Linux

Plex

At the time, Windows was updating and restarting whenever it felt like it which would stop my Plex server from running until I logged back in. Windows and Macs are now just thin clients that allow me to connect to all my Linux servers.

I needed LaTeX, and in the early 1990s, the Dos version sucked, and Scientific Word on windows 3 was very expensive.

/Oh yeah I'm old

I tried it out and discovered none of the annoyances I had with windows existed here, then I started customizing things, redesigning my interface from the ground up to make everything as optimized as possible, to an extent that would never be possible on windows.

Plus I have massive ethical concerns regarding proprietary software.

Now I can't leave.

I am interested in tech, and also watched a lot of YouTube videos about different topics. Somehow I realised how much data windows sends. Since I was planning to buy myself a new pc(my old one was a Celsius W370 from 2009 that took 20 minutes to boot windows) I decided to not install Windows on this pc but to install Linux. I went the classic way and chose Mint with cinnamon.

That was about 1.5 years ago.

I wouldn say that I'm somehow obsessed with Linux and there's definitely no way back. I got completely sucked into FOSS. My next phone will be a Google pixel where I will install Graphene OS on. Fuck big tech.

I got tired of windows breaking its self. Windows XP would get very slow after using it for a while and would need a reinstall to fix it.

Linux user group at my uni. I love Unix like systems, especially Linux.

Curiosity. It began while trying to play around with programming, and finding a lot of talk and resources about Linux, and then trying it. 3 broken Debian installations just for messing around, then Ubuntu as a more permanent install, all of this alongside Windows.

Then I began using less and less Windows until I just deleted the Windows partition because I needed more space.

I had always used Windows for the longest time. I used a certain cloud service and was impressed with how easy it was to manage services with docker. Fast forward a couple of years and I got a small mini-PC with Windows. I tried to install docker on it but Windows back then had no way of using Docker without virtualizing it with Hyper-V, a Pro feature. I thought let me give this another try. I tried to replicate the same setup with NSSM tools. It kinda worked eventually but it was a dirty hack at best and I did not like this solution.

I thought to myself, why would I pay Microsoft to use a feature I can use for free with Linux and get better performance while at it.

Here we are 7-8 years later.

On an old laptop of mine that has pretty piss poor specs I ended up messing with the regedit on win10. On the only account on the laptop, I lost admin access and couldn't change it back. I tried fixing it using a solution online that required downloading Linux and booting it up on a thumb drive. After that failed and I found out that Best Buy was just suggesting reinstalling win10, I just said "fuck it" and installed Ubuntu, which was what I had on my thumb drive. That was a couple years ago. Since then I have switched to Sparky Linux, even though I rarely use that laptop anymore thanks to my desktop.

I'm definitely not ultra obsessed with it, but I do find it's nice to have.

Resenting Microsoft more than I hated Linux basically. When Windows started pushing malware-like popups and automatically "upgrading" peoples OS without asking I started using Linux as my main OS. At that point I disliked Linux because I had had some bad experiences with attempting to use it in the past, but it was becoming clear it is the lesser of two evils. Over the years it got more tolerable while Windows just got worse. Not an evangelist or obsessed at all, I actually still dislike it, but there's no way I'm going back.

win10 EOL support. Genuinely hate the incorporation of AI into the OS.

Wanting to make a custom ROM for a phone.

curiosity, originally. this was back at the very earliest days of slack and debian, some 30 years ago.

i am not 'obsessed' with linux itself, but i have a definite preference for FOSS over proprietary solutions.

I could just do more with it.

I didn’t have a lot of money and went dumpster diving for parts. Changed out a bad capacitor and got a system booting. This was back in Pentium 3 and 4 days. I found a 512MB stick of memory that had some bad areas. Linux was able to map around it with some kernel options at boot. Since I had limited storage I used knoppix and had a print out of the needed kernel options and memory addresses.

Once it was up and running I was able to do anything and everything I wanted. I did built a better system and got gentoo going a year or so later.

Eventually I got gaming mostly working with the project that eventually became crossover. First software I ever purchased too. I started dual booting less.

I bounced back and forth between windows and Linux and when I built a system around 2010 I didn’t even bother configuring it for dual booting.

I haven’t really touched anything windows since around the release of Windows 10 and only used windows 7 for work reasons prior. These days I’m pretty useless with anything on that end.

So I’m an evangelical fan of Linux. I use it everywhere I can and the FOSS philosophy resonates with me. I advocate for it where it makes sense and works. I’ll go out of my way and spend time & money helping people move into it too.

