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

Tldr: GNU/Linux is easier to use than Windows.

Let me tell you, I am a user that does not want to fiddle around with my operating system. I want my operating system to be basically invisible and just run the programmes that I like to use, even though I am tech savy. I became "tech savvy" because I needed to troubleshoot my computer constantly, thanks to Microsoft Windows.

In my free time I liked to play video games, and I didn't know about Proton until 2021. When Windows 11 rolled around, I was already fed up with the constant Win10 trash, forever reinstalling and fighting the system to just behave normally. With Windows 11 and the stupid TPM, where Microsoft could disable my computer and turn it into literal e-waste, that was the final straw that broke the camel's back. That was 2021. Then I installed GNU/Linux on all of my computers, no dual boot. I once experimented with it in 2010. And ever since then it has come a very long way. In 2021, basically 80% of my games worked through proton. The nicest surprise were the programmes that I found. I got in contact with many of the "flagship" FOSS projects, and I was delighted. They worked all so well, so much better than any of the proprietary ransomware that constantly extorts you for money. I exclusively use those for work as well now. And by now, all of my games are supported by Proton. Literally every single one. Ever since installing, I haven't looked back. Because GNU Linux is so much more simple, the programs do not need to be updated individually, they can just be updated normally through Flatpak or Apt for example. The system doesn't need constant reinstalling, and it doesn't have any sort of Windows rot. The system and the programmes on it do not require any internet to function.

So in short, I love GNU/Linux because it made the computer frictionless. You didn't need to fight it in order to be productive with it and to do the things that you want. And all of those years I looked back and I thought to myself how little my computer actually worked on windows. The "worst" maintanance with GNU Linux that I ever had was I needed to install a driver for the Wi-Fi/Bluetooth card of my Microsoft Surface tablet. That's it. No registry, nonsense, with disabling bundled viruses, no forced one drive, no forced ads, no slow down of the system over time, actually being able to uninstall programs, and many more things, make GNU/Linux superior in my book.

Linus Torvalds pointed a gun at my head and said "give up Windows, or else..."

I just felt increasingly like I didn't have control over my system. And Gnome 2 was looking sick to me at the time, I loved the look. 👌

Started with Ubuntu for a few years and now I've been on Arch for over a decade I believe.

Largely privacy, data ownership, performance, and a general shift towards foss and self hosting.

I got Windows 7 hacking to a point where it was basically a weird Linux and then had a moment "why bother fighting the OS, it will not get any better".

Productivity: once your Linux machine does what you want, it does what you want. It doesn’t ask if you’re sure you don’t want ai cloud storage telemetrics shoved up your hinders every 2 clicks.

Bloat: No explanation necessary.

I have ADHD: I get shit done on Linux. You can turn off whatever you want and it stays off. Windows (especially 11) is a bs distraction minefield by default. And it’ll actively work against you to keep it that way.

Because I hate MS CEO

wiped a windows partition with grub while trying to install an iso to a usb stick (just woke up and thought that was a good idea to be doing), realised my mistake, had bad ram at the time and so i bit the bullet and installed linux cause windows wouldn't get past the initial install screen, 2 pcs later and i'm still rocking linux. switched in the tail end of october 2018 and i laugh at the state of windows ever since then.

It was fun! Not only do you have this new-fangled OS to just fuck around with, but it gives you more access to the system and you can actually learn how it works? Amazing.

Eventually it just became so ingrained in my personal workflow that I wouldn't be able to function without it.

They baked AI into the operating system and had that recall thing where they basically took screenshots of your screen every few seconds. Linux doesn't do that.

0: i tinkered with linux as a kid. didn't get it. no games?

1: in uni i went back to trying it out. mostly over microsofts policies.

2: i was surprised that the green and orange variety of it-just-works-linux were super comfy to set up.

3: in my dual boot phase a windows update messed up the boot loader.

4: i decided to wipe the win-partition with a wire brush, and never looked back.

It was a couple of years ago. Continuing enshittification of Windows pissed me off enough to look into it (10/11 restricting of options, CoPilot, various bloat etc).

2 years later, i'm running Mint on my laptop, Arch on my desktop, a server with OpenMediaVault and a miniPC with Batocera. My computer life has never been better!

