Personally, I’m not brand loyal to any particular OS. There are good things about a lot of different operating systems, and I even have good things to say about ChromeOS. It just depends on what a user needs from an operating system.
Most Windows-only users I am acquainted with seem to want a device that mostly “just works” out of the box, whereas Linux requires a nonzero amount of tinkering for most distributions. I’ve never encountered a machine for sale with Linux pre-installed outside of niche small businesses selling pre-built PCs.
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. These two groups of people seem as if they’re very fundamentally different in what they want from a machine, so a user who solely uses Windows moving over to Linux never made much sense to me.
Why did you switch, and what was your process like? What made you choose Linux for your primary computing device, rather than macOS for example?
I was using ubuntu during my internship and I like and never looked back
I moved to Linux from OS/2 in the 90’s.
I barely knew what linux was before I watched pewdiepies video on it a long time ago. Just knew that some people on steam would complain about games not running on it, so I never bothered to look into it, since that is basically all I use my computer for. However, over the past 2 years I have been becoming more aware of my individual footprint. Something I noticed was that I will complain about things I think are “wrong” with the world, and then not do anything about them. One of those things was Microsoft (or big tech companies in general). I hate them, yet I would be using their product/service. Literally giving money to something I don’t like.
I honestly have never enjoyed learning about computers and coding, I’ve tried and it’s never felt fun to me. I’m definitely not the “target” of linux I guess. When I turn on my computer, I just want to play some games or do homework/work with no fuss.
However, Linux is at a point to where I, someone who has no want or need to learn computers, can switch and mostly use it out of the box. So I just switched, because if I’m gonna sit here and shit on Microsoft for not doing what I think is right, then I need to stop using their product. Capitalism means as long as they make money, they aren’t gonna change a damn thing.
Yeah, I feel this sentiment very strongly. Complacency is what they want, because then you just mindlessly participate in the system. It’s difficult to not participate in the system by default since it’s like “hey man, I just
worklive here”. So not only do you need to be educated in wtf these systems even are, why they’re bad, and how to best engage/disengage with them, you have to actively make an effort to change with energy not a whole lot of people have these days. Some may see this reaction to Microsoft as silly and overblown, but people getting rid of windows could literally save their life due to the systems of surveillance built by Microsoft aiding increasingly dangerous and malicious political actors.That’s a good point. I guess even if you had to go through a few additional steps, it wasn’t very difficult for you, so it’s worth it.
I am kind of in the same boat as you, except I haven’t yet tried Linux. I’ve just been reading up information about it and I also mostly use my PC for gaming and some work, but work is mostly in a browser anyway. I hecking despise Microsoft now for Windows 11 and just had to battle their forced updates that nearly bricked my computer and I’ve finally had enough. May I ask, which version of Linux did you find worked “out of the box” for you?
I use POP!_OS. Works pretty much perfectly for me, although they just came out with a new cosmic desktop which I am not using (but looking into), so you might have a different experience than me. I have some issues like FPS in deadlock slowly degrading (I think if I use steam overlay) or sometimes games with third party launchers (like Mass Effect) just wouldn’t work until I tinkered around. These aren’t dealbreakers for me though. Most games work out of the box for me. If you’re really worried, you can always dual boot it with windows just to be safe, that’s what I did. https://ostechnix.com/dual-boot-windows-and-pop-os/ here is the guide I followed. If you don’t want Pop OS, I’ve heard decent things of bazzite as well for gaming.
POP and Mint seem to be the most recommended ones so I think I will start with one of them and see what happens. I’m not terribly opposed to tinkering a little bit and I generally try to avoid games with 3rd party launchers, so I’m sure it’ll be fine. The only thing that concerned me was reading about Nvidia being a bit finicky (stuck with a 3070, but probably switching to AMD when this AI craze eases) with Linux, but I’m sure it’ll be fine.
Kind of excited to dive in tbh, and that doesn’t happen too often anymore, lol. Thanks for the reply!
It was 20 years ago and Microsoft was terrible and Windows was awful. Later on I used Windows 8.1 somewhat out of necessity until it was deprecated and went back to Linux because Microsoft is terrible and Windows 10/11 is awful, but now with all kinds of invasive telemetry.
Windows is terrible.
I haven’t, I run a Windows desktop, Linux desktop, Windows laptop, and Linux laptop (was a Mac OS laptop but Apple EoL’d it, so I am looking at a Mac Mini M4 Ultra or M5 if they release one next year). I am OS agnostic though.
Linux does what I want it to do. Windows doesn’t.
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.
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.
poverty; i couldn’t afford a windows license.
Linus Torvalds pointed a gun at my head and said “give up Windows, or else…”
My computer was old and crusty and windows 11 would’ve surely killed it. Fedora let it continue on until I eventually made my new computer that I’m currently using, and there’s no way I was gonna shell out for a windows license when linux is free
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.
Office 365 in my face 24/7.
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.
This is really interesting. I started with Mint-Cinnamon since it sounded like it would be ideal for me as I had no desire to switch to Windows 11 and I needed a daily driver OS; I did not like Mint at all and spent too much time trying to make it work with newer hardware. Fedora Workstation has been a great experience for me and it checks all the boxes with minimal troubleshooting. What is about Arch that made you decide to switch? Genuinely curious as I am all-in on Linux now that I know I can do productivity stuff and gaming so easily and I don’t have to give another dime to MS.
I suppose all the “I use Arch” memes made me curious about the hubbub behind it. Fedora is totally competent, works right out of the box and gives no issues in my experience, I truly believe it should be recommended more when folks consider making the switch. Arch has been a learning experience for me, kinda figuring out what the system needs but doesn’t come with. “Oh, I have no firewall, I better install it. No bluetooth? Alright, I’ll add that too.” It’s so hands on and it forces the user to make decisions that the distro usually makes for the user on its own. This is a “for better and for worse” type of thing, but it forces the user to learn more about Linux itself than just handing them a totally functional machine right out of the box. It was intimidating as hell the first couple installs, but now I understand things I didn’t understand before as a result of it.
I understand, this also worked for me. Although I also have to include Debian in this since it’s the my favourite for server related installs