I was trying to run a forum in the early 2000s and was pirating Windows Server with IIS to do it, and I discovered this entire other free, legit OS to do what I wanted to do with ease. Back in those days you could install a "LAMP" stack during install which gave you Apache, MySQL, and PHP automatically configured, whereas in IIS I was having to install a seperate PHP interpreter and figure out how to send php scripts to it and back, the whole thing seemed janky.

After that Linux became my go-to for any IT related project, and even more so when I started my electronics hobby due to how you can just make it do any damn thing you want.

In 2020 it became my desktop permanently after Microsoft decided they didn't want their OS running on my perfectly fine computer anymore.

Windows 11 was so buggy that simply plugging in a USB device caused it to crash, I joked about installing Linux then I actually did. I have not looked back since.

Ham Radio, the Raspberry Pi and Windows 8.1.

I first heard about a Raspberry Pi on the 2 meter band, someone mentioned making contacts in Europe with one. Sounded intriguing. I wanted to work digital modes but didn't really want to hook up my laptop to my radio for fear of wiring it wrong, so I bought a Raspberry Pi. Which runs Debian Linux. I learned how to cd and ls and sudo and apt-get.

Then that laptop I was being so precious with suffered a monitor backlight failure. And it was time for a new laptop. This was in 2014, Windows 8.1 was on the shelves at that point.

I was enjoying using the Pi at the time, and decided to try running Linux on my new laptop instead of Windows. And I've been using Linux Mint ever since.

Windows 3.1, 3.11, 95, 98, ME, Vista...

Stopped evangelising when I realised people hate evangelists telling them what they should do. Started leading by example instead. Curious people approach you if they want to learn.

Won't be going back to proprietary OSs.

How to dual boot linux mint and windows (ended up accidentally ended up just having mint on my drive).

It came to me in a dream

OS2/Warp

IBM showed us there could be a superior OS that wasn't Windows or Mac. Been chasing that dragon ever since.

Basically servers and Pis.

If you wanted to host your own site and services, a Linux vps was (and still is) the only choice. Back then it was Debian, nowadays I use Arch on everything. Same with Raspberry Pis when the first one became available in 2012. With university I started using Arch on my laptop and later when Proton and Wayland became good, I moved to it on the Desktop as well.

Curiosity. I was in primary school in mid 2000’s looking forward to learn more about computers. I only had access to the internet in school but whenever I could freely use it, I mostly spent time reading about history of software and hardware. By the time I received my first PC, which was slightly outdated (late 90’s), but overall fun. The only thing I knew was different versions of Windows and question on alternatives appeared naturally - I was wondering if that’s the only OS that can be used with the hardware. Around 2005 I was conscious of Linux existence, not really sure what it is and how is it possible that it’s free. I didn’t try anything until year later when I ordered free Ubuntu 6.06 CD, but it didn’t play nicely on 128MB of RAM. I managed to make it work anyway by creating a swap partition, however without internet connection there wasn’t that much of use. It wasn’t until 2007 when I finally got in house ADSL and upgraded the PC. Soon after I tried newer version of Ubuntu, struggled to make internet work on it (over tiny little ADSL USB modem that wasn’t well supported yet) but eventually succeeded. Fast forward 16 years later I still daily drive Linux and now work as a Linux admin.

The constant reinstalling of windows. I actively resisted it because I wasn’t interested in learning something new. My laziness eventually kicked in and it was easier to learn Linux.

The year was 2002 & I was fed up with windows for various reasons. Connected to the internet looking for a windows alternative & ended up finding slackware. Installed slackware & got it somewhat working. Happily used it for a short while, before moving on to Fedora Core when it was released....

Windows begging me to create a Microsoft account on start up everyday, even making me unplug my ethernet to get past it. I'm not obsessed with Linux.

McAfee Antivirus.
Got so tired of the software slowing down the computer and freaking out over non-virus programs. Also the price to renew was stupid.
No need for AV running 24/7 on Linux.
After using a few different distros over a couple of years I decided to never go back to Windows (and I detest Apple so that will never be an option), and I settled on Kubuntu.
So. Damn. Happy.

programming! I had heard that programming is better on Linux so I gave it a go and quickly realized it was better for everything else as well

My dad gave me a laptop running ubuntu as my first computer many years ago and I have never found any non-linux operating system I really liked. There are some things I love about Haiku, but it just isn't quite good enough to replace Linux for me, at least not yet

On the list of reasons over the years.

1. High School friend showed me their install, and how it had these sick spinning cube desktop. Ditched it once I realized I couldn't do anything I wanted on it.