I was already somewhat interested in Linux (as a long time Windows user) when I started studying Computer Science, mainly for it's core philosophy of freedom and openness.

Given that most courses used Linux as the default OS I installed Ubuntu on my laptop to dual boot it with Windows, and began getting familiar with it.

Over the years I started using Linux more and more, making it my main OS, with Windows still installed for the few programs I couldn't use otherwise. Over time this set of programs became smaller and smaller, until it was just games.

Last year I bought and assembled a new PC to replace my laptop for daily uses, and given the higher specs and better support (AMD GPU instead of Nvidia) I see no reason to have Windows on it at all. Everything I need runs perfectly fine there.

I use Arch, btw.

Honestly, from curiosity and messing around with stuff, playing with Crunchbang on an old Win9x PC. (this was eons ago as Crunchbang wasn't BunsenLabs yet at the time)

Yes, really, the last time I actively ran Windows for any reasonable length of time was with Win9x, specifically 98se.

I messed around with Win10 LTSB for a bit on a laptop (this was in 2016, so when Win10 was still new and LTSC was still called LTSB), but eventually went back to running Linux, and given Windows' current trash-fire state, I'm not touching it on my hardware outside of a VM ideally, or a dedicated burner box if a baremetal install is ever needed for anything.

I dabbled with Linux on and off several times over the last 20 years but never stuck with it for long, usually because of some giant pain in the ass getting some piece of hardware to work properly, plus I like to play games too and that used to be a huge stumbling block.

Microsoft’s escalatingly shitty behavior around Windows 11, combined with how much desktop Linux has matured with things like Proton/Heroic Launcher/Bottles solving most of the compatibility problems finally pushed me over the threshold for a full switch to Linux.

I’ve been running Linux-only (first Mint, then Fedora) on my laptop for about 2 years now without problems, and finally took the plunge on my desktop PC about a month ago. Massive props to Proton for making this feasible now. I have Windows 11 installed on a spare 256GB SSD that I had just in case there was some kind of show-stopper that I needed to go back to, but haven’t booted back into it since making the switch except for one time to check that it works.

Once the gaming problem was solved (I’m not worried about kernel level anti-cheat because I’m not into that type of game), the last thing tying me to Windows was Adobe Lightroom. I do miss Lightroom and I’m not as skilled using the FOSS alternatives to that product, but I just decided ‘fuck it’, Adobe are assholes with them making Lightroom subscription-only anyways.

It is so nice not being nagged to use one drive or sign in with a Microsoft account and have bullshit slop content shoveled at me by my operating system any more. Seriously, fuck outta here with that no-local-accounts horseshit.

Anyway, not going back any time soon.

My PC shat the bed, I needed one RIGHT NOW for university, and a roommate gifted me an old tower with OpenSUSE installed.
I hated it and couldn't figure out how to install anything. But I was broke (as in, couldn't afford to eat every day). So I was stuck.
When I found out how the package manager works and how much software was available, I was blown away:
No hunting for software on the internet?
Everything is free?
No limited functionality or nagging reminders to upgrade to pro?
No searching through installer submenus to find all the checkmarks that install spyware?
Never looked back after that. The next year Ubuntu appeared, and blew my mind again.

These posts are funny, literally everyone has an answer so you get like over a hundred replies.

As silly as this is, licensing was the straw for me.

In high school, I built my first desktop and pirated Windows XP. In college, i built a PC for both my wife and myself and purchased two Windows 7 licenses really cheap with a student discount. In 2019, my PC died so I built a new one, re-used the license, and saved a lot of the old parts. In 2020 I got my wife a new PC (barely managed to buy the parts as the pandemic was starting).

So as the pandemic was in full force, I had enough functioning spare parts to make one gaming PC that would have been mid-tier 6 years prior. I put it in our unfinished basement and planned to mostly use it for playing videos or music while I worked out, maybe do some light stuff like personal email or web browsing or light gaming- since I started working remote full-time I didn't want to spend much time in my office when I wasn't working anymore.

So I had to choose an OS for it. Pirate Windows? Buy Windows? At that point I was constantly running into issues with Windows on our machines. Updates forcing themselves on us. My wife's machine has upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 8 on its own somehow and was pretty terrible until she moved to Windows 10. I had tons of driver issues with the audio interface I used for music production. Windows had been getting slower and less responsive and had been rough on the older hardware. So I installed Mint Cinnamon.

