Vendors don’t always update hardware drivers for other versions of those proprietary operating systems. Linux doesn’t depend on vendors directly for updated drivers. Now I can use my old hardware without being stuck on an old OS version.

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No joke! A friend told me it was “the year of the Linux desktop”, because of all the recent breakthroughs in drivers and usability.

I love how this story doesn’t even remotely let you guess what year it was.

Windows

High school computer class. I was like: “Hey! This is pretty cool.” And the rest is history.

Servers run on linux and also don’t have licensing bullshit attached. And when my desktop windows installation shit the bed, linux got installed instead.

The stereotypical story actually happened to me.

My parents had the habit of disabling the wifi if I didn’t want to do chores.

So I looked up how to hack the neighbors’ wifi. People online told me it wasn’t possible, unless I installed “Kali Linux”. I tried it and failed. I looked up why and people told me I should start with a beginner distro, lik Ubuntu. So I installed that.

There was a ton of software sourcecode posted to the comp.sources.unix usenet group that I wanted to check out. The problem is all that software was in shar format, and there was no way to extract those files on msdos. I found Yggdrasil Linux on CD at a local software store and decided to check it out. Been using Linux in one form or another ever since.

I’ve used Windows since 3.1. I was installing Windows 10 on a laptop a few years ago. The changes they’d made to core functions were so frustrating, I felt like I didn’t know how to use Windows anymore.

I figured I might as well try a new OS. It’s not like I loved Windows.

I did a dual boot with Windows and Ubuntu. I never logged into Windows again.

I’m not obsessed or an evangel. I don’t code. I don’t mess around with the OS. I browse the internet and do some piracy. That’s it.

I think it’s great that Linux is mature enough that a dumb user like me can easily switch over from Windows.

Windows Vista on a laptop with 2gb ram :)

Great suggestion by a fellow IT student to try arch, so I learn the system from the ground up.

@mac
Windows was too slow on my older laptops. Installing Linux (Ubuntu) on it gave it new life.

My first Linux installation was based on curiosity, which was short lived, because Linux (Mandrake) at the time was too challenging.

I moved permanently onto Linux after I could no longer use my SCSI card on Windows 7. I find Linux a joy to use even though I don’t do any programming, and rely on ChatGPT to create scripts.

Security, Software Updates

The constant OneDrive ads. I could ignore the fact that W11 is essentially spyware, but it kept fucking annoying me with ads and I had enough of it. After programming in Linux, I don’t want to go back to W11. Troubleshooting is so much easier bc the CLI is heavily used. Package managers make my life easier too. Linux is good 👍

I dont know if this is still the case, but Windows used be very bad with downloads through Steam. They would often drop to zero throughput. Also Alt-tabbing in an out games without the system crashing also seemed to work better on linux. So for me gaming was actually better on linux.

I don’t think I’ve turned into an evangel yet. However when I’ve passed on a computer I’d just put a fresh install of fedora on it.