I had been using Linux on servers for years, and finally also decided to give it a shot on the Desktop during the Linux challenge from linustechtips. Went to PopOS first, then Fedora and Debian and am currently on OpenSuse.

I built a computer and didn't have high speed Internet about 18 years ago. Couldn't get Windows activated so a friend gave me a (Debian?) CD so I could get something going. Been keeping old machines alive with it ever since.

Cost and price ..... I could never afford much in terms of tech purchases 20 years ago.

Always collected second hand systems, first learned to find and use cracked windows copies, then when that got too complicated and difficult, found Linux and have never looked back. The amount of money I've saved not to paying for proprietary software, went into buying better hardware that I used to install Linux and OSS software.

Sometime in the late 2000s. Bought a used netbook from someone and didn't know it had ubuntu on it.

I've been using Linux for something like 27 years, I wouldn't say evangelical or particularly obsessed.

I started using it because some of the guys showing up to my late 90's LAN parties were dual booting Slackware it and it had cool looking boot up messages compared to DOS or Windows at the time. The whole idea of dual booting operating systems was pretty damn wild to me at the time too.

After a while it became obvious to me that Slackware '96 was way more reliable than DOS or Windows 95 at the time, a web browser like Netscape could take out the whole system pretty easily on Windows, but when Netscape crashed on Linux, you opened up a shell and killed off whatever was left of it and started a new one.

I had machines that stayed up for years in the late 90's and that was pretty well impossible on Windows.

I’m just now getting into it. Set up a laptop with Ubuntu running Plex media server. Been taking some real baby steps watching basic Linux tutorials.

It did take me about 4 hours to figure out how to mount an ext HDD so that Plex would have proper permissions to find the media. It was very rewarding to finally frickin resolve that! I’m still gonna keep pecking away and learn as I go while watching I keep watching tutorials.

I was tired of Windows, so I tried Linux for a month, then switched to Mac OS for a decade.

When Mac OS started to become iOS, I started leaning towards Linux.

When my MacBook keyboard caps started falling off and Apple told me to replace the entire keyboard, I left them indefinitely.

And now I've been here for a few years. So far, so good.

ADHD, and Pablo Vazquez from Blender.

Ubuntu used to ship out free installation CDs. Since it was free, I figured why the hell not. Played around with it, loved it, but didn't use it for much more than messing around.

A decade later those fond memories enticed me to buy a Raspberry Pi and play around with Linux again, and a few years later it became my main OS. It's just so much fun to tinker with in a way that Windows never was, and nowadays it runs almost everything without a problem.

Windows 11 was so buggy that simply plugging in a USB device caused it to crash, I joked about installing Linux then I actually did. I have not looked back since.

Screenshots of x-plane and other games on the back of the Red hat 5.2 jewel case.

I had known what Linux was but I never really was interested in finding out what it was. That was, until, 2021 came around and I became more privacy conscious. Learning more about Open Source software and it's philosophy, switching completely to FOSS software (besides ROM) on my phone and then slowly looking into Linux. I was fascinated by it, this wholly new world as it seemed to me... ready to explore and learn so much from. Of course, someone who's used windows most of his life will definitely think of it as a challenge to learn to use Linux and adapt to it. I started supporting and using more and more OSS and loved it, so naturally I also had became a bit more interested in Linux. After I became privacy conscious, I also wanted to get away from Big Tech and I already hated using Windows by that point. That was because I've had a low end PC most of my life, I stuck around with Windows 7 until 2019 where it became EOL and I had to switch to Windows 10. It was an awful experience, running windows 10 on older and low end hardware.

Then came 2022, I had a new upgraded system and it was more mid-range than low-end now. I started using Linux in VMs and learnt more and more about it, I tried to switch full time but couldn't because of a few things that I just cannot live without. Truth be told I'm still using Windows, there's just one thing holding me back and all other things I've either adapted to, learnt or have found an alternative for. I know some people will hurl insults at me for saying I dislike Big Tech but also use Windows and call myself privacy conscious but It is what it is. I use Linux part-time in VMs and I really enjoy it. As soon as that use case is covered, I'll be making a full switch to Linux.

Apologies if this went a little off-topic haha, couldn't help myself I'm afraid

Linux is foss

and gnome looks neat!

Windows 10. When your OS no longer respects your choices and you have to fight it every minute, there is something wrong. The creeping invasions on privacy have only cemented my use of Linux

Truthfully, I'm not sure if I would have ever switched over if Microsoft kept the Windows 7 paradigm. But I started my search for alternatives when Windows 8 - already too adventurous for me - came with the computer I bought.

