Windows Updates

Got an update while finishing a large project for work. Tried to postpone updates, Micro$oft said no and reboot anyway. Rebooted and waited 2 hrs for the "Please Wait" to go away.

Oh yeh and also the in your face OneDrive adware. I swear, every single time I update, the laptop keeps asking if I want to sign into onedrive.

Windows is terrible.

Basically, im getting old and weird and less willing to abide corporate fuckery.

Linux requires tinkering and Windows doesn't? Is that some alternate-universe version of Windows? In my experience, the difference is social/psychological. When Windows fucks up, "everybody uses it," so the blame falls on the masses, not the user, who was just going along with what's normal and expected. People sort of mentally elide memory of the Windows fuck ups, because that's just how Windows is.

Linux is different and weird, and you have to stray from the herd to use it. Straying from the masses is scary, because when Linux fucks up, it's your fault for being contrary. That threat to one's place in the social order is quite memorable. Hence the reluctance of Windows users, who hate it, to even consider trying another OS that they know nothing about.

I never switched from Windows. I never used Windows as my main OS. I had an Amiga, then learned Unix on SunOS, so I was used to being weird. Once I got a PC, I used FreeBSD. It did require a lot of fiddling back in those days, and when I got tired of that, I switched to Ubuntu, which was amazing in that it Just Worked(tm). (Aside from manual installation of the Windows driver for the PCMCIA WiFi card with NDISWrapper.)

(I still do tinker with it, and sometimes break it, but the base OS has been rock solid. I noticed the other day that my main PC was installed with Ubuntu 18.04, and upgraded to 24.04.)

I've been absolutely seething over Microsoft's bullshit for years. Over the years of having less and less control over my own fucking computer, the parasitic privacy invasion, the dumbfuck constant bloat, the cartoon level evil of Microsoft in general, the constant degradation, forcing unnecessary features and ads, and generally just the sheer audacity. Honestly, I've just kinda been putting up with it for not much more than "it works for now and I'm just tired, man". However, then Microsoft started pushing ai and some updates that were literally bricking systems so I could no longer justify having a switch from windows being such a low priority; it was now a liability. I'm now running CachyOS and I'm quite happy with the switch. Everything just fucking works, not to mention the very noticeable performance boost. Fuck Microsoft.

Because I can tell it to do whatever I want. I get to control the device I own. Pretty basic. Same principle for my others devices, so deGoogle Android phone, earbuds with open source firmware, keyboard with open source firmware, Zigbee for IoT, etc. My stuff should do what I want.

Because of Windows.

Because if my operating system is going to break in stupid ways I want it to be my fault or at the very least something I could fix if I knew shit about fuck. Seeing as I don't know that the main perk is Linux keeps getting better as windows keeps getting worse.

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.

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.

Final straw was seeing the Starfield lockscreen with a small ad about Gamepass after an update. Still use Windows on a different machine if I need certain software.

I have told this story several times.

In late 2013 or so, I bought a Raspberry Pi 1B as part of my amateur radio hobby. I did all my actual work on a Windows laptop, the Pi was pretty much just a toy, and I learned a little about Linux with it.

Mid-2014, the display in my aging laptop died. I was going back to school that fall, I needed a laptop. So I ordered a high end Inspiron from Dell. And Dell sold me a lemon. That laptop would just...shut off and never turn back on again. And then I'd call Dell's tech support. They'd send a tech out within a week or two. He'd throw a part in it, and then it would last somewhere between days and seconds. After waiting over a week to get a tech to come out and fix it, it didn't finish booting before it died again. I finally got them to replace the laptop outright, with a system that lacked many of the features I had explicitly ordered.

I am no longer a Dell customer.

That whole time, I needed a computer, and the only thing I had was that Raspberry Pi in addition to my Galaxy S4. It was real fun typing up homework in LibreOffice on a single core 700Mhz ARMv6 and 512MB of RAM.

I finally got a running Dell, after an entire semester, loaded with Windows 8.1. Windows 8.1 was a total pube fire. Linux felt more familiar at that point, so I tried a few different systems, discovered Linux Mint, and 11 years later I don't have any computers that run Windows.

