I've been purging all big tech from my life as much as possible. Meta was easy because they don't really offer anything. It took quite a while to eliminate google. Once that was done, it was Microsoft's turn.

I've also been absolutely fed up with Windows over the years. Each release somehow gets worse and more clunky and in my way of doing what I'm trying to do. So on top of being untrustworthy, using my data and generally being capitalist assholes, Microsoft's product itself is shit.

I installed Mint and seen what innovation actually looks like. I also realized most of the things I love about android are actually features of linux under the hood. So I intend to jump on the linux phone bandwagon as well.

I've been using Photoshop for over 20 years. That's been the hardest part. GIMP is impressive but for as long as it's been around it's still a little rough around the edges here and there. I'm learning to deal with it though.

A long time ago, there was this misconception that "linux" was terminal-only. You know, like the interface sysadmins and Hollywood hackers use.

A small long-defunct non-tech forum I used to be a member of had a tech sub-forum, and in that sub-forum there was a new post one day introducing "linux" and covering some basics. It was full of DE screenshots (GNOME 2 and KDE 3) specifically to dispel the "terminal-only" misconception.

That was almost ~20 years ago. And the rest is history. I never liked Windows or M$ anyway for both technical and non-technical reasons. So it wasn't that hard to convince me.

I almost exclusively use the terminal for everything except web browsing now, and don't use a DE. So you could say that I myself ironically became a perpetuator of the misconception 😉

I was in college at the time, I went to class, which I needed my laptop for. I believe it was windows 10? I opened the laptop to start my work, and windows immediately, unprompted, without permission, began an update - an update that took longer than the class lasted. This should never happen, and for me it never does on any Linux distribution I've used.

I grew up with my brother throwing used computer parts on my bed whenever he upgraded something, in case I wanted to reuse them. He also gave me a copy of Windows 98, and later XP that I reused every time I did a major hw upgrade. But one day the XP CD-rom was just too old, but I was too young to start working and had no money, and so Linux came into my life.

I had dabbled with Linux over the years, starting with Lubuntu reviving an old Dell 120L during college. When I moved to university they gave us all Macbooks to work with in the IT department. OS X never clicked with me, so I set up a VM with Linux to perform my day to day work. I instantly became the Linux guy because of that... so any tickets that came in for Linux troubleshooting got routed to me.

It just sort of made sense to try a Linux build after that, since I couldn't afford a Windows license after I lost access to MSDN.

I upgraded from 7 to 10 right around when it released. Microsoft got me with the "Free upgrade offer".
Problem is, I had a very shitty ADSL connection, so when Windows Update started doing its thing, it would make it almost impossible to do anything else on the web.
There were many times I would turn the computer on to do something, only to be unable to load any webpage because Windows Update was eating all my bandwidth.
And to make things worse, Pausing updates, Active Hours and other controls only came out much later, early Win 10 had none of it. When it wanted to update you had basically no control over it. There were some registry hacks to disable updates, but those didn't really stick for some reason, so many times I applied one and thought the issue was fixed for good only to come back to my PC days later and face the same issue again.

Eventually I was like "Why the hell do I have to keep fighting my computer?". You can imagine the shock it was coming from Win 7.
I had tried Linux before all of this (Ubuntu 14.04) and while I did enjoy the experience I didn't stick with it, but I kept the idea in the back of my mind.
Some time later I setup a dual-boot, and year after year I relied less on Windows (and Linux kept getting better) until Linux became my daily driver. Fast forward to today: Windows isn't even a dual-boot install anymore, just a VM I barely use :)

Mostly because I don't like gaming on windows and I want things to work without having to tweak every single security feature and all the junk I turned off every single time there's an update. I'm also tired of MS breaking things with updates and generally using the public as free beta testers to the detriment of their products.

Also, fuck 365.

A little over a decade back, I had a laptop that came with Windows 8 but didn't actually meet the specs for it. I installed Ubuntu back then to get the thing to run reliably, and it performed really well that way.

On my home computers I kept using Windows, but with the trend toward less ability to control your system, more ads and AI nonsense being baked in, and just general bloat, when they announced the end of life for Win 10, I decided I'd switch to dual booting Linux Mint at the start of the summer. (I'm a teacher, and it seemed like the best time was when I could deal with my computer being on the fritz for a while if I messed it up.)

I set it up as dual boot because I figured here and there I'd still need to go back to Windows for some specific reason or other but that was back in early July and I've yet to encounter a reason why I really need Windows, so I genuinely haven't booted to Windows even once since the time I originally setup the dual boot and made sure it was working.

Honestly, so much of what we do these days takes place in browser windows that it barely feels different, other than it runs a little smoother and I occasionally have to run an old windows app through Lutris. (Had it installed anyway for games from GOG, and it turns out it works just as well for non-gaming apps.)

