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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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I switched because there's nothing I can do on windows that I can't do on Linux. Granted, it can take some legwork and reading tutorials to get certain games running on linux. But I just feel more in control of my stuff on Linux.
As a beginner, I really suggest you make the move to Linux as easy as possible for yourself. It's more likely to be a pleasant experience, and thus a long term one. Try something easy like Linux mint. Once you get used to that, you can start distro hopping.
I never switched. I checked out BSD and Linux when it was new and I stuck with Linux.
Ok, I was on AmigaOS before, but it died.
Back in the day (1999/2000) Linux seems to be a small niche, fun and novelty. I started with Turbolinux :D
Is faster. I don't care about the extra bells and whistles, and I want a straightforward functioning system that allows me to do what I need to do. I also like that I can customize my desktop experience to my heart's desires. I can literally change the way my system looks if I get bored of it. Most importantly, the lack of tracking/telemetry and being a smaller target on the web.
It was when the third or fourth thing ended up persistently broken after an update and the whole system became too much of a pain to use. I honestly don't recall if it was XP or Win 7.
I had used a couple of Linux flavours before for a short periods and originally planned to dual boot, but this time, just never got around to putting a new Win partition on and found that I had no need for it anyway.
Switched to Linux in November 2022. I was tired of not owning my pc
When you first switch you might feel overwhelmed because you'll have to develop a sense of how things work in a non-Windows world. But, after a bit you'll realize you feel in control of your computer, maybe for the first time ever. It may seem like a small thing, but the realization that I finally "own" my computer and control the software that is installed on it, how it runs, what programs do what tasks, etc... was really surprising and made everything worth while.
As for switching, I had been exploring the idea. One night while writing an important work email on my Windows 11 pc in outlook (also work required) my pc just randomly shut itself off and, of course, outlook did not save the email draft. Deleted the windows virus the next day and my pc has worked much better ever sense.
If you make the switch you'll be able to find lots of great help with technical issues online in places like this.
For me I just want to see Linux get more support and it'll get that with more market share so I switched. I think there should be an alternative to windows or mac. Also the terminal is so nice to have. After many years on linux I'm very comfortable in a terminal but still don't know a lot of the powerful commands, but now with ai I can just ask it how to convert videos or move files from one computer to another and it gives me the command
For me it was pretty gradual. In my university research a couple years ago I needed to work with the university's supercomputer running RHEL, so I got some exposure there. At some point I put Mint on my laptop, keeping Windows on my desktop "in case I needed to do any real work", then about a year ago I put linux* on my desktop as well. I do still have a Windows dual-boot just in case there's some weird software I need to use, but I haven't touched it more than once or twice since. I switched partially out of curiosity, but largely as part of an effort to de-google and de-microsoft my stuff so I'm more in control.
*distro-hopped a bit, but now am settled on EndeavourOS
I was surprised at how much you needed the terminal, but also how easy it was to use the terminal after a bit of practice. I prefer it to GUIs for a lot of things now (like git). Also, installing software from a package manager rather than going to a website and downloading it. I didn't like that at first, but I love that concept so much more now, since I can just sudo apt upgrade and everything is up-to-date (no downloading the new version after an update).
I'm now to the point that when I do need to use a windows machine for some reason, it takes me a second to remember how things work. It's kinda a weird feeling tbh haha
I Did not want to reinstall Windows again. Switched and never looked back.
Originally, because I was a poor middle school student with a bunch of dumpster hardware. I could not afford a windows license (this was the XP days). I immediately liked Ubuntu (gnome 2 at the time) more than windows, everything felt faster and more customizable. It really screamed on my pentium 3. I used Linux of various flavors all the way through school and continue to use it as my OS of choice to this day. I remember my teachers always being mad that I didn't use "times new Roman" font when I turned in papers, explaining that I used Linux and TNR was not an available font didn't do much for me. I would switch to windows for AAA games back in the day, but that is quickly becoming less necessary.
The biggest benefit I have seen over the years is that it is so much easier to keep old hardware alive (and still secure) with Linux. If your old matching is starting to bog down you can always find a lighter weight distro to load it up with. And when you are ready to upgrade hardware the old stuff can easily be turned into a server, game console, or PC for grandma. Anything to keep it out of a landfill is pretty easy to do. It used to be that you never had to worry about paying for an upgrade either, but now that windows is essentially free for upgrades that is no longer a huge benefit.
I switched back in 2005 (I think), because Windows XP didn't have the drivers for being installed on an S-ATA drive and SUSE could be installed without any hassle. I feel very old.
