I’m tired of shit randomly not working, mainly audio. Most of the stuff I need to do is Linux okay now so I’m moving my laptop to something with kde, probs nobara. Or debian with kde. My desktop will probably dualboot kubuntu (bc unfortunately rocm is the least annoying on that) and windows 11 because I unfortunately like playing r6 siege with my friends.

My backup laptop runs Bunsenlabs os bc windows dies of death.

Edit: 50/50 on kde or openbox. Want to try kde, I’ve been using openbox for ages though.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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 :)

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.

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.

Privacy concerns for the most part. Also for better desktop performance and less bloat on my existing hardware. I was not going to buy a whole new laptop just for macOS, and also gaming on macOS is not nearly as viable.

I would like to somewhat dispute this idea that all Linux users enjoy fixing problems for entertainment. Don’t get me wrong, I can and do solve problems in Linux, but once I have a setup that works, I just use my machine normally rather than constantly tinkering with it.

As for how I went about the switch, fortunately, my laptop at the time had 2 NVMe slots, so I installed a second drive and dual-booted between Windows and Linux for a while until I had set up replacements for all the programs that I use regularly.

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.

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.

Microsoft spyware mostly. I feel stressed using a surveiled and monetized system for personal stuff. Also cause I have always loved Linux utilities and it’s teminal.

I had also mostly finished switching over my software stack to FOSS. So most things just felt easy to move over.

Final straw?

So it was contradicting itself and would not update no matter how many times I would hit “check for updates” over the course of a week.

So not only was the system not functioning correctly, but I could no longer trust it was going to be secure from third parties.

I had intended to switch for some time before then for a litany of reasons but this definitely convinced me to stop wasting any more time and I moved myself and family over less than a week later.

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.