I installed Linux and the feeling of freedom and privacy hit me so hard that I immediately began committing crimes, knowing that the FBI could never track me. Piracy, sexual assault, trademark infringement, petty larceny, tax fraud, you name it. I also own several fully automatic firearms even though I live in the state of California, but it doesn’t matter. Ever since I removed Windows 10 from my computer and replaced it with Arch Linux, and began using a PinePhone as my daily driver phone, police can’t even stop me in traffic. Windows may have a lot of video games, but the benefits of Linux should not be understated.

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’ve told this story on here before, but here it is again: I used to write for a very Windows-centric computer magazine, and after a couple of years I noticed that most of the content I was writing was about how to make Windows behave less like Windows. So I thought I’d give Linux a go, and I haven’t looked back since. I’ve had phases when I tried convincing all my friends to make the switch, but I’ve realized that it’s just not for everyone. I don’t think I’m obsessed, I don’t customize my desktop much, I just want my system to work smoothly.

Windows becoming completely hostile towards power users.

I used to LOVE Windows, I even made fun of friends who were using Linux, which I only used on servers because I thought the desktop experience was sub par (and at the time it was, we’re talking 10-15 years ago). Then Windows 8 came and I stayed on 7 because the experience was bad. Then 10 came and data collection started getting out of control, so I had to jump through a bunch of hoops just to make it usable and “private enough”. Eventually things got so bad around 2019 that I realized that I was spending more time fixing that pile of crap than the average Arch user and I decided to give Linux a serious try.

I was somewhat annoyed by some UI/UX flaws but eventually I got used to it, and with the coming of Linux gaming I started using Windows less and less (it’s an AMD system so the Linux experience is excellent), eventually last year I realized that I hadn’t booted it in months so I just wiped that drive and started using it for games. I’ve also gotten a lot more paranoid about privacy and sandboxing proprietary software.

Now with Windows 11 things have gotten so bad that even my students are making fun of it so I don’t think I’ll be coming back.

I got into Linux because BSD didn’t have enough hardware support.

My philanthropic beliefs and love of freedom. I was absolutely amazed when I found out about open source and free software. Then I got to it and loved it even more, the community, the UI and DEs, how much you could customize everything and how much choices you had. But mostly it is the philosophical beliefs that makes me love linux. Even if it is not better than some alternatives in some aspects, I willl still stand by it.

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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 Mainboard had somesort of error, where Windows wouldnt Work, Linux did tho

I was fucking around with my windows pc.

And then i found out that you can fuck more around in linux, and that was the story of my first ubuntu iso burned on a cd.

I had no clue about anything but was blown away by something “different”

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.

I wanted to switch to Linux for several years because I was very sick of how Windows did things.

With Valve doing Proton and Windows 11 being a much shittier Windows 10… With rumours of it eventually becoming a FORCED update!.. I decided to actually switch to Linux last November.

Haven’t regretted it. Haven’t used any other OS since.

Windows kept doing things I didn’t want it to.

The last straw was when I had a 24 hours render running, and Windows decided to update and reboot 1 hour before it was done. I was using the computer at the time, RAM, CPU, and GPU were all at max, the mouse was being moved, I clicked “later” every time the update pop-up appeared, and it still rebooted.

Linux does what I tell it to, and doesn’t do what I tell it not to do. I didn’t think that was a big ask until Windows.

Curiosity, followed by realizing how good it is for development.

I joined the Fediverse and it seemed like everyone was using it!

I’m unable to fully convert at the moment, but boot it up every so often to experiment.