Towards the end of my time using Windows 10 as my primary OS, the realization that the UI is not an inherent component of the OS sealed the deal. As a Windows 2000 fan, I fell in love with the way Chicago95 Debian replicated the look and stability that I had sorely missed.

The desire to learn something beyond DOS, beyond just BBS', beyond RIME and FIDOnet email, wanting a UNIX like operating system that was like what I had at university, to be able to natively run talk, ytalk, IRC, ICB, Gopher, FTP, and NNTP.

Back when the world was young, I had to produce a fairly large chunk of documentation which I started to write in MS Word 2.0 (which ran in Windows 3.11 or Windows for Workgroups).

However, at around 100 pages, I started to have trouble with file corruption. So since the company I worked with had contacts with Microsoft, I got in touch with them. "yes that's a known bug, there's a new version on this FTP site" (we were in the nascent ISP business).

So I got Word 2.0c. Which promptly crapped all over my document. "Oh, yeah, I guess the bug isn't fixed then".

Around the same time, a coworker had been telling me about those guys who were busy writing a Unix from scratch (hah, so silly) and who had, already gotten a usable and stable system (wait, really? cool!). So I grabbed a copy and tested that. It ran fine (it did help that I already knew a bit of Unix). And I did my document there, I don't remember in what, if it was LaTeX or Applixware (maybe that came later).

Since then, Linux has always been on my desktop, with Windows coming and going on a secondary disk or partition, mostly relegated to the running of games.

I don't really have any one stand out reason. I first introduced myself to Linux in the late 1990s, buying a Red Hat CD and phone book sized manual that at the time cost a lot, especially as I was poor student. I think one of my tutors (I as doing computer studies) said that he ran Linux and I got nerdy and curious. It sadly didn't last long as too much of my other study was based around Windows.

Over time, Iecame to despise corporate monopolies, spying, manipulation, billion dollar advertising budgets, and turning people into products (not just Microsoft, but Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc.) more and more, so I decided it was time (early 2010s) to give Linux a go again. I'd read people saying it was more usable for gaming than it used to be. Still required giving up some games since Steam Proton wasn't a thing yet but for me, I was making an concious choice to only support gaming that was Linux native (or games that I already owned that worked on WINE).

I distro hopped bit before settling on Mint. Used that for about 2 years and then got a new PC. Wanted to challenge myself more and went with Arch. I have enjoyed the customisation, freedom, privacy and ethically conscious choice ever since.

I wouldn't say I'm obsessed but I certainly try and free other people from the shackles of non-floss software as much as I can.

RIP Windows 7

Certain games wouldn't run in Windows, but ran perfectly fine on Linux. This was the tipping point for me to fully switch to Linux. Gaming never been so smooth and pleasant for me as it is on Linux now. No more random crashes, driver shit, etc.

I worked with Unix before Windows was a thing. I've worked on windows, saw what a shitshot it was (and still is), and work with Linux instead. I do have Windows PCs at the lab for some renitent software, too, but it is always a step backwards when it comes to data procession.

one too many BSOD
this was 2005 ish

Back in the day, it was the cheapest way to get a company online. I built a slakware server with sendmail and squid on our isdn line

in high school i saw this xkcd and didn't understand the joke. next thing you know i'm trying to dual boot ubuntu, writing down error messages so i can look them up on the library computers and download alternative gpu drivers onto a flash drive (we didn't have internet at home back then and i couldnt drive yet... so debuggging issues usually took multiple days). weirdly, i enjoyed that experience and here i am ~16 years later. i use linux at home and at work :)

My OS, shipped with the PC, became slow.

Back in the distant past of 2008, a RuneScape player by the name of Icedpizza thought my complaints about driver problems on older hardware would be easily solved by this incredible thing I'd never heard of called Ubuntu. Downloaded 8.04 Hardy Heron and my life has never been the same since.

Two friends in college recommened it while I was sick of Windows bloat/tracking & setting up programming tools seemed a lot easier

My interest started in my physics classes. They teach you the basics of Linux since it gets used for simulations and solving other math problems as well. I’m not 100% sure why, but i remember not even finding windows versions of some software that we used. I think it’s connected to supercomputers almost exclusively running Linux, and I had a couple of professors that use them.

Windows 10. I was originally okay with another windows version rather than just updates, and then my dad put it on his as an "upgrade" from 7. It was utter shit. Took an old but serviceable pc and turned it into fucking molasses. And that's not even the worst of the bullshit, as it turned out.

So, I grabbed some CDs and burned on some distros and tried shit out. I liked what I found, with the exception of audio.

I'm definitely not obsessed. I don't have brand loyalty, even when the brand is free as in beer. And I'm not evangelical in that I don't inject linux into every fucking computer related conversation. But I do speak up for the fact that we aren't stuck with only windows and no other options, and that I prefer Linux overall.