2. In University, the ComSci labs all had networked machines with Ubuntu installed. It was cool, but again outside of coding, I couldn't do anything I wanted on it.

3. 2022, I got a new Laptop, couldn't use Windows 11 without an account (I know of the work arounds). MS has Windows 10 with a EOL in 2025, and Valve is pushing the Steam Deck hard. Gave it a second shot. I now can do everything I want on it without issue. I even made a 1 year retrospective video about it.

I use arch btw /s

Servers in school. Learned how to setup a website, Linux tools test. Then at home how to setup a Counter Strike server.

Cost

A combination of:

• I was very curious about computing and trying different applications
• I liked customizing and tinkering with my setup: Launcher, window manager, icons, etc.
• I was a poor teenager

On the windows side, there were neat apps like Stardock Windowblinds, for the most part, everything was paid and expensive for someone with no disposable income.

Mind was blown when I realized everything I wanted was available for free! My first install was actually from a CD that came with a book I checked out from the public library

I've been using Linux for a long time on various other systems but what caused me to finally ditch Windows completely on my daily driver was:

A nonconsensual Windows Update which caused my bitlocker encryption to become corrupted and I lost everything on that disk.

This unscheduled reformat combined with all the other shady practices on Windows lately cemented my choice.

It's been several months now and I couldn't be happier!

The quality of gaming on Linux has advanced an incredible amount in the last year or so since I've tried it. Most of my games will either run natively or require a few extra clicks to use proton in steam. A few outliers that aren't on steam required Lutris.

On average I find the performance in games is better on Linux, even for non-native games using proton/wine.

Definitely would recommend giving it a shot if you are on the fence. Particularly if you've tried gaming in the past and were disappointed.

I was on windows 8 and 10 was out my pccwas old slow i really didnt want a pile of spyware with my os. I asked around and found Linux mint.

Two things made me leave. Both having to do with Windows.

1. Microsoft themselves.

2. My Windows install was just...bad. I'm not sure how else to describe a Windows that frequently crashed and just gave up and Blue Screen. Sure, both probably happen to any normal Windows install (well, the 1st thing. If you get the second, yeah that's a problem)--but not at the frequency it happened with mine, I'm sure. Besides that, it was slow for no reason (AFAIA, anyways) and doing anything took a while. Yeah, I eventually reinstalled it after some hassle, and after that it was just slow, but then i made the fatal mistake of trying Windows 11 and was like "if this is what I'm eventually ganna have do deal with...no thanks." Tbf, Microsoft was promting it, so i assumed it was an upgrade to Windows 10, not a wannabe chromebook with some baffling "lets fix what isn't broken and works great as is" choices.

Well, thinking about it, there was a third reason i ususally neglect to mention:

3. I had a choice. I like looking at all my available options and choosing what to go with instead of having something chosen for me. I'm a big boy and can make my own choices for myself, thank you (looking right at you there, Bill). As soon as i heard "there's something else besides this or an Apple Product. And it's much better than some people like to give it credit for" i researched a bit on the differences, the requirements, and a good place to start, and well, here I am.

As for what I am, IDK. I'm a happy Linux user, but i also get some people are perfectly happy Windows users (or aren't, but are locked into the ecosystem regardless) and hey, as long as we agree that both OS's have their quirks, you let me keep my penguins, and I'll let ya keep your...erm, Windows (does Windows have a mascot? I doubt it, but you never know)

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.

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.

Lemmy. Thank you guys

My interest started in my physics classes. They teach you the basics of Linux since it gets used for simulations and solving other math problems as well. I’m not 100% sure why, but i remember not even finding windows versions of some software that we used. I think it’s connected to supercomputers almost exclusively running Linux, and I had a couple of professors that use them.

I built a computer and didn't have high speed Internet about 18 years ago. Couldn't get Windows activated so a friend gave me a (Debian?) CD so I could get something going. Been keeping old machines alive with it ever since.

I’m just now getting into it. Set up a laptop with Ubuntu running Plex media server. Been taking some real baby steps watching basic Linux tutorials.

It did take me about 4 hours to figure out how to mount an ext HDD so that Plex would have proper permissions to find the media. It was very rewarding to finally frickin resolve that! I’m still gonna keep pecking away and learn as I go while watching I keep watching tutorials.

I was tired of Windows, so I tried Linux for a month, then switched to Mac OS for a decade.

When Mac OS started to become iOS, I started leaning towards Linux.

When my MacBook keyboard caps started falling off and Apple told me to replace the entire keyboard, I left them indefinitely.

And now I've been here for a few years. So far, so good.

My OS, shipped with the PC, became slow.