Me, coder, student, cant afford mid range PCs, interested in learning computers, gamer, not professional. What about you guys?
It was the night of December 24th, 1996. I turned on the family PC, then running Win95, and found my D:\ drive corrupted. Windows had no tools nor docs how to resurrect a corrupted filesystem. I cried, and two days later installed SuSE on a spare disk.
Some 20 years later, I restored about half of the disk lost in 1996, because Linux had the tools, and the docs, and encouraged me to learn.
What’s the option? Windows? Keeps getting shittier all the time. Now with AI Slop and bugs. No thanks. Mac? Their walled garden, making it so you can’t upgrade your existing computer? No thanks. My last mac was a 2015 that let you upgrade things but it was a pain. They’ve since removed that so they lost me as a customer.
With Linux, I have a Framework laptop that let’s me upgrade everything. It’s easy to take apart, there are hardware switches for the mic and webcam… it’s very user friendly. Linux doesn’t have any telemetry. The only AI that gets installed is if I install it myself, it’s not intrusive. I’ve been using Linux for a long, long time but the Desktop experience has been lacking in the past. It’s gotten way better recently and the last thing I would boot into windows for was Fusion 360. I spent some time learning FreeCAD and since 1.0 it is way better and now I don’t need to boot into Windows anymore. Steam has made leaps and bounds with proton and now I can even game on Linux which is pretty huge. Is Linux perfect? No, but it does everything I need it to.
I can continue using the hardware I already own, and it still runs well. And now I have a reason to learn how to make it work even better, so that’s fun
Because Windows 10 installed candy crush without my input and interrupted me to tell me how edgy it was.
I am old, I have used windows for around 20 years. I am also a geek. I tried Mac OS a long time ago - not geeky enough and the hardware was too expensive for me back then.
Tried Linux several times. It was fun, but I had too many issues, up until now.
In my opinion if you plot user friendliness over time for Linux and windows, the Linux is going up on the friendliness axis, slowly but steadily. Windows on the other hand… Goes somewhere. Every good idea MS devs have is countered by 3 terrible (for users) from the marketing department.
I want to be the owner of my own PC. I want to control everything, windows was good enough a few years ago, but it is not anymore, the cloud integration plus AI bulshit, plus bloatware.
No, thanks.
Steam Deck made gaming on Linux possible and that was the only thing holding me to Windows. I had been using Windows since Windows 95.
Microsoft simply stopped making an OS and started making a subscription and content delivery platform. When they did that, they lost me as a customer.
One reason. Anti -Windows 11.
It’s open source and not owned by an evil corporation. It doesn’t have ads. It doesn’t mine my data and sell it to the highest bidder. It doesn’t have AI shoved in every nook and cranny. It’s much lighter to run. I can easily run it on a 10 year old laptop.
I think I can handle the ads part, but the ‘lighter’ part, thats a good one.
Ads are bloat aswell.
It’s not light if it has ads.
Decades worth of windoofs hate. Finally did the full switch a few months ago. I have been using windoofs for gaming only anyway and professionally I already had plenty of Linux experience.
Linux isn’t great either though and can be a real pain in the ass. Recently had to fix few lines of code in the kernel, because I had no audio. But the fact that one can do it in principle is already a huge win over windoofs. And although some games stubbornly won’t run (stable), a lot do without having to tinker much, thanks to Wine, Proton, and a couple of startup parameters.
Professionally I mainly use Ubuntu, for gaming I did so at first as well but switched to CachyOS recently.
I’m glad you said this. I think it’s important to be honest about the Linux experience. It is not perfect. My Boomer parents could not use it. It often is plug and play, and often you don’t have to do anything with Terminal. But, there are times when it’s not plug and play and there are many times when you have to use Terminal to make something happen.
For example, Lubuntu updater keeps telling me there’s a new version of Lubuntu, but does nothing when I click upgrade. OK. I think it’s because there is a beta upgrade available that the updater sees but won’t upgrade to.
I’ve been using Linux since about 2003, off and on. It’s much better than it was. For me, it’s better than windows. For my 70-year-old mother, she should stick with the windows environment.
I have no issue with using the terminal myself, but you’re expecting other people to use something that’s foreign and unneeded when it’s not even safe to do so. Copying scripts from the internet is dangerous, and even a minor typo when you know what you’re doing can bring your system down. -Which happens even to senior system admins at times.
Some people don’t want to run Linux for the same reason they don’t want a job where a slightly off measurement in a chemical factory can destroy a town.
Huh? I don’t expect people to do that at all. Are you saying “you” like the royal/editorial you?,
I agree with you. Just like I said above, stupid old people and lazy people can’t be expected to use Linux because sometimes it requires using terminal.
I started because I heard it’s good for programming which turned out to be true. Initially stayed because it was customizable but had windows for games. Now just Linux because it’s better for everything I do. I think now people switching to Linux mostly do it because Linux is just better except for niche programs.
20+ years ago I grew tired of having to constantly buy upgrades or find cracks for Windows and a friend suggested i check out thi s new OS that was coming out called Ubuntu. I believe it was around 2004 when I installed the first distro and I have never looked back. I find it amusing that all my friends and family think im some super hacker because I use linux lol.
Fed up of all my apps appearing with copilot in them. Fed up of apps like notepad becoming fucking laggy. Its bloody notepad for Christ sake.
I don’t care about AI. I don’t want it. Every time I uninstalled it all, it just appeared again a week later.
Then I found cachyos and realised I could play all the games I play. Never looked back.
I enjoy not feeling spied on. Not feeling my data is being sold on.
Windows showed me one too many ads in the start menu.
Also, I found a distro I like and can stick with forever.
IT worker, close to 50 years old, only ever could afford low-mid range tech, gamer. Been using windows for over 30 years and linux for 8. Linux works better than windows and it allowed me to improve my tech skills beyond a desktop machine.
It’s better.