Now, I am a bit zealous about how much I fucking hate Microsoft and windows, but that's a separate issue imo. But, again, I don't inject that into every conversation.

Username and password.

Interesting how there's so many answers here, but no mention of the one I came here for (and I thought would be most popular) : ricing.

I got into Linux when I saw screenshots of all the cool desktops people made with KDE, XFCE, and tiling window managers. Even Gnome looked sleek and minimal. After a while I got bored of ricing but I stayed for the ease of use as a developer

I wanted to see what the fuss was about after windows 11 came out, because I was sick of Windows intrusive UI and shady business practices.

I still use windows for some things, but now I duel boot to cinnamon and it is my daily desktop driver. I vastly prefer the clean interface and speed of Linux over windows, and I now play most of my games on it too. I was shocked when I realized that Elden Ring runs great, and looks better, on Linux while it was unplayable on windows at release.

I also installed Fedora to my surface pro after a windows update made it impossible to use without severe slowdown. I've had my surface for 6 years and it runs great on Linux.

The only downside to Linux is that, as am artist, the apps are limited. Blender is fantastic, Krita is catching up, but there is no way to use clip studio, harmony (toon boom, storyboard pro), or Zbrush (yes I can sculpt in blender but it is not quite there yet.)

My hard drive on my laptop died in college and I needed to get a paper written in a few days. I didn't money to get a new Windows license and Fedora was free and had a live disc I could burn to install off of in the school's computer lab without getting in trouble. I distro hopped a bit since then, but never went back to Windows. Things worked and it wasn't as hard as people made it sound.

No evangelizing, I just use my computer.

Curiosity, back around 2010 before I was a teenager. No clue how I heard about it, but the concept of replacing the entire operating system was fascinating. I figured it must be really good if it was such a well kept secret.

A few years later, when I started to learn programming, Linux was the obvious winner. The online course taught C in a Linux environment, and I was amazed that the default Ubuntu build at the time had everything built in, whereas a Windows equivalent required visual studio and licensing adventures.

It really stuck as a daily driver after Windows 7, where a clear trend emerged: Windows got in my way, Linux got out of my way. Simple as.

Probably like most people here, I just got more and more fed up with Windows. I tried Ubuntu a few times in the past, but it never really stuck, and at the time Windows wasn’t quite as bad (I quite liked Windows 7 in all honesty). But as time went on with Win10, it kept moving in a direction I didn’t want and I kept trying to customize it to my liking, and an update would just mess a bunch of stuff up and just make the whole experience worst. Recently it started having issues with my multiple monitors, shutdown and sleep/hibernate were basically broken, Bluetooth would randomly stop working, it was just a lot of aggravation.

I’m only a few weeks into my grand Linux adventure, but I’ve got almost all of the functionality that I need from Windows with none of the frustrations, and it’s way faster on top of that. Right now I can’t see myself going back.

Windows is boated and eventually becomes unusable or unsupported.
Linux has no such issue.
That was my initial reason for trying it.
Since then I've revived countless computers with Linux.

Cut throat environments!

I borrowed an installation CD from the local library around 1998. It was RedHat 5.x, and I started messing around with it due to me being interested in alternative operating systems. Before it, I had OS/2 Warp 3.0 in our IBM Pentium 100 MHz family computer which didn't really do it for me to be honest.

It took weeks to get anything working with Linux. I went to the library, borrowing books. In our middle school we had an internet connection, so I utilized it to learn how to configure modelines correctly to get X11 running.

When it did finally run, the default window manager was FVWM95, almost like Windows 95!

I used OSX a few years in the power PC times, just to switch back to Linux around 2008.

Edit: my real love for Linux started when I got Debian running. RedHat didn't have anything comparable to apt those days. You needed to download RPM packages manually with all the dependencies, while apt just worked with one command.

Had an old laptop which ran horribly slow on windows. Put Ubuntu on it without knowing anything about that stuff. Years later, I got interested in computer science and Cybersecurity, made some experiences with Kali Linux. Eventually switched my desktop to Linux mint iirc. My servers tun Debian

That old laptop? I used it for the first months of Cybersecurity lectures, until I bought a new laptop with my first salary. This weekend I put LMDE 6 on it. Debian is home.

Curiosity. Then starting development and figuring out most things non-MS specific assume UNIX/Linux based. I'm not obsessed at all, I quite enjoy macOS, and don't mind Windows too much for what I do with it, but it's my OS of choice for development machines, and any servers I control.

I watched a video from the linux experiment and thought it looked cool, so I kept watching his videos, and now here I am.

I started using foss software for everything, and one day, I realized that all the software I used was available on Linux, so I figured out I could run a foss os as well, and migrating was just straightforward.