I’m asking what big motivational factors contributed to you into going Linux full-time. I don’t count minor inconveniences like ‘oh, stutter lag in a game on windows’ because that really could be anything in any system. I’m talking, something Windows or Microsoft has done that was so big, that made you go “fuck this, I will go Linux” and so you did.
For me, I have a mountain of reasons by this point to go to Linux. It’s just piling. Recently, Windows freaked out because I changed audio devices from my USB headset from the on-board sound. It freaked out so bad, it forced me to restart because I wasn’t getting sound in my headset. I did the switch because I was streaming a movie with a friend over Discord through Screen Share and I had to switch to on-board audio for that to work.
I switched back and Windows threw a fit over it. It also throws a fit when I try right-clicking in the Windows Explorer panel on the left where all the devices and folders are listed for reasons I don’t even know to this day but it’s been a thing for a while now.
Anytime Windows throws a toddler-tantrum fit over the tiniest things, it just makes me think of going to Linux sometimes. But it’s not enough.
Windows is just thankful that currently, the only thing truly holding me back from converting is compatibility. I’m not talking with games, I’m not talking with some programs that are already supported between Windows and Linux. I’m just concerned about running everything I run on Windows and for it to run fully on a Linux distro, preferably Ubuntu.
Also I’d like to ask - what WILL it take for you to go to Linux full-time?
I wanted to customize Windows 10. Customizing Windows was too hard and unsafe (requiring many “bloated” third party tools).
Then, after seeing some cool themes, I realized Linux is way more customizable. So I tried Linux Mint and now I use NixOS.
Becoming a Communist.
That, and increased gaming support, and a Thinkpad that struggled over time given renewed life with Arch.
Our favorite OS, comrade.
It wasn’t clear that windows 95 would beat OS/2, and OS/2 was clearly the better so I installed that over windows 3.1. Then in college I got introduced to BSD. I still prefer BSD, but sometimes linux has things that BSD doesn’t so I use linux in places.
My final straw was getting a new MacBook Air (I was at that point fine with how UNIX-y macOS was) and realizing I couldn’t dock the laptop to more than one external monitor without some weird hacky third-party software fix. Why, you ask? Well not at all because the laptop technically couldn’t do it, but because Apple said it can’t, because they want to overcharge you on a Pro.
I promptly returned the MacBook, bought a Framework on eBay, and learned NixOS.
10/10, I haven’t looked back since.
was bored in w*ndows and kde looked cool
Windows.
When Microsoft started enforcing online accounts to use my computer. It was then that I fully jumped ship. I was using Linux way before that for my media server, HTPC, etc., but it was that and the Steam Deck that made me finally fully jump.
Exact same over here. I don’t want an online account. I just don’t. I never will. I’d used Linux desktop a few times in the past but gaming was always bringing me back to windows. Finally my windows machine broke for no reason and after weeks of not being able to fix it I just installed Linux on top of it. Haven’t considered going back.
when I realized my hardware no longer worked for me it worked for microsoft and dell and hp etc. I was done.
I’ve been playing with Linux distros for over 25 years now. I can’t recall what made me go exclusively to Linux,but it had to do with me wanting more control over my devices. I remember that I ended up killing Windows entirely after dual booting 7 (I did not want to move to Windows 10 and EOL for 7 was rapidly approaching) with Linux Mint in 2019 on an Alienware laptop. I started running as much software as I could on Mint, getting to learn LibreOffice pretty well, but I still had to keep a VM for work, as the in-house platform was Windows only.
About 3 years ago my company accepted to provide me with a Windows 365 cloud computer, and I’ve been solidly using Linux exclusively since then (except for work, but that’s going away too as the new platform is fully Web based).
Truth is that I never liked Windows because it’s and incredibly intrusive OS, so I have not missed it one bit.
I’d been using linux for work for a couple years and it was going fine. I had a pretty crappy laptop at home with limited storage and I was constantly wrestling with Windows storing update stuff, installing adware during updates, etc.
I’d heard of proton and about how well it was going with it, so I had an idea linux gaming was possible.
Eventually something happened during a windows update that required I reinstall the OS and I just pulled out the flash drive I used to install linux on my work machine and tried it out. Eventually I did have to dual boot (on a bigger drive) for some games, but nowadays I’m all linux everywhere.
I’m still on Windows 10, mainly for gaming. I probably won’t switch (to PopOS or Mint) until Win10 EOL happens, primarily for gaming-related reasons.
I have an Nvidia card and can’t afford to get an AMD, and most of my games are not on Steam (I really like GOG), so I’m hoping by that point Nvidia compatibility will have improved enough compared to last time I tried switching.
I mean FFS I went to PopOS like a year ago and couldn’t even get Dragon Age: Origins to run, even through Lutris. It made me sad. :(
VMs are what really did it for me. I was working at a health care job doing IT. Whenever someone wanted a new server I’d have to buy the hardware install the hardware load Windows server on it load the middleware on it, connect it to the SAN, add it to the complicated backup schedule. Literally anything anyone wanted took me a month.
I threw an ESXi box in connected it to the SAN once, worked out a mirroring backup solution. Now I could slice up one decent size box into dozens of smaller boxes. My real limitation was Windows licensing. Server and CALs and middleware gets pricey quickly. But I can install as much community-based open source as I want.
I started running Linux of the desktop to keep up with technology. Before long the vast majority of my servers were Linux.
I was starting college (comp.sci, natch) and a hard req for the program was “Your own personal computer, with an Ethernet card and an OS that had a TCP/IP stack for remotely accessing classwork.” I didn’t have a great deal of money (most of it was tied up in tuition and housing) and ethernet cards were expensive (I think I paid $140us for it at the time). I couldn’t afford Windows and didn’t have a warez hookup for '95. A BBS I used to call had Slackware disk images for download.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Windows 11’s TPM led me to believe I wouldn’t be able to upgrade my machine without windows thinking I need a new license, as it had happened for windows 11. I found a workaround but didn’t know if it would work for Windows 11 as well. I want to control my machine so I went with Linux.
There was some kind of an upgrade and it had privacy issues in the eula. I was dual booting for a while already.
