Linux doesn’t try to sell my elderly mother a subscription to onedrive

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.

I switched because Microsoft just keeps getting worse and worse, and I like having complete control over my system. And limiting the amount of my data going out.

Linux in general uses much less system resources than windows, and I like being able to easily change my workflow (desktop environment, window manager, etc).

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.

I just like to hang out with you guys : )

Windows 95 was dreadful.

Yes I am old and my knees do hurt, thank you.

A variety of reasons really. Privacy concerns, not having full control over my system with Windows, ads being pushed on my computer that I can’t turn off easily, Linux is more fun to use and learn about in general. Last but not least is community. The community around Linux is fun to be a part of and makes me want to learn more so I can contribute in any way I can to the projects that I like. Once you start really checking out Open Source software and what it represents it’s hard not to care about it.

Call me a filthy casual or whatever, but I use Windows, Linux and macOS equally. My preference is Linux but I don’t limit myself by just pretending the other two options don’t exist :)

Privacy concerns and a growing view of closed source software as malware.

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.

There was no special reason for switching 25 years ago. A friend of mine used Debian and I tried it out. Not being a gamer must have helped because if you like playing, chances to encounter a game that only runs on Windows are quite high.

Now the reason why I never changed back. Once the system runs, which may take some rime depending on how customized you want it, it always runs the same way. I never had a slowing down due to updates. Another reason may be not having to think about viruses or malware. Never had it and most likely never will. Antivirus? They may exist for Linux but I have never used them.

In a few words. It just works.

For me it was the philosophy behind Free (as in freedom) software. Call me a Richard Stallman fan, but I would love to live in a world were everyone is free to:

• Run the program as you wish, for any purpose.
• Study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
• Redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.
• Distribute copies of your modified versions to others.

Learn more at fsf.org

I don’t have ads within my OS or start menus, I can do whatever I want with it, I can customize it with different desktop environments, if I mess anything up and need to clean install I don’t need to worry about license keys.

Also chicks dig penguins.

As of W10 I stopped trusting Windows. Having ads bundled into a >$200 OS shows me that being an OS is no longer the primary goal.

Previous to that I had been using Debian as a media server so the switch was pretty painless. I can play 90% of my Steam library on Linux, edit photos, edit videos, stream, browse, and do literally everything I used to do on Windows.

I was learning OpenGL at the time and I was frustrated that I could not play a game using OpenGL (When I use a technologie in programming, I love using software that use it) because none of the games in my library supported it. So I discovered Ubuntu 16.04 and I immediatly loved it. I also reinstalled it seven times because every time I broke it and I didn’t know how to fix it.

What realy chocked me at the time is how easy it is to install C++ dependencies for your project. You just use the package manager and boom, you link it to your project and your done and if for whatever reason the package is not available in your package manager, you can build it manually very easely.

However, there where some downside too. VSCode didn’t exists at the time (or I didn’t ear of it) and the only proper IDE was kdevelop which I never liked. Hopefolly, when VSCode came it was realy cool, but not as cool as when I discovered NeoVim. The gaming too was bad, Proton didn’t exist, Wine was not as advanced as today and DXVK was not a thing yet. You could only play games that where 5+ years old and only at 15/20 fps with a lot of glitches.

Linux nowoday serve all my needs, I only need to start Windows when I deploy and test some program to it or when I play a game that is not well supported on Linux and I only do it in a VM with single GPU Passthrough.