The windows machine was keeping secrets and refusing to do what I tell it

I want to run some code, let’s have a discussion about admin privileges and finding the correct shell app and oh shit “something went wrong”

Linux just doesn’t say no, if I do something wrong it tells me exactly why it was wrong. So I guess visibility is why I jumped

…because I didn’t want to be a victim of the tech industry anymore.

I kept disabling features and they kept getting re-enabled by updates.

I installed WSL to run gcc and it bricked my graphics drivers, requiring a full reinstall.

Requiring a microsoft account to access my own computer.

App recommendations (ads) in the start menu.

Maybe there were workarounds for this but I shouldnt have to trouble shoot that kind of stuff for a product that values itself at such a price. I just couldnt feel like an owner of things I have purchased.

A long time ago, there was this misconception that “linux” was terminal-only. You know, like the interface sysadmins and Hollywood hackers use.

A small long-defunct non-tech forum I used to be a member of had a tech sub-forum, and in that sub-forum there was a new post one day introducing “linux” and covering some basics. It was full of DE screenshots (GNOME 2 and KDE 3) specifically to dispel the “terminal-only” misconception.

That was almost ~20 years ago. And the rest is history. I never liked Windows or M$ anyway for both technical and non-technical reasons. So it wasn’t that hard to convince me.

I almost exclusively use the terminal for everything except web browsing now, and don’t use a DE. So you could say that I myself ironically became a perpetuator of the misconception 😉

A little over a decade back, I had a laptop that came with Windows 8 but didn’t actually meet the specs for it. I installed Ubuntu back then to get the thing to run reliably, and it performed really well that way.

On my home computers I kept using Windows, but with the trend toward less ability to control your system, more ads and AI nonsense being baked in, and just general bloat, when they announced the end of life for Win 10, I decided I’d switch to dual booting Linux Mint at the start of the summer. (I’m a teacher, and it seemed like the best time was when I could deal with my computer being on the fritz for a while if I messed it up.)

I set it up as dual boot because I figured here and there I’d still need to go back to Windows for some specific reason or other but that was back in early July and I’ve yet to encounter a reason why I really need Windows, so I genuinely haven’t booted to Windows even once since the time I originally setup the dual boot and made sure it was working.

Honestly, so much of what we do these days takes place in browser windows that it barely feels different, other than it runs a little smoother and I occasionally have to run an old windows app through Lutris. (Had it installed anyway for games from GOG, and it turns out it works just as well for non-gaming apps.)

I had dabbled with Linux over the years, starting with Lubuntu reviving an old Dell 120L during college. When I moved to university they gave us all Macbooks to work with in the IT department. OS X never clicked with me, so I set up a VM with Linux to perform my day to day work. I instantly became the Linux guy because of that… so any tickets that came in for Linux troubleshooting got routed to me.

It just sort of made sense to try a Linux build after that, since I couldn’t afford a Windows license after I lost access to MSDN.

I upgraded from 7 to 10 right around when it released. Microsoft got me with the “Free upgrade offer”.
Problem is, I had a very shitty ADSL connection, so when Windows Update started doing its thing, it would make it almost impossible to do anything else on the web.
There were many times I would turn the computer on to do something, only to be unable to load any webpage because Windows Update was eating all my bandwidth.
And to make things worse, Pausing updates, Active Hours and other controls only came out much later, early Win 10 had none of it. When it wanted to update you had basically no control over it. There were some registry hacks to disable updates, but those didn’t really stick for some reason, so many times I applied one and thought the issue was fixed for good only to come back to my PC days later and face the same issue again.

Eventually I was like “Why the hell do I have to keep fighting my computer?”. You can imagine the shock it was coming from Win 7.
I had tried Linux before all of this (Ubuntu 14.04) and while I did enjoy the experience I didn’t stick with it, but I kept the idea in the back of my mind.
Some time later I setup a dual-boot, and year after year I relied less on Windows (and Linux kept getting better) until Linux became my daily driver. Fast forward to today: Windows isn’t even a dual-boot install anymore, just a VM I barely use :)

I first discovered Linux in middle/highschool back when Ubuntu was the hot shit and they had that awesome Gnome 2 desktop. I loved the vibes, but didn’t stick with it because I didn’t know what to do. Then just over the years I’d occasionally install it for a few days and give it a shot, learning more and more, even installing Arch Linux once (back when it was actually a challenge).

Switching to Linux was inevitable for me, I think. As the years rolled on, Windows got worse and worse while my understanding/confidence with Linux got better and better. I don’t remember what the final thing was that convinced me to finally go 100% Linux on all my devices, but I did around ~2017 or 2018 with zero regrets.

So I think that if there’s a path for people to learn Linux at a comfortable pace, without the trauma of going all in, they’ll also find it impossible to resist. The dynamic of Windows becoming worse while Linux becomes better is still holding strong.

I used it for a few things in uni, then a few more, then a few more, and eventually realised that my workflow had become

• Boot windows
• Turn on VM
• Use Linux the whole time
• Shut down

So I decided to cut out the middle-man

Microsoft said they were going to start tracking everything I do, to, you know, help me or something.

Fuck that.

Mostly because I don’t like gaming on windows and I want things to work without having to tweak every single security feature and all the junk I turned off every single time there’s an update. I’m also tired of MS breaking things with updates and generally using the public as free beta testers to the detriment of their products.

Also, fuck 365.

I grew up with my brother throwing used computer parts on my bed whenever he upgraded something, in case I wanted to reuse them. He also gave me a copy of Windows 98, and later XP that I reused every time I did a major hw upgrade. But one day the XP CD-rom was just too old, but I was too young to start working and had no money, and so Linux came into my life.

Microsoft doesn’t want me to use Windows. Win10 is almost expired, and my laptop doesn’t support Win11.

Learning web development and did not like Apple devices. Didn’t take too long to also start gaming on Linux and abandon Windows completely.

I hated windows 95/98, it broke all the time. The dudes in the doom community in IRC were like hey Linux is cool, try that. Never looked back. From what I hear from my friends and family, windows still sucks all the time.