It's interesting how nobody is saying "because it's free software," which is kind of the entire point of Linux.

Don't get me wrong, I didn't switch for that reason either. But it's telling how conditioned we've been to not even recognize a free culture exists.

I had an overwhelming feeling of corporations telling me what they are selling and that I just have to deal with it. Apple, microsoft, adobe, all subscriptions that lock you in and hold you hostage.

Maybe I am just being over the top, but I miss feeling like I OWNED something. With linux? I own my laptop again.

Originally I switched just because I didn't have a Windows install available and Linux was convenient enough to just download and stick on there. But then once I got used to using it I massively preferred it. I'm the opposite of what you're describing, I don't want "problem solving and tinkering", I like Linux because it basically just does what I want it to do. Windows does what Microsoft wants it to do lol.

The last Windows OS I used was XP, around 2004-ish. Even back then, it was obvious to me that, because it was closed source, that they could one day start acting against my interests, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I saw open source as an insurance policy - it prevents vendors from acting maliciously against their users. In that very quaint, old time, nobody believed that MS would ever do something like that, but it didn't matter - the fact was that they could, so inevitably, they would.

I'm quite proud of how prescient I was when I look at what they're doing today. No evil is too great to stop a greedy businessman.

Anyway, I decided to just be brave and create a partition on my main drive and install Ubuntu on it. All I needed to get my work done was OpenOffice, LaTeX, a browser, a compiler, Python.... Everything worked better in Linux than Windows so even though I was dual-booting, I practically never used Windows again after a couple weeks. Later on, I switched to Debian, and the next laptop that I bought, I just wiped the hard disk and used Linux for the whole thing. I kept the recovery partition because I was paranoid but obviously never needed it.

Today, there's no doubt in my mind that Linux is the best OS. Sure, Macs have better batteries, but if I'm doing productive work, then I don't really need more than an hour away from my charger. I could maybe agree that the BSDs are better, but I've never tried them.

linux just feels better, quicker, more powerful from a user standpoint. also it doesnt spy on everything you do and use it to create a profile of you that will be used for god knows what, now, or in the future.

Linux does what I want it to do. Windows doesn’t.

I was a dumbass and downloaded a shit ton of viruses. I couldn't afford to get a tech to fix my mistakes and XP didn't have a bootable recovery menu. I followed a tutorial on how to make an Ubuntu image flash drive, and the rest is history.

I was bad at computers and priced out of being a dumbass. I'm a sysadmin now 🙃

I got tired of having an OS that is working against me. That is not a healthy relationship. With Linux you can really see there is a shift in the mindset. User experience is prioritized and you are allowed to do what you want wherever you want to. This means for example things like running a live iso, installing the OS and surfing the web at the same time is possible. I can remap the super key, and other keys. Oh, tiling Window manager exist like hyperland. Omarchy. And how about tabs in the file explorer. Why did not Microsoft implement it 20 years ago like when it came to Linux.

I problem solved and tinkered all day everyday on windows, linux just worked and used less ram, I immediately noticed I had many more tabs open and no lag

I didn't appreciate MS's anti-consumer practices (subscription fee for an OS, invasive telemetry and tracking, fucking ads in the goddamn Start menu), etc.). I installed Mint a couple years back and have almost zero regrets.

I moved from FreeBSD to Linux, for GPU rendering in Blender. If it wasn't for GPU drivers, I'd still be on FreeBSD.

Avoiding studying for exams in 2007.

got sick of trying to make Windows "more private" until I realized I didn't have to

My computer was old and crusty and windows 11 would've surely killed it. Fedora let it continue on until I eventually made my new computer that I'm currently using, and there's no way I was gonna shell out for a windows license when linux is free

To flex on strangers online and post to unixporn fora

I have never owned a windows machine.

And I doubt most people can honestly claim their primary computing device is something other than their smart phone.

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.

Instability in my WIndows NT 4 development machine. I'd been using Linux as a hobbyist for several years, but switched to it at work so I had a machine that didn't crash every few hours.

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

Self-respect. I'm not going to tolerate my property being sabotaged against me in service of some other entity, and I don't understand why anybody else would either.

As soon as Windows 10 "telemetry" (read: spyware) started getting backported into Windows 7 almost a decade ago, I was gone.

Windows users in 2025 are nothing but cucks and simps for corporate abuse. They don't "just buy, have, and use a computer;" they are part of the problem.

I have a laptop and a handful of desktops between my office and home. Some run Windows and some run Linux. I simply choose which one matches my task best.

Systems where I'm writing server-side code are going to be Linux. Systems that run jobs in the back end such as my self hosting stuff are all Linux. Systems where I'm doing email, documents, and general web browsing are going to be Windows.

Of course, my Windows systems have WSL, and my Linux systems can run Windows apps in virt. These days the line is super blurred and it would no doubt be possible to use only one if I were willing to give up some native app running.

Started 20 years ago. It made sense from the first time I had to buy a pc and deal with windows. Previously had been Mac person, and just hated Windows. Linux felt different and had potential for flexibility and options.

Did Linux week every year since then. Shame it took 18 years for linux to get to where I could game on it and not feel like I was having a 3rd rate experience compared to windows, performance wise.

Been running EndeavourOS (aka Arch btw) with KDE plasma for 2 years. Still have windows on a smaller disk but Linux is my primary OS.

Happy to share my build guide (just a text file and some backed up configs).

I just had a Plex server die on me because I dared to use ReFS and storage spaces 10 years ago.

The performance uplift I got moving to Proxmox and ZFS filesystem was STUPID. And way more stable.