There's still a lot of things that are frustrating and annoying. More advanced things that almost no one would ever want to do are way easier, while simple everyday tasks make you jump through hoops. Installing programs from the default repository is great, but good fucking luck if what you want isn't there. But it performs way better, is way more customizable, doesn't have the spyware. Works way better with my audio interface.

Eventually I got an OrangePi and set it up as a Pi-Hole with Debian. I got a steam deck and love it. My wife got a laptop with Windows 11 and hated it so much I set it up to dual-boot Mint Cinnamon too.

Back in the early 2010s, I bought a new PC with Windows 8 on it. Hated the way it looked and the way it worked. I wanted my Start menu and Aero and Classic themes back. Led me to learning about Linux. But uxTheme and Classic Shell kept me happy for a couple more years.

Then I got a laptop with Windows 10. Felt my heart rate spike as I went through the settings and found out how much more hostile to user choice and privacy Microsoft had become. When the semi-annual updates kept undoing all my hard work debloating Windows, I decided it was time to begin using Linux in earnest.

At first, I had a dual-boot setup and jumped around between Ubuntu, Deepin, Arch, etc. Found myself booting into the Windows partition less than once a month, at which point I moved it out onto its own drive. Distro-hopping went on for about a year, after which I decided that Debian met all of my needs. Continued DE-hopping for about another year until settling on XFCE with Chicago95. Brought me enough joy to make a standardized setup in a VM, which I have since cloned to all of my computers except for the Windows laptop I keep around for work.

I'm about to pull the plug on Windows because MS says I need to replace my PC to install Win 11. Nothing wrong with my PC at all, it runs fine. So I've flashed a usb stick, checked the Linux distro will run ok, backed up my data and am ready to go. Just have to get a day free of distraction...

I got my first PC in 1983 I think it was. Second-hand, running MS-DOS. I've done a lot of computing since then, at work as well as home, almost always Windows. I've had Linux on an ancient laptop for a few years, various distros. I like to tinker, so that aspect of Linux doesn't put me off at all.

I started using Linux in addition to Windows years ago, but I switched full-time because I found that Linux actually runs faster on the same machine hardware, and if you have a stable distro it actually breaks things less often.

I've had windows go to do it's update, and sit on the update screen for ages, never seeming to finish. No process bar, nothing, just that stupid screen saying "we're doing updating, thanks for waiting" or whatever (cycling through several messages without saying what it's doing, is it stuck?) I would have to hard reset my windows machine when it did that.

And windows has so much stuff running in the background, either pre installed things running or who knows what services. I didn't use edge or IE but they would still be running there in the background in task manager.

Not to mention the other issues like having to go find software I wanted to download, hunting for a real, valid, non-virus link to download, then run an installer, and click click click through the installer. Oh it needs some version of Microsoft visual C++ runtime that it didn't include automatically? Good luck finding the right vcredist to install to make it work, you're on your own.

Linux has none of that nonsense.

You want to update? You either click the button or type the command, put in your password, it gives you a list of exactly what it's going to update. You confirm yes and it goes and giving you a progress bar and tells you what it's doing each step of the way. No guessing if it's stuck or broken. If it does break, it gives you an error message you can actually Google for a result for.

You want to install new software? For most of what I've wanted, I can just go to the distro's software repository and download things directly from a trusted source. The builds are signed and verified so I can trust they're real and not a virus rather than having to go searching online. All dependencies are also automatically installed with the correct versions to make everything just work.

And there are no installers, you click the buttons to install and what you want installs with no extra stupid menus or anything, if you want to install 10 things in one go you can.

Also there are standard paths for everything, you can pretty much Google "Linux how to" and you'll get sane results for most distro's.

And games run faster on Linux with less overhead from background things competing, there's no background update crap kicking in to nuke your game performance. I've been running steam and the free epic games stuff on Linux full-time and Linux only for probably 5 years and I've had minimal issues, VR also works. Sure there may be some setup involved but there are many guides and instructions out there, and it mostly amounts to installing things and maybe a little bit of configuration.