I kept disabling features and they kept getting re-enabled by updates.

I installed WSL to run gcc and it bricked my graphics drivers, requiring a full reinstall.

Requiring a microsoft account to access my own computer.

App recommendations (ads) in the start menu.

Maybe there were workarounds for this but I shouldnt have to trouble shoot that kind of stuff for a product that values itself at such a price. I just couldnt feel like an owner of things I have purchased.

I hated windows 95/98, it broke all the time. The dudes in the doom community in IRC were like hey Linux is cool, try that. Never looked back. From what I hear from my friends and family, windows still sucks all the time.

because windows removed focus stealing prevention

I updated to 11, didn’t like it. Switched to Pop, and then switched to arch couple weeks later.

I first discovered Linux in middle/highschool back when Ubuntu was the hot shit and they had that awesome Gnome 2 desktop. I loved the vibes, but didn't stick with it because I didn't know what to do. Then just over the years I'd occasionally install it for a few days and give it a shot, learning more and more, even installing Arch Linux once (back when it was actually a challenge).

Switching to Linux was inevitable for me, I think. As the years rolled on, Windows got worse and worse while my understanding/confidence with Linux got better and better. I don't remember what the final thing was that convinced me to finally go 100% Linux on all my devices, but I did around ~2017 or 2018 with zero regrets.

So I think that if there's a path for people to learn Linux at a comfortable pace, without the trauma of going all in, they'll also find it impossible to resist. The dynamic of Windows becoming worse while Linux becomes better is still holding strong.

...because I didn't want to be a victim of the tech industry anymore.

I used it for a few things in uni, then a few more, then a few more, and eventually realised that my workflow had become

• Boot windows
• Turn on VM
• Use Linux the whole time
• Shut down

So I decided to cut out the middle-man

w10 support ending and w11 being spyware thats also an operating system

Privacy and Foss philosphy

Fed up with Microsoft. I had a windows 10 computer they said couldn't update to windows 11, and they said Recall was coming, so I said fuck it. Switched to mint, and now I'm trying pop!_os.

Way back like 10+ years ago I ran Ubuntu for a while, but I play a lot of video games and support was lacking. Wine, proton, and other tools have come a long way since then.

I never switched, I use Linux for privacy and security. I have since, 2001 or so, I guess. Open source means lots of eyeballs on the code, and I trust those open source developers a lot more than I trust a corporation.

Still game on windows. Accepted win 11 but, yeah

I uh ... actually don't know. I guess I has enough of windows 10 three years ago and simply installed Linux.

Wait no, it was my graphics card that had issues with Windows during Valorant gaming with my friends, then other games where the OS simply crashed and rebooted for no apparent reason.

It sucked a bit at first as I couldn't play with my homies, but there are other hero shooters that do work (like Rogue Company) and we played that then.

So hardware was the pebble.

Back then, it was just that "I could". I liked it at the end.

I switched to Linux (back in i386/i486 days) because I was using FLOSS and finally could have a free/libre operating system underneath.

Because Windows ME really deserved the "Mistake Edition" moniker, and I already knew some people running Linux.

Windows 95 got a click of death virus and fucked up my drive from freshmen college years. All my photos on my first digital camera too. That day I decided to try Linux.

I installed Gentoo first. Mostly because I'm and idiot.

Soon after I tried red hat but it was uptight. Then I jumped to Mandrake and I kept using mandrake for many years until it died. I tried a bunch of others until I tried Ubuntu. I'm going to stay on Ubuntu until enshitification dictates that I need to change. Moving to Mint soon probably. Ubuntu still feels okay enough to stay but it's showing signs of enshitification.

NTFS shat itself on newly bought hard drive, from what I remember in event viewer it said something about filesystem corruption. My steam library of 500+ GBs was gone, as well as my ripped music collection (at least I had that copied to my phone beforehead)

In other instance, a family computer. It was late 2023 and some buggy update happened that made start menu and taskbar unusable. Not clickable at all, couldn't hide it either. Numeruous throubleshooting attempts later not even update supposed to fix the issue worked. I caved for linux for this PC too

Microsoft said they were going to start tracking everything I do, to, you know, help me or something.

Fuck that.

Lots of programming and server use for jobs at work. I spent whole days in WSL (just one window) or putty / cygwin and it was stupid. About that time, since I was using different hosts pretty frequently, I started to learn Vim and it was a gateway drug.

It was maybe 2 weeks into vim I made the switch in the office. When I switched to Linux at work, I switched to Linux at home for consistency (and because I wasnt really gaming at the time so no big deal). At that job I frequently would just remote in from home so it made sense. Once I learned the ropes I switched to arch and dwm and never looked back. I guess I'm an nvim guy now so I've evolved a little in 15 years or so.

Learning web development and did not like Apple devices. Didn't take too long to also start gaming on Linux and abandon Windows completely.