Lots more command line stuff, but in the age of AI assistants and things I don't feel that hampered by my lack of syntax knowledge.

Obviously this is about a server though, not my gaming rig with is still on W11. But that's said Steam has moved things along to a point where I feel like gaming on Linux is within reach.

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.

Privacy and freedom. Some developer tools are already installed or if not are easy to install. Also I don't like bloatware, the price is nice and the performance is great.

I tried to break from Windows back in college after Windows 8 was such a disaster. Set up an Arch dual boot over a weekend and tried to use it whenever I could. Unfortunately found myself using the Windows partition far more often mostly because of gaming compatibility. Shelved it and suffered through MS's bullshit ever since.

10 years later on the dot, I went on a huge degoogling/de-MS push this past winter/spring. Set up GrapheneOS on my phone, moved away from as many big tech services and tools as I could, changed my email, and eventually said fuck it and installed CachyOS on my brand new desktop to give it a go. It's been my daily driver ever since. The whole degoogling push also got me to set up a home server and go down the entire selfhosting rabbit hole but that's a discussion for another day.

The Steam Deck is what really reintroduced me to it and showed me how insane Proton is for compatibility, and with all the garbage big tech and fascists want to throw at us, this year was definitely time to make the switch.

Which reminds me, I should probably wipe that Windows partition that still gathers dust.

I grew up with Windows and I switched, because my installation got broken (updates didn't work), it later got hacked, (I use there is nothing to lose mindset for piracy), and I was too annoyed with Windows. I wanted more privacy and performance from my device, so Linux experience was a nice surprise as it turned out to be so much better.

Windows ME happened. At the same time Debian was getting decent and then Ubuntu was released and that seemed to take over the world.

I wanted computing to be fun again. IMO XP was the last version of Windows that was actually fun

Curiosity I guess, but I have pretty much dabbled with Linux for different things since the early 2000s. Maybe even the late 90s.

Windows users seem to want to just buy, have, and use a computer, whereas Linux users seem to enjoy problem solving and tinkering for fun

would disagree. there are plenty of casual user friendly distros, like ubuntu or bazzite. there are immutable distros

i personally work on linux and like linux but used windows for gaming at home. switched this year after realising all the games are play run fine on linux

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.

Windows is such a horrible experience and MS is such a horrific company.

Windows users seem to want to just buy, have, and use a computer

That's just not how I would describe Windows. It's more like a digital bilboard with spyware that also runs programs. It actively prevents you from just using "your" computer.

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

I first started running Linux in the early 2000s. I wasn’t solely using Linux, but it was very much a situation where I used it for what it was best at and used Windows for where I needed Windows. Mostly that was for games, but it was early in my IT career and Windows was a skill I needed to build, so I did a lot of dual booting. It really propelled my understanding of computers running and breaking multiple OSes.

I fully made the switch a couple of years ago when I realized I hadn’t booted my Windows install in six months. Linux has come a long way, and has also been helped by so many things being browser-based these days.

Honestly it was the advertising in a product I paid for, that and I still remember the days of borg bill gates on slashdot buying and ruining companies and all the hate we had for them back then.

it ran like shit, I never knew what was going on, trying to read the logs was a pain in the ass, I had to edit the registry for basic shit, they crammed ads into everything, I didnt use one drive, it eventually just stopped updating - it would try then fail without any useful info and say try again.

what a dumpster fire of an operating system and company. how they still have market share and are successful blows my mind.

Enshitification of Windows was my reason, I was quite patient, I let it slide when they backported telemetry to Windows 7, Windows 10 was still quite usable but the amount of bloat was getting on my nerves already. When I saw what shitshow 11 is becoming I jumped ship. I'm glad I did it early and didn't wait for Windows EOL.

I barely knew what linux was before I watched pewdiepies video on it a long time ago. Just knew that some people on steam would complain about games not running on it, so I never bothered to look into it, since that is basically all I use my computer for. However, over the past 2 years I have been becoming more aware of my individual footprint. Something I noticed was that I will complain about things I think are "wrong" with the world, and then not do anything about them. One of those things was Microsoft (or big tech companies in general). I hate them, yet I would be using their product/service. Literally giving money to something I don't like.

I honestly have never enjoyed learning about computers and coding, I've tried and it's never felt fun to me. I'm definitely not the "target" of linux I guess. When I turn on my computer, I just want to play some games or do homework/work with no fuss.

However, Linux is at a point to where I, someone who has no want or need to learn computers, can switch and mostly use it out of the box. So I just switched, because if I'm gonna sit here and shit on Microsoft for not doing what I think is right, then I need to stop using their product. Capitalism means as long as they make money, they aren't gonna change a damn thing.

I like solving problems.

I enjoy customization.

I hate Microsoft.

Windows makes me angry

Windows 98 ate my college photos and music when a virus made my HDD take a click of death dump.

Fuck you to whoever wrote that virus. Since then I gave various linuses a go and I did so for a while each just learning how to be as lazy as possible while using linux. Later I had to run windows for some cad software. But after it corrupted my Linux several times I gave it the boot into its own drive which is only startable using grub. Grub sits on the Linux drive. My home drive is a big ass Linux formatted drive that mounts into Home/username. That way even if my Linux takes a shit I can reinstall it and boom back to where I left off....solo much further than anything windows could ever imagine. I could even have several linuses all going to the same home folder without any problem.

I moved away from MacOS in the past few years to finally full-time Linux after using it recreationally since the early 2000s. I’ve only really used Windows on work computers (or school back in the day).