My dad always tells me about how it drove him insane for days that Windows XP couldn't detect the HDD, but it showed up totally fine in BIOS. He ended up taking it to a computer shop, and the bastards didn't even tell him about the F6 floppy (instead they charged him double what was quoted because their techs had to 'learn how to do it').
It was only because they somehow even screwed that up, what should have been a simple setup of Windows XP, and he had to reinstall, that he finally learned from the internet that he needed the F6 floppy.
Ha! I ran a little computer shop for 6 years starting in 2008 and never knew about the f6 floppy until today
Well TIL
Yeah, it was nicknamed the F6 floppy because Windows XP setup would say "Press F6 to load a SCSI driver" and you would hit that, select the driver from your floppy, and continue setup.
I've even seen vendor's websites call it F6 Driver because the unofficial name was so ubiquitous
I switched once in college just because I could. But then I switched back when Windows 7 was released.
Then I switched again at work because our product ran on Ubuntu server, and I hate PuTTY with a passion, and it was just easier to manage Linux from Linux. But I switched back again when we were acquired by a larger company that required us to use more productivity tools that didn't run well on Linux at the time and had to to "just work" (Skype for Business, Zoom, etc).
These days I spend most of the workday in WSL via Windows Terminal. At home I run a handful of Linux VMs atop an ESXi hypervisor installed on an old desktop. But when I'm not working, I generally just stay as far away from computers as possible.
Privacy concerns and a growing view of closed source software as malware.
My brother pushed some buttons in Windows lockscreen, which caused assistance settings to never go away again (I still don't know how I should've fixed it), that was the final annoyance with Windows and I switched to Linux on my laptop. On my PC I switched once I didn't need Windows for work (remote desktop) anymore.
I'm in the same boat myself. Windows is and has been my daily driver since the days of Windows 3.1. Over the past few months, I began a path learning web development and I've been using WSL on Windows 11 to learn. I picked up an old laptop and I'm currently installing Debian with KDE Desktop hoping I to find a life raft out of the Windows world for reasons unknown.
Windows ME sucked big time. Never looked back.
Windows Vista kinda sucked and Kubuntu 7.10 was so much snappier, and I was already dealing with Linux servers so I liked it for web development.
Windows is cancer with the telemetry. Also the updates, which is the reason I hate Ubuntu
W10 came out and W7 security updates was done. Had to move to W10 for work and our engineering software got slower. Moved home (older) computers to W10 and they became useless bricks. Found SUSE/OpenSUSE supported my CAD software with their linux release. Swapped to that. Speed was back for work and home stuff. That was 2017 or so. I haven't gone back to Windows except for some shared excel reports. Teamviewer, Webex, zoom, MS teams all have linux versions for work collaboration.
When I was in college, one of those stupid Lockdown Browsers broke my laptop’s ability to use its physical speakers. No amount of modifying Windows registries or even clean installing Windows could fix it. I booted Linux from a USB stick and lo and behold everything worked as normal. I wiped Windows and never looked back.
I saw a post from r/unixporn on all and thought it looked really cool.
Critical last straw for me was having shit Internet and windows updates eating literally all my bandwidth. Other reasons include privacy, ownership, etc. I was already familiar with Linux when I switched.
I switched when my old Windoz XP install deflated in a blue screen of death. I didn't even know there was a difference between an OS and the computer as a whole, but a friend gave me four live CDs with linux distros on them (Ubuntu 12.04, Bodhi, PClinus, can't remember the fourth).
What made me stay was the FOSS ideals that make software available to all. I was so broke at the time that I didn't have the money to buy a new $100 windows install. Without Linux I wouldn't have had a computer. Since then it's always been the ethos that has kept me with Linux. That being said, here are the unexpected benefits:
When the Steam Deck was first announced, I was so excited for it that I figured it was as good a time as any to switch to linux on my desktop, to get familiar with in in advance of the Steam Deck release. I wanted more control over my PC, and I've been wanting to switch to linux for ages, but it was something I kept putting off just because I knew it would be quite a time sink to learn to use it.
I was surprised with how simple linux really was. I started with Kubuntu and hopped to Garuda, to be able to use the AUR, and I've been in love with linux to the point where I never even boot into windows despite still having it installed. I just have never felt the need, and windows now feels so clunky and not very personalized to my preferences.
I didn't want to pay for windows.