Which, on Windows you still often need to install things to get stuff to work anyways, so really the argument that windows "just works" has worn a little thin with me. I'd believe you if you told me that a Mac just works, I've not used one.

I've used Windows for decades, I know that "just works" is a lie. It works no better than Linux imo, and depending on distro, some Linux just works better than Windows.

From my decade of Linux I would suggest: Debian or Ubuntu for a rock solid stable distro. Probably go Ubuntu since you'll find way more help easily Googleable, but snap causes some difficulties.

Garuda is my current Arch based distro, so far no breakage after about 2 years of use, great for gaming. Would not recommend arch based for your first foray, I ran archlinux itself for about 6 years but it would break from time to time (fixable, but still not beginner friendly.)

Windows 10. It just didn't run on hard drives, when I turned off constantly scanning the drive and the firewall, it refused to update because the update service requires the firewall. Then I forgot how I did it so I never booted into it again.

Windows 7 was the last offline Windows and the last one that was tolerable

About 10 years ago a friend discovered Linux during his studies and suggested I try it out.

I haven't looked back ever since.

I also wanted an OS that "just worked", and Windows was no longer delivering that. I was constantly having driver issues (usually wireless and Bluetooth related), which required messing around in the registry to fix. I suppose I could have wiped everything and started with a fresh install, but how long would that have worked for?

If I was going to have to tinker and tweak things to get it to work anyway, I figured I might as well do it with an OS that I was in control of, that didn't shove ads in my face constantly, and that I didn't have to pay to unlock all the features. I already had a little experience with Linux in VMs, so I tried dual-booting. I found I didn't really need to boot into Windows except for the most niche cases, so I just stayed on Linux.

When I built a new computer a couple of years ago, I switched over from dual-booting to just Linux. I've been running EndeavorOS ever since.

told this story before but windows 10 force rebooted overnight after spending hours fucking with it so it doesn't, while still being able to update manually.

lost me quite a bunch of work that was rendering in the background and the important deadline. lost the will to further put up with microsoft.

My dad played (and still plays) heavily modded Cities Skylines. After upgrading his RAM to 32GB, he'd run afoul of Windows 7 Home Edition's 16GB limit. I offered to check out Linux on my own computer to see how well Cities Skylines played. I never went back.

Back when AI models were first coming out (before..well all the worst of it happened), AMD self hosting only worked on Linux.

Spun up a few distros in a VM, picked my favorite (EndeavourOS), then installed it on a new drive so I could cleanly dual boot. Got hooked and haven’t looked back in like 3-4 years, and don’t touch Windows at all anymore.

Also don’t touch AI anymore, really.

Office 365 in my face 24/7.

When I started on windows, and even with the textual pseudo-GUI's of DOS, once you got it working you could customize the hell out of everything(or it didn't pretend otherwise), and it would just continue to work until something physically broke or I broke somethin; with a tweak I would generally just undo and get back to it.

Windows is nothing like that now. My phone is more customizable, smooth, enjoyable and stable than Windows(OOBE, anyways). Its arguably better at things like, idk, working with scanners, which Windows insists are dark magic only the manufacturers can help you with(TWAIN was literally cleaner, and still is, when you can lift the hood to find it); I'm not saying its all-that-weird to need a driver - what's weird is refusing to look for an entire device-category until a third-party app tells you how, when EVERYTHING ELSE is basically plug-and-play, including the printing functions of networked copiers or fax machines.

Rant from this-specific-day's bullshit at work aside, my first experiences were with an Amiga and some Apple ii's, OS2Warp was an experience that barely struck me as much-different than what I was used-to, and I've messed-around with Macs as much as much as anyone.

What's weird isn't moving away from Windows, basically the most overtly Black Mirror-esque OS of what's out there today. What's weird is how hung-up people are on it.

Every brain-controlling or addicting substance or species on Futurama has more to offer; Windows, like facebook, is trying to be the ads injected-into dreams. Who the hell wants that?

