Linux

I don't have the most overpowered PC. I just have a small little desktop (Minisforum UM700) and Linux runs a whole lot better on it. My work also was giving out some old laptops that they were retiring (still better devices than my laptop which was a Lenovo T420) but they came without an operating system. I've always enjoyed using Linux but never made the full change because I would need MS Office and switching from Excel to LibreOffice Calc was just annoying. Since I didn't need to do work on my personal PCs anymore, I made the switch and I love it. Games run better for me.

I currently use Linux Mint but I might switch to just plain Debian (or Linux Mint Debian Edition once they release LMDE6 which will be based off Debian Bookwork).

I left Windows because of telemetry, lack of customization, and tedious updates. I just wish I had bought a machine with AMD rather than NVIDIA because I'm still on X.org for optimus-manager.

For me I was always interested in alternative OS'. I didn't necessarily dislike windows, I just thought Linux was fascinating and liked playing around with the different ways to do things and accomplish tasks.

It was only later in life that I learned how excessive windows data collection was and became uncomfortable with using it that I began to seek out linux as a full alternative and try to decouple myself from the windows ecosystem.

I've been dual booting on and off since 2004, but the big switch came in 2016 with DXVK making my games not run like ass.

I had enough of Windows. I had an older motherboard and the windows drivers were terrible for the sound card causing me to have to reinstall them manually all the time. Sometimes I'd leave a video transcoding and windows would reboot to update. After each update I'd spend the time to get rid of the bloat ware like King games, Xbox garbage etc. Once after an update I woke up to the windows 10 "Welcome to your computer" screen, and it decided during the night that it was going to erase my user profiles.

The most frustrating thing though, is that for all these issues I'm locked out from correcting them, or preventing them, or even checking what happened. Windows obfuscates so much in the name of "user experience" that any effort to diagnose a problem or fix a problem usually results in reinstalling being the best solution.

Also, Settings/Control Panel is a mess and really shows the lack of coherence in the OS. Linux isn't completely coherent by design, Windows is by ineptitude.

I was studying software engineering so I knew about linux for a while but never went ahead to try it as a workstation OS. I started to really dive into it when Windows 10 came out. Win10 is now regarded as one of the "good" editions but that kind of wasn't the case at release time, switching from Win7 it was bloated with a whole lot of unnecessary new "features" and weird changes. Win7 got it's end-of life announced and having Vista and more recently Win8 in memory I just about had it with Microsoft's shenanigans so I started looking for an alternative. I never really ran a doal-boot setup, I had an old little thinkpad to experiment on and in the first year I ran it through basically all major and minor distros I could find. The hopping was real 😄

I was hooked, loved everything about the freedom and it was refreshing building my own OS from scratch so I settled with arch for a while. At first with arch based distros on my main rig as training wheels (Manjaro and Endeavour) and then plain arch with Qtile and then KDE.

Nowadays especially because of my work I rather much prefer more stable experiences, I switched to Fedora after a pacman -Syu borked GIMP in a particularly annoying time (still love you Arch, no hard feelings ❤️) and just now after about 2 years I installed debian with all the RHEL stuff going on. Kinda making a whole circle in this journey.

I was just thinking about this because I have to use windows sometimes at work that linux really brought back the fun for me in computing. Despite all the flaws and issues that we are dealing with like the whole packaging question and things like that, it is just so refreshing to deal with these issues knowing that I can deal with them, rather than waiting how Microsoft will make those choices for me. For me having Windows or a Mac is like having half of a computer where I just have no choice but accept certain things as a paying customer no less.

Windows didnt Work with my Mainboard, Linux did. Eventually fixed the issue, stayed with Linux because it didnt let me down when I needed it the most.

everything on linux is so straight forward, it's just so calm.

Honestly? My old laptop was having issues (not major but not ideal in terms of overall performance) running Windows 10 and it inspired me to try out a few distros. I later learned after trying a few:

• Overall Linux isn't scary at all, with an abundance of tutorials and documentation provided. (Just be aware of trying not to solve all problems with random hammers, or rather using any tutorial to fix the symptoms you're having)
• In terms of customization it's second to none. Privacy wise has been well documented, but even aesthetically via the UI you have a ton of options. (Plug for unixporn@lemmy.ml for some inspiration.)
• Finally it's nice just to tinker with Linux as a project. There's only so much you can do with Windows or MacOS, while Linux is open and allows for a variety of programs, tools, and more. It allows you to get more comfortable with your computer and by extension more comfortable with technology in general!

When I first tried Linux more than 10 years ago, it was SUPER exciting to just get YouTube working. With fiddling with graphics drivers and installing flash player and all that. That feeling was great.
Also I just hate big corpos spying on me. To me using Linux or rather just open source software in general still feels like a tiny act of rebellion. I think that feeling will never leave me.

I've been dual booting Windows and Linux since the 00s. At some point around 2015-2016 I just stopped installing and maintaining Windows altogether and now I have a virtual machine image I just transfer around my network if I ever have to use Windows for something.

I think the real turning point for me was when they introduced UAC and ever-increasing restrictions on unsigned drivers starting with Vista. Wine was already a thing and I could run most games I cared about even back then although I still had to boot into Windows for gaming sometimes. Once steam Proton starting getting really good which was around 2015, there just wasn't a reason to be using Windows anymore. As the enshittification of Windows continued getting worse it became more tedious and time consuming to get anything done in Windows to the point you might as well use Gentoo. I do programming and game modding for fun and there's no way I could use modern Windows for this it's so bad and slows everything down with it's utter bullshit.

Embarrassingly enough, wanted to install Ubuntu on an external drive. It was early, still in bed, accidentally erased the notebook's main drive. Thought I might as well give it a shot. That night, tried to go back to windows. Turns out that creating a bootable Windows bootable USB is nearly impossible from MacOS and Linux nowadays.. gave up after a few hours.

So, giving Linux a forced try. I'll probably make a Windows installation USB as soon as I can get someone to lend me their Windows computer. If it takes long enough, I may not though 😞

Because it was mandated by our communist party!