for around 10 years and the price of the hardware was a huge motivator. The 13" Framework came out and I jumped on that modular bandwagon. I do still use my Mac as a video ripping station but otherwise I earn all my money as a dev on Fedora 40 and have a secondary tablet with NixOS on it, because the draw of an easily reproducible system is strong.

Now Apple just continues to do stupid shit and I just want to own my computer without them looking over my shoulder and charging me a huge price to do it.

I do need to upgrade the Framework (started with the cheap i5 chip) to the fastest AMD variant available so that streaming works better without the fan spinning up, or just build a desktop for streaming and video work.

I'm a non IT user interested in usability. I left Windows 7, on my home PC, over 10 years ago, as Linux has a good selection of Desktop Environments to choose from. So I get to try different ways of working. Windows has loads of tweaks. But no serious alternative desktops. Work PC is Windows only sadly.

My internship supervisor. I did an internship back in 2006, I had this supervisor that was very very pro open source. He asked anyone on the team to use a Linux distro for work. I used Ubuntu for work for a long time. Slowly I started liking my personal laptop with windows less and less. So at some point (I think 2010 or 2011) I just went to Linux for my laptop as well. At first a dual boot, but I booted in Windows less and less. So on my next laptop some years later I skipped windows entirely.

I don't miss windows at all, but I do really hate I have to work with teams. It's the only app on my laptop I really hate on Linux.

I was starting college (comp.sci, natch) and a hard req for the program was "Your own personal computer, with an Ethernet card and an OS that had a TCP/IP stack for remotely accessing classwork." I didn't have a great deal of money (most of it was tied up in tuition and housing) and ethernet cards were expensive (I think I paid $140us for it at the time). I couldn't afford Windows and didn't have a warez hookup for '95. A BBS I used to call had Slackware disk images for download.

The rest, as they say, is history.

I bought a steam deck

For me I got super annoyed by the taskbar not hiding and unhiding correctly. Other one was the search not working correctly on start menu and many times just stalling and nothing happening.

Those were the ones that broke the camel's back.

Did not want to switch from windows 98 SE to XP, so went with linux instead.

Recall

It happened really slowly for me, over a period of years. We have multiple PCs (several media PCs, a home server, and our personal PCs) that we've built over the years. Aside from our personal PCs, the OS chosen was always just whatever was free to us at the time. Over time this became overwhelmingly Linux. But the real turning point for me at least was the end of 2021.

Our oldest media PC still had Win 7 on it and it was showing it's age. We'd had a lot going on in our lives when Win 7 support ended, and upgrading it was just not a priority until then. Long story short, I put Ubuntu on it.

While I definitely had my gripes about Ubuntu (which caused me to move to Mint a few months later), it was nothing compared to the problems I'd had with Win 10 on my personal machine a couple years prior. Compared to Windows, everything was just so... Easy. I didn't have to fight for my right to just change shit I didn't like. Installing applications was a fucking dream. Most games I cared about playing worked as well or better than they did on Windows.

So I put Mint on my personal machine and never looked back. Moved over to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed a few months after that, but I'm thinking about going back to Mint now that 22 is out.

TL;DR I was real tired of paying for software that would try to tell me what I could and couldn't do. Thought Linux was "too hard," found out it's not (at least for me).

Started learning web development.

When they announced when windows 10 support would end. The writing was on the wall and each update was a toss up whether it would add a useless feature.

I knew from experience many years ago that windows would delete grub if it so much as looked at it funny. So I got an amd card and cut windows out cold turkey.

Linux has a whole host of weird quirks and issues, just like windows. But it's either something documented, fixable, or will be fixed in an update. I'm more excited to click update in Linux than I am with windows too.

Few pieces of software don't work with either wine or a windows VM as backup. But so far I'm not missing much. Missing out on some games because of anti cheat sucks though. Even though I hate anti cheat, I still love a good game of league.

As a professional software dev, I worked with pretty much every OS daily. My personal computer was a Windows, my work laptop was a Mac, and I ran my code on Linux so I was familiar with the things I liked and disliked about each. I also ran my own set of server with my websites, mail servers, and various research projects to learn and grow.

