It’s not like I hate other operating systems, I just really like the idea of FOSS and try to use it whenever possible.

Windows kept shoving their stupid Edge browser down my throat. Tried every way to remove it and it kept popping back up like malware. Kept annoying me with “upgrade to Windows 11 popups.” I’ve used windows 11 on other people’s laptops and was flabbergasted that there were ads on paid software. In addition to that I heard 10 will stop getting security updates next year so I bit the bullet and switched to mint full time. It’s worked well for me so far.

Been 100% Linux on all my personal devices for about 4 years.

I just got tired of being treated like I was either an idiot or a criminal by Microsoft. Plus the way they kept forcing their bloatware and trash ads on the OS that I already paid for!

I decided I didn’t care what I had to give up, it was worth it to be rid of Microsoft’s clutches forever. Switched to Linux and I’ve never looked back.

Turns out, I actually didn’t have to sacrifice much at all, and the few things I don’t have anymore are nothing compared to the benefits of using Linux and FOSS software.

Everything works better for me too, more stable, updates are rarer and wayyyyy faster when I push them. No more fighting with AMD driver hell in Windows, no more weird lockups or crashes, a million times more customization options, and zero bloat or spyware installed by default on my system.

Windows 98 really sucked and running Unix at home became an option.

i was a starving college student with $20 to my name and a dead windows me desktop computer that had an entire semester’s worth of school work trapped inside of it.

i had read about linux before and saw that i could buy a couple of mandrake cd’s from a magazine at circuit city for $5 or borrow $169 from someone to buy a windows xp installation disk.

i bought the magazine; installed linux; and taught myself (with google’s help) how to copy all of my school work onto a usb drive. i finished those papers using the school’s computer laboratories; and then kept on using the linux installation from then on in 2002 until now.

I got a new PC. I installed Windows on it. I felt dirty, so I said fuck it, and installed Linux instead.

It wasn’t any one specific thing, but a lifetime of windows frustrations adding up, on top of a growing frustration with enshittified tools and services in general

That was 4 months ago.

Solid gaming support

The pursuit of Freedom led me to Linux.

The pandemic and programming.

I was watching some tutorials and saw how easily people used the terminal, and how clunky cmd felt.

Next day I had ubuntu running.

What pushed me over the edge: the threat of Windows screenshotting everything I did.

Absolutely fucking not. Took it all to Ubuntu the day after I heard. Couple days later everything I need was set up & a few months later I haven’t looked back

it rebooted itself while i left it overnight doing an important render.

thats after i fucked with it for hours to turn automatic updates OFF.

i would probably still be on windows 10 if it werent for microsoft going out of their way to make it shitty.

The turning point was when Windows was no longer set and forget. Windows 7 was the last time that was the case before I had to put any real work into it.

I put up with Windows 10 for a bit and wrote a script to neutralise bloat and configure the OS to some saner settings, then I could keep things consistent between installations. That was fine for a while.

But over time Microsoft became more unhinged and my script evolved into several larger scripts in order to deal with the BS. It became an endless cat and mouse game and I found that I was wasting too much of my time maintaining it just to have a OS that was clean of crap.

The last straw was when a botched update gutted the performance of my PC, and Microsoft took several months to fix the issue. I installed Debian which just worked, and it was good timing because Windows 11 was announced shortly afterwards. I’ve experienced it at work and it’s hands down the worst OS I’ve ever used, and I’ve used pretty much every version of Windows since 3.1. I think I’d even take Me over it. At least that OS sucked because it was poorly designed. Windows 11 is intentionally hostile to its users.

It wasn’t my first rodeo with Linux since I’ve been on and off with it since 2007. Still, I was pleasantly surprised at how well it works out of the box these days.

A few months later and I had built my new machine. I didn’t even bother to install Windows on it. Now I use Arch btw and haven’t looked back.

At first I was tipping my toes in Ubuntu but kept coming back to Windows as I kept running into stability issues. Googling my issues very frequently kept sending me to the Arch wiki, and I thought “well if they have so much covered, why not use this distro instead”. That and 196 subreddit (rule) made me try Arch, and my experience was noticeably better. Barely any crashes and improving Proton compatibility made me use it more and more. I kept a windows install for VR and anti-cheat enabled games until late 2023.

During my transition period (both in Linux and gender lol) between 2021 and now, I kept getting comments “why are you making your life harder with Linux, just use Windows where everything works”. Well, nowadays tables have turned and now I get to say “weird it works for me on Linux”. Except VR, it’s still a mixed experience.

Windows 7 being discontinued.

I migrated my HTPC to Linux several years ago, and since then just transitioned more and more of my machines over.

My desktop is the only machine left running Windows at this point due to there being no Freetrack implementation on Linux for sim games

Microshit flipping back privacy settings on win11 among other bullshit.

Tried monitoring network connections, there is no way tell what windows is doing. Blocking them will break the OS… I was done.