The short version is 2 reasons:

• Microsoft requires Windows 11 computers to have special new hardware that not all computers have. Security updates for Windows 10 ends in 3 months. Many people are faced with a choice of buying a new computer, or installing Linux on their current one to save money. Others realize how much Windows 11 sucks shit and switch because Linux is better.
• Gaming on Linux has gotten a lot better recently. For many people, this was the main thing holding them back. Software support in general is better than ever.

You're in a linux loving, windows hating bubble here on Lemmy. There is no significant number of people migrating from windows to linux according to any metric we have.

Copilot. Win11 working only on mew hardware. Win10 going out of support. Basic bloated operation with little concern for what users want.

Because Valve showed people that linux is not so bad after all. Might be also that people can ask ChatGPT for help and Microsoft is financing it's own funeral.

There are a few different factors. I think the biggest is that the lifecycle for windows 10 is ending. Microsoft is pushing the upgrade, but 11 has Recall which is essentially AI spyware. Many folks are trying to push Linux instead of upgrading when support is fully cut off

Because windows won't do with old laptops and 3 years is apparently enough to consider a laptop old nowadays.

I can only answer why I dropped Windows. I wasn’t going to pay a company to force AI spyware onto my system, ignore my commands with every update that negated them, or hold my data hostage if I didn’t jump through their endless hoops; all to claim my data as theirs with their end goal being to charge me more money for accessing what is supposed to be mine in the first place!

I switched a year ago, after trying and failing multiple times over the years whenever I gave it a try.

1. Linux has massively improved, systemd is a lot cleaner than the mess of disparate shell scripts it displaced. Network Manager is also a lot nicer now than I remember it being when it was first introduced into Red Hat.
2. Windows hasn't, in a lot of ways it was actually regressing. I used to get multiple shell crashes a week with no insight as to why, friends would claim it was just me but then receive an update and start having similar crashes. Also noticeable UI issues that went unfixed for multiple revisions, made it felt cheap.
3. MS went all in on AI garbage and was jamming it into everything, kept getting popup notifications and the like to try Copilot, notifications went from being useful to just being an ad delivery mechanism.
4. Gaming on Linux massively improved, last time I tried it OpenGL support was a mess. Now OpenGL is very mature, and all the D3D translation stuff uses Vulkan which has been rock solid for me. I've found games run better than they did on Windows on the same hardware, and the only game I've had an issue with was Destiny 2, which is intentional on the devs behalf (Luckily the game's boring now)

I find I'm a lot more willing to let issues slide though, like I've had some Thunar crashes which I'm cool with since there's like 4 devs maintaining it, vs. the multi-billion dollar company working on Explorer which I expect better from. Also unsurprisingly the only actual shop-stopper issue I've had was with a memory leak in the Nvidia drivers, the actual FLOSS stuff has been great.

The fact they keep trying harder and harder to make me switch off a local account is reason enough.

Windows 10 is no longer receiving security updates

Not all machines that ran W10 are capable of running W11

W11 is full of AI integration, always-on data collection, and other no-sell bloatware

Linux is easier to use than ever and free

recently switched from macos to arch linux and ive never been so happy with an OS

For me it's because it seems evident that Microsoft wants Windows to be saas and here's the thing: I don't like Windows that much. For over 20 years now, I've preferred Linux for server stuff and Mac for daily driver stuff, I've only tolerated Windows, mainly for gaming.

Since Windows 7 died (I skipped 8 altogether and reluctantly have been dealing with 10 with lots of hacks to keep it locked down), I have only been barely tolerating it - and games were the sole reason.

Well, Proton has now obliterated that, conveniently right as Microsoft has decided that what people REALLY need is for them to be 100% shit. I refuse to install 11. So I'm out.

Microsoft Recall.

Worse than all but the worst viruses, for real. Takes screenshots of everything (everything), and stores the contents where hackers can steal them easily.

It'll probably get quietly reactivated every few updates, so you can never really afford not to be checking.

Source?

This is not happening in the wider world, not on any appreciable scale. Here comes lemmy:

"NOAW! People ARE switching in DROVES!"

LOL, the vast majority of people can't spell Linux.

The user experience. The Windows user experience just gets worse and worse while Linux gets better and better.

Windows 10 is about to be end-of-life this October. You probably think 'just update your OS to Windows 11', but many computers are deemed unfit for Windows 11 by Microsoft.

In order to move on to Windows 11, many people, and I do really mean a ridiculously large amount of people would need to buy a new computer or laptop. In the meantime their old systems are still fit for everyday use, so there is quite a lot of e-waste coming up.

Instead of just dumping the old computers you can just put Linux on them and continue using them. Linux costs nothing, just time. So if you don't have specialized software which absolutely must have Windows, you might as well just switch to Linux and keep using your old systems which are still perfectly fine for your everyday needs.

My old gaming laptop that I still use right now is from 2018. It does have the TPM 2.0 chip that Windows 11 requires, but its CPU is like just one generation too old for it. So, what do I do? When Windows 10 stops getting its updates, throw it away? Naw man, Linux will work. You can even game on Linux just fine as the Steam Deck has proven already, so I'll just switch my sweet laptop over to Linux and continue using it as usual.