Then I decided it was time to order a new laptop and I didn't want to go to Windows 11 because I felt Microsoft was going too much into features I didn't want like Ads, more tracking, pushing AI. Don't get me wrong, I like AI, but it was too much about forcing me to use it to justify their stock valuations.

I also was working on reducing my usage of big tech, setting up self hosted services like pi-hole, Home Assistant, starting to work my own Mint alternative. It just felt natural to get a Framework laptop and try running Linux on it.

I still have a Windows desktop for games and other things, I still use Mac at work. I still like the Mac for it's power efficiency and it doesn't get as hot. Linux has some annoyances here and there, like dbus locking up, or weird GNOME issues, or for a while my screen would artifact until set some kernel params, or the fact that my wifi card would crash and I had to replace it with an Intel card, but I'll stick with it.

Last year my wife said "most games can be run on Linux now because of steam deck, I think I'll switch to Linux" and I said "well I guess I'm switching too" so I un-installed windows, and I've been full time since, even starting to self host jellyfin and nextcloud. She and I have both done linux in the past, but gaming was what was holding us back. There wasn't anything WRONG with windows per se , except maybe the looming threat of windows 11, I just really love linux, open source, and being able to easily lift up the hood to peek inside

I use arch BTW. And Debian, my first love.

Windows XP deciding not to boot one day and not being able to find the OEM recovery disk

Went travelling back in 2015 and my laptop was already a 2011 model and starting to slow with Windows. I wasn't buying a new one just to travel with, money I'd rather spend on the trip.

I only needed it for movies and social media etc, maybe downloading photos from my camera.

Installed Ubuntu, so much nicer to be on and fun learning experience and then just never looked back.

Been 9 years and I havent moved home and I'm still on Linux (nixos now).

When I payed a decent amount for logic express and 2-3 years later I couldn't use it with the latest Apple OS.

When IBM killed OS/2

My first encounter with Linux was in 2007, I installed Kubuntu Gutsy Gibbon on my dad's computer out of curiosity - I was intrigued by a notion of free OS you can deeply customize.

I have spent countless hours fiddling with the system, mostly ricing (Compiz Fusion totally blew my mind) and checking out FOSS games.

Decades later I switched to Linux full-time. After 12 years of daily driving OS X and working as a developer, I wanted a customizable and lean OS that is easy to maintain and control. Chose Arch, then Nix, havent looked back ever since.

I started with Ubuntu in the 2005-7 timeframe on very slow old hardware. Shortly after, I bought an eeepc as I was a poor college student at the time and couldn't afford much else. I dual booted for years until windows 8 irritated me into giving up Windows for non-gaming completely, I've been using various forms of Linux as my primary OS since then.

Tl;Dr tried Linux because my hardware was very modest, stayed because Windows was getting worse in various ways.

For what would make me completely move, I just want my games to work, I know a ton of effort has been made on that front, but Nvidia drivers kinda stink so performance is a bit worse or completely unusable in certain programs on wayland at least.

Stuff like Wabbajack Skyrim/FO mod organizer modlist support for Linux too, along with modding other games in general usually requires windows because of dll hooking being very common.

My laptop had 32gb of emmc from factory; it came preinstalled with windows 10; windows 10 pretended at least 64gb and constantly kept the emmc at 0bytes free; i was sick of it. + windows 10 on that poor celereon was miserable.

I was toying around with the idea of doing my classes and early dev work on linux, hearing it's got a lot less roadblocks and annoyances, and that checked out.

I've been running it on all of my systems as main OS since not too long after that, and don't intend to go back

First thing that ever made me switch was MacBook Bootcamp drivers weren't available for a time, and things just worked great on Linux, even the broadcom wifi drivers right out of the box. What made me stay was the infinite amount of customization I can do, and that all of it is stored in one of two places and can be so easily backed up wherever needed.

I was able to play ubisoft games online with my friends. That was my last use case for windows.