I hate all of the spying that Windows is engaged in now. What really pushed me over the edge is that Windows started opening a full page Office 365 add in my browser every time the computer woke up from sleep. I couldn't find any information about how to stop it and eventually just said "fuck Windows" and installed Linux. That was about 3 years ago. I still have Windows as a dual boot because I need it for Fusion 360, and the piece of shit still does the O365 add that I can't get rid of and now constantly tries to trick me into upgrading to Windows 11, despite the fact that I've already said no about 10 times. Fuck Windows piece of shit spyware/adware masquerading as an operating system.
sick of windows. spyware, forced updates, no customizability... ect
Private, Secure, FOSS. I want something that I know is my own and not a $200 license to a proprietary POS operating system that spies on me. Run a packet tracker on any Windows system and watch that guy ping to Windows with every bit of telemetry you can offer.
crazy updates which broke normal functionality, absence of tiling window manager
I've been growing increasingly frustrated with how much my computer felt less and less like my own with every Windows update. They have been steadily removing control away from the user and putting me in frustrating positions. I've used Linux for a week here and a week there over the last few years so I thought, screw it!, and made the switch about 3 months ago. I don't feel any need to go back.
The last straw was when using the Xbox app. For some reason I didn't have ownership of the folders where the games were installed. I couldn't see how much space they were using and I couldn't access them to troubleshoot an issue I had. Well I could, but I shouldn't have to manually give myself ownership of non-critical files on my machine while using an admin account. In addition, after uninstalling a 100GB+ game, it for some reason just left the files on my drive (That I also didn't have ownership of to delete.)
The Xbox app also one day decided that it couldn't update any games, the error codes are shit and don't lead to any usable information or the copy/paste responses from their troglodyte community helpers telling you to run sfc, chkdisk, Windows repair then they just tell you your RAM is bad. (This applies to most of Windows' generic ass error messages) To top it off, the Xbox app now launches THREE other launchers by itself... without asking (Ubisoft, EA, Riot). Whoever decided that needs to be fired, ideally into the sun.
I don't want to use anything from a company that hires brain-dead morons that make and/or allow those kinds of design choices.
Getting personal, are we?
Well, the year was 2006 and I had a tank of a Dell D610. Never failed me
until it did.
One day it did the BSOD thing. I thought it was neat. After having used computers for more than a decade I finally saw the infamous BSOD. So, reinstalled Windows and got everything set up jus... BSOD.
Curious.
Another BSOD.
So, I reinstalled (for the second time) and very cautiously rebooted...BSOD.
Well, fuck.
I happened to have a Knoppix LiveCD laying around. I got that up and running and managed to download Ubuntu and burn that and installed Ubuntu and never looked back.
I didn't stay with Ubuntu for long, though.
I don't have a technical job either. I am just a teacher. Linux serves me well.
For me it was a couple reasons:
my brother installed Ubuntu 12.04 on my desktop for me when I was in high school, and I was enamored with the different desktop layout. It got me started on the journey.
maintaining it is much easier than windows. Running one command/script to update a system is much faster than heading to the right window or menu and hoping Microsoft delivers you an update. Plus if it breaks it's easier IMO to troubleshoot and fix.
I made the switch when windows ME was released, right now I'm using win10 for work because of some software that really doesn't have an alternative in Linux but I do run it on all of my other computers. Benefits:
Edit: I forgot to say that I run Debian on most of my machines.
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Why did I switch to Linux ? I pushed Windows XP as far as it could go (skipped Vista altogether), and after that I became so frustrated with Windows 7 being so bad that I switched to Linux and never looked back since.
I really enjoy copying URLs / bash scripts off the internet instead of downloading a file and pressing enter on it.
Forced Windows updates bad. Gaming on Linux good. Also Windows 11 not installable on perfectly good hardware.
So it was 1995, and a new version of Windows came out. Sadly it didnt run on our 486 so we upgraded to a new computer with a Pentium processor (a week before the Pentium Pro was released). My parents got their new machine and i was left with with Windows 3.11.
A friend of mine from school, a few years older, had just come back from a computer show down in Green Bay with a box fully of floppy disks (like 70). That weekend i brought my computer over to his house along with a few other friends and we all installed Slackware. At that point we were all using the Universe of Wisconsin's dialup service and were able to get online, do some Gopher, IRC and MUDing.
The only other time i ran a non *nix OS would be when work gave me a Windows machine or when I was gaming (Quake, Ultima Online). Otherwise it has been Linux and BSDs since 95
For me, it was much like iPhone vs Android. I've twice been back to owning an iPhone and have kept leaving because of the more closed ecosystem. The freedom to explore, take apart, modify, hack, learn, etc. I don't do a lot of that, but it is nice to try things out. So in summary for me its the philosophy behind it, and I can install it freely across all computers, Pi's, etc in the home.
EDIT: I forgot I'd also bought Vista at the time, and it was not great. I vowed after that not to pay for another Windows OS.