Windows was becoming increasingly bad for people that use mainly keyboards, and my laptop's HDD nearly dying and me having to use a Linux distro to recover files I couldn't lose gave me an window and interest to try out a distro closer in UX as Android, thus I found Ubuntu almost 5 years ago.

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'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.

Honestly, I grabbed linux because I wanted something that worked and wouldn't change.

Windows keeps changing, a lot. Now getting to the point where none of my computers could handle 11. So I just said screw it, kept my hardware and now I run Ubuntu

Was not as disruptive as I thought

Privacy, freedom to choose whatever I want, focus on FOSS (I hate/dont trust proprietary software), and security features for hardening Linux (Landlock, SELinux, Bubblewrap, sysctl, hardened_malloc).

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.

I want meaningful errors I can troubleshoot. "Oopsie poopsie" error messages tell me nothing.

I didn't want to deal with the spyware of an OS. Recall looks nightmarish and I don't want ads in my OS.

Windows 8 was an abomination, I was still using a flip phone and so I was extra grossed out.

I used Linux in a VM and WSL for several years, and I occasionally used it on an old laptop. It was in 2022 on the week I installed Cygwin that I thought, “I do more Linux stuff than Windows stuff. Why don’t I just straight up use Linux?”

I created a test install on a secondary drive, which has now been my main install for years and has been moved to a bigger drive twice.

I got very used to Linux, and Windows gave me no reason to come back.

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.

ideological reasons. windows creeps me the fuck out. i've been using linux since the slackware days. sure i've been on win 3.1 and all the way up to XP as my OS because of gaming, but I have dual booted with linux since around 2003. I haven't had Windows installed on any device since 2013 - and frankly, I am so fucking happy with fedora and the steam deck finally kicking the door down and making linux 100% viable for everyone.

But yes, I'm too old now and I really can't be arsed to deal with the constant patchwork of the olden days and there is no way I would ever look back at anything since switching to fedora 2 years ago. It's insanely good (finally). Not even mint could deliver an equally flawless experience after all these years in comparison. I actually just dropped mint from my last holdout device earlier this week, replacing it with Fedora.

The Year of Linux Desktop is finally here!

Linux became so much less work to keep running than windows, even for gaming (if you've got an AMD gpu at least). I don't play competitive gaming in any capacity so I'm not missing pretty much anything.

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.

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.

Can people please just stop with these terrible generalizations? Lots of windows users consider themselves "computer people" and tinker with their computer and solve problems. Plenty of Linux users aren't doing shit but using it as it comes. It feels like a terrible rip off of the old apple ads "I'm a Mac", "and I'm a PC". It's crap.

I'd been considering it for a while due to various garbage they've done over the last couple versions, but forcing that stupid Copilot on me was the final straw. Also the huge uptick in Linux compatible games was definitely a factor.

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.

i switched to Linux in 2013ish to get away from my gaming habit and go all in on programming and computer science. that may not work these days as all the games i play work on Linux ha

My computer wasn't compatible with Windows 11, and it's not that old, dammit. The thought of throwing it out because of some arbitrary push for Windows 11 from Microsoft made me angry, so I finally installed Mint since it's the one I kept hearing is easiest for people who don't know anything about Linux. I've been using it almost 3 months now and I don't find it difficult to deal with at all, and the games I play work on it. The biggest hurdle has been compatibility with some school stuff, but I've been able to use LibreOffice and Google Docs when all else fails.

Computers aren't my hobby, running into errors when I just want to get shit done pisses me off. I've been dealing with a minimal amount of that on Mint, I imagine mostly because I'm not tinkering with a ton under the hood (mostly aesthetic changes so that it looks how I like). If you have basic troubleshooting skills for Windows then a lot of that transfers to Linux, even though the actual solutions will be different.

If something better than Mint came along I'd probably switch to it, but I don't know what that would look like, since Mint is doing exactly what I want: running my programs and not popping up with a ton of useless AI crap or ads.

Irritated enough to learn

I like to tinker, I like to have a level of control (or at least the option) of things I own, I like to learn, I like the idea of open source, and from Windows 2000 on I didn't like the direction it was going.