Had a really old machine in high school that could no longer run Windows 10 smoothly.

Windows started to fully break down, and limiting my young self.

The windows machine was keeping secrets and refusing to do what I tell it

I want to run some code, let's have a discussion about admin privileges and finding the correct shell app and oh shit "something went wrong"

Linux just doesn't say no, if I do something wrong it tells me exactly why it was wrong. So I guess visibility is why I jumped

Tried Linux to play games on after steam deck started getting good. Though my it was fine.

Then I got a new laptop. Tried to install windows 11. Required internet to setup. I installed Linux and haven’t looked back.

Microsoft doesn’t want me to use Windows. Win10 is almost expired, and my laptop doesn’t support Win11.

Can't really pin-point when, just started making sense since the 2000s...
Conversely M$ becomes shittier everyday.

I switched to Linux, because my very first confrontation to buy a Windows license myself weirded me out. It was quite casual. My exposure to Linux came from a few software development related videos. The workflows I saw looked much more efficient and fulfilling. To be honest, with a dying laptop running on Windows 8.1 I had an extra terrible experience anyway. So when I built my PC and I realized that legally purchasing a Windows license looked like browsing the black market, I decided to save my money and just try Ubuntu. I definitely had the luxury of being able to simply dive in.

I was bored and some weird neighbor gave me SLES on like 10 CD’s.

Thank you, weird neighbor. Now it is my turn to pay forward.

Back in the day I had started a software development major and was incentivised to learn about computers on a fundamental level. I learned that Linux was commonly used in the server space, so I decided to make a bootable USB to learn how to use the system (I tried Manjaro with the Deepin DE).

I soon realised I liked using it way more, mainly because I was bored of Windows's visuals and lack of options. I had tried rainmeter to add widgets and effects, but it was a bit of a hassle to configure and update.

After using a dual boot setup for half a year, I moved fully to Linux, since I no longer had classes requiring Windows-only software. Nowadays I'm using EndeavourOS with KDE, mostly for gaming, browsing and writing documents.

MSI recently pushed a firmware update on my motherboard that somehow reset the device ID, so windows decided I wasn't running genuine windows anymore.

I lived with the watermark for a few months, then kept running out of space on my old 256gb windows drive (all I could afford at the time) and I decided that instead of just migrating to larger drive and buying another copy of windows, I'd take the leap and just do it. It was unexpectedly painless.

My one concern was gaming, specifically helldivers, which has been pretty much the only thing I can play with my friends. Turns out, it just.... runs.... everything else... just... runs...

The last time I tried linux was like 10 years ago, and its definitely come a long way, at least with some of the more consumer level distros.

My windows 10 install broke itself after running an overnight update. I tried to fix it using the Microsoft tools and stuff I read online and ended up needing to do a fresh install. I couldn't recover the windows activation key.

At the time I'd been listening to the WAN show talk about their upcoming 30 day linux challenge. So I thought fuck it why wait until that comes out to see if linux is good. I shouldn't have to re buy a license for an operating system that just killed itself.

And I picked mint. It was an absolutely horrible experience, nothing worked out of the box and I spent at least 5+ hours troubleshooting display, WiFi and drive mounting. I got it to s point where I was happy and I could do what I wanted. Then decided to try out some other distros. Tried endeavour, it was broken out of the box. Tried Ubuntu and realised I do not like gnome. Tried garuda it was ok but ugly and WiFi didnt work. Tried arch.. Did NOT know enough to get a nicely working system. Then I tried Manjaro and it had a nice clean KDE plasma setup out of the box everything worked, updates were lighting fast so I stayed on that for a year and loved it.

When the 30 LTT linux video came out I was shocked by how bad their experience was. For me I had a working system minus a few bits of hardware not working and software was pretty easy to install and worked very well. I was also mad that Linus uninstalled his GUI and then blamed linux dude you ran that command without reading it. Thats day 1 shit you learn. You have some responsibility to know your system.

I started using Linux more after using it in a couple of my tech classes. Fast forward a year later, I had purchased a T480 and installed Debian since I was interested. Its been a benefit for me learning Bash and SteamOS on my Steam Deck as I love to tinker with things and am a comp sci major.

when there was a reliable systenwide eq

it's my dream feature

They made windowsNT too glossy.

I had been using linux in some capacity (dual-boot, alternate computer, homelab, etc.) for close to twenty years, but there was always some functionality (mostly gaming) that held me back from switching fully. Then something like two or three years ago Proton/Wine finally got to where basically everything I wanted to run was able to run with no more effort on my part than doing the same thing under Windows. At that time I had been dual-booting Windows and Fedora for a little over a year and Windows/Manjaro for about a year prior to that and hadn't had to boot into windows for almost six months. So, I formatted the Windows drive and haven't looked back.

I built a new computer at the same time proton was released and was just like ok why not.