I've used Linux since 1998 (red hat), along BeOS. But I went back to Windows because XP was rather good, Linux was becoming good too slowly, and BeOS was dead. Still kept my Linux partitions though, while my laptop was now running MacOSX. After a few years, with 7, Windows became even better, so I moved to it full time, including in laptops. In the 2010s I tried Linux a couple of times again, but it was having these small bug things that was breaking the overall good experience. It just wasn't ready for the desktop, sorry. My laptops became once again MacOSX, while I was doing photoshop cleanup for my traditional paintings with Windows 10. Then, in 2022, I retried Linux, and it was finally ready for how I always wanted it to be. The overall experience was good. Linux came to 100% usability for me just this year, with the release of Gimp 3, which allowed adjustment layers.

Basically, I have a baseline standard of how well I expect OSes to work on the desktop. I want the number of bad surprises to a minimum. I'm too old for tinkering, I want things to work. For Linux, this came true only in the last few years. So now I'm switched to it on all my computers. I only kept one macbook air with macos, all the other older mac intel ones are now running linux too. My main OS is Debian-Testing, while on laptops I run Mint. I have no Windows PC anymore at all.

Curiosity at first, but now all the stuff I usually do is easier from linux ssh, sshfs etc. WSL on windows is niftyish.

I had used Lubuntu to rescue an underpowered laptop back in community college. At university, I was on the campus tech support team... and ended up "the Linux guy" for the few foreigners who had installations (I knew how to run apt and that's about it). Out of uni, I ended up in a career supporting RHEL. Of course Raspberry Pis skyrocketed in popularity as well, so I got to sink my teeth into a Debian-derivative and blow up a few installs without having to worry about change management.

When time came to build a system in 2025, I figured I'd try it as an experiment. I stumbled at first and learned Debian does not play well with new hardware, but after switching to Linux Mint it's been nearly painless. Most of the software I had been using in Windows was already open source (because I couldn't afford to buy software), so almost everything migrated 1:1. Excluding Winamp... :(

I switched because of a strong dislike for Microsoft and their spyware. I didn't even bother dual booting, I ran baptism by fire right into Fedora and it was way smoother than I expected it to be. I enjoyed Fedora so much that I decided to try Arch. Very different experience, but now I've learned so much that I dumped Fedora and I use Arch for almost everything. I do keep a machine with Debian that way I feel like I'm getting the most well-rounded experience in case I ever need to help a friend with a Debian-based distro.

I have been a casual user of gnu/linux since Ubuntu, and was very curious and interested by the concept of libre/ open-source. I'm still a casual user now, but have fully switched to Manjaro when Proton became official and I could finally just start gaming on linux. It was rough at first, but now I can play seamlessly on a system that isn't bloated and doesn't require a live colonoscopy to even work. I love Manjaro for its ease of use. Even my mother can use it.

I was an edgy teenager and wanted to be different. I was already kind of into coding and it made it quite easy to try out different languages and environments.

In those days I had fun finding equivalents to Windows-only apps like MSN, and finding games that worked in Linux like UT2004 and TrueCombat:Elite. It was never a perfect solution so I always kept, and still do keep, a Windows installation around for gaming. I don't give a shit if MS harvests my data - what are they gonna do, advertise to me? Good luck with that. But for day-to-day stuff I am far too used to how Linux works to go back. I figure Windows has improved a lot in terms of reliability and usability since those days (and if you don't care about data harvesting or really old hardware, those are the remaining major reasons not to want to use Windows nowadays) so it might be that if I were in the same position today I'd never make the switch, but hey.

It means I don't really like the religious OS wars that erupt here. Like OK, there are MS irritations we're not dealing with, but what I am dealing with is that some esoteric combination of events means that a couple of times a week my laptop stops recognising my dock and all USB devices connected to it until I reboot - including if I plug the devices in directly to the laptop!

If I were just some random user who had just switched, that would send me back to whichever OS I had come from in an instant. So I feel like it's important to be sensitive and empathetic to that.

I was Windows only and a gamer growing up. Work and music production had me on Mac learning UNIX, bash anyway.

After this year’s Windows 11 updates and the amount of Linux gaming support available thanks to SteamOS and Proton, I now boot to a Linux distro more often than not. If it isn’t a specific Windows only game, I can do everything I want on Linux and not feel like I am inside of a corporate office building in my mind. My personal Mac has become my Logic machine.

Ubuntu works pretty well out of the box. Manjaro as well if you want to pretend to use Arch :)