I was always curious but never moved over completely because I had this idea that it was difficult to run things (games, etc). I had a laptop with dual boot with Ubuntu for the longest time, then I started to use WSL to code.

The thing that made me finally switch was the steam deck. It showed me it was possible and now we don't have a single machine with Windows at home.

Thinking about it now, I don't know why everyone kept recommending to use Ubuntu, it was probably one of the main reasons why it took me so long to switch.

It's significantly easier to use and I wanted to create a maximally ergonomic setup that I designed the ux for.

windows wouldn't let me choose, linux did, also when linux has an issue it's never because someone was doing something malicious, on windows it nearly always is.

If you want an OS that lets you own the machine you bought, Linux is the most viable option. Conversely, Windows is not an option. I don't consider an OS where you are the product to be one that works for me at all, much less one that "just works".

Linux users seem to enjoy problem solving and tinkering for fun

Like with any OS, those are a subset of users, but not all. The thing is, Linux users spent the last 30y building a set of tools that enable you to use as little effort as possible to do very powerful things with your hardware, and yes, with great power comes great ability to break everything. But in the last 15y, there are distros designed for people who want an OS that "just works", that don't require you to know or use the risky tools that could break things, and they're getting better every day.

Why did you switch

I wanted to use Linux for the last 15y, but gaming was a sticking point. Around 5y ago, thanks to valve, it is no longer a sticking point. I do all my gaming on Linux.

what was your process like?

I first switched to fedora on my laptop about 12y ago. I didn't do a lot of gaming on my laptop, so this was fine. Eventually I switched to Manjaro. Around 5y ago I put Manjaro on my desktop. Then eventually switched both to endeavor.

I'll admit, I create problems for myself by refusing fully featured Desktop Environments. But I always learn something more about my machine in the process. As a result, I believe I can now simply do more with less effort on Linux than I could on windows. I have bash scripts on keybinds that open custom UIs for various things. I can seamlessly access multiple servers on my network running various services. I don't ever have to worry about some update overhauling my UI and sneaking an AI in the background. Any experimentation I do with AI is on my own terms, and none of my data gets shipped off without my consent.

What made you choose Linux for your primary computing device, rather than macOS for example?

I used a Mac 20y ago. It was solid. But eventually the cost outweighed the hardware capabilities. And then they deprecated every graphics API but Metal. Now there's relatively nothing in the way of gaming on Mac. On top of that, it's just as bad as windows when it comes to doing what some company wants it to do rather than what I want it to do. So I don't consider it an option that works for me.

poverty; i couldn't afford a windows license.

Multiple reasons. Performance issues, bloatware, bullshit system requirements, forcing unnecessary and often times useless features on it's users, restricting how much control the user has over the OS, and a lot of smaller issues that just ruin the over all user experience.

While I will admit that Linux isn't perfect, the experience I've had with Linux overall has just been so much better. There are also a lot of small benefits to Linux that Microsoft will never offer. For example, if you have a computer with an older GPU, not only will it still work with newer Linux distros, it may also support newer versions of OpenGL and Vulkan. The first computer I ever used Linux on had an Intel HD Graphics 3000, and on top of getting surprising performance on Linux compared to Windows, the supported version of OpenGL went from 3.0 to 3.3, which doesn't seem like much but, at least at the time, a lot of applications had OpenGL 3.3 as their minimum required version.

As for why I didn't use MacOS or ChromeOS. I've heard that MacOS is mostly fine but I'd have to buy a brand new computer to run MacOS and their computers are just too expensive for me. And as for ChromeOS, I am aware that I could have used ChromeOS Flex but in addition to the fact that it still has some of the issues I have with Windows, I have concerns about how much I actually be able to do with it. Google is very vague when it comes to explaining the differences between ChromeOS and ChromeOS Flex.

If ChromeOS Flex allows the use of android apps just as much as the main version of ChromeOS, then I do think that might be a good choice for people who want to drop Windows but don't want to use Linux. I do have limited experience with ChromeOS because my mom owns a Chromebook and it seems fine and they are pretty cheap, but I'd imagine that most people don't want to buy a new computer just for a different OS.

I hated Windows Update. There were other reasons, but this was the main one.

Freedom. No company tells me what I can and cannot do with MY machine.