I decided to switch when windows xp went end-of-life, because my pc was a mid-2000’s era relic that would surely catch fire if it was forced to handle the windows 7/10 bloat. Naturally, I installed Mint on bare metal without doing any research beforehand. Not the best idea, but sometimes it’s fun to jump headfirst into a completely foreign landscape. That said, Cinnamon (the desktop environment of Mint) shares much of its design language with windows, so it’s not really that foreign, as far as the graphical interface is concerned.
What surprised me was just how different the underlying system was, how much more transparent and accessible it was, and how incredibly efficient and versatile the command line could be. Then there’s the broader OSS community, which I think is a fantastic thing to participate in even if you don’t use Linux, but using Linux is certainly a gateway.
I’m not saying Linux is perfect, and it’s probably not for everyone, but it is nice to not be held captive by some monopolistic corporation, who continuously engages in ethically questionable anti-consumer behaviour, in the name of increasingly monetizing their user base. Linux gives power back to the end users, and that’s what makes it worthwhile and important.
Long time ago my dad bought a few netbooks and they came with Xandros pre-installed. It wasn’t much of a choice to be honest (all my friends, school, every other PC was running Windows). And I never give it a chance because there was a desktop with Windows so I used that instead.
Times goes buy and the Xandros version was not going to keep up with my needs and I’ve switched to Ubuntu Remix (very cool at the time) and then I’ve got to experience Ubuntu 09.10 with Gnome. And that was a game changer for me (I learned a lot on how Linux works under the.hood) but I kept Windows machine just for gaming (until last year).
My AMD graphics card had atrocious driver support in Windows, and every time windows forced the half-yearly big update on me, my PC would go into a BSOD loop and I would not be able to run windows. It was becoming a massive annoyance and a humongous time waster.
So I switched to Linux Mint. No hardware problems at all. With the graphics card working, I played a video game that literally worked better in Linux than Windows.
Then I bought a new laptop and dual booted different distributions. But every time I log into Windows after doing something in Linux (Fedora KDE spin), my windows clock would get messed up. There are professional softwares I have to use that only work on Windows, so completely switching to linux was not an option, and windows boots up Much faster than linux.
So when I needed some space for an online multiplayer game, I got rid of the dual boot. Now I run everything using WSL2.
Windows remains the default platform for small developer teams, and large video games. So it takes a large incovenience to abandon it. And just a little bit of friction is enough to make me switch back to windows. Sorry if I disappointed you guys.
The misconception of Debian as an “outdated” distro is… alarming. IDK but I am running Debian 12 (coming from latest Fedora) and I don’t feel any sign of early deprecation or that an already “old distro”. It’s smooth, stable and usable, like things should be if you use your computer to do other stuff and you rely on your installed software to be there for you when you need it.
People tends to freak out if the latest packages aren’t installed. Stop it, please, security patches are more important than having the latest Gnome/KDE version. Perhaps if we stop selling that idea in Youtube videos, newcomers to this space will not be rushing to install the latest things without knowing if they are worth and really good distros like Debian, which is NOT a corporate backed Linux Distribution, will get more traction.
(PS: in Fedora, you are a guinea pig for future RHEL updates and ultimately, more profits for IBM)
Not to mention RH is ultimatly in charge of Fedora, so it isn’t a community distro. Look at the codec issue that came up this year the lawyers at RH told them to remove it so they did. If it was a community distro why would the lawyers care?
I’ve used debian stable for a decade now. The things I care about are not dependent on new features, so I’m not in a hurry to upgrade to newer versions. I’m happy with security updates and a system that is reliable above all.
Package managers are a godsend and there’s nothing like them on Windows. Chocolatey is okay, but it’s got nothing on Linux pms. This discontinuity between installing and upgrading some applications, other applications, Windows apps, drivers, and system software makes me want to cry.
Customization. Man is Windows lame here. Colors on Windows is about all you can do, and it’s so limited. I bought the machine I should be able to set it up how I like. There are some deeper ways to theme and adjust things more directly, but they’re hard to use and risk breaking your system. On Linux, customization is easy, even on a more pro-default-option DE like GNOME. I just want things to work, and Windows fights me to get it to a usable state.
Bloat, telemetry, ads, proprietary garbage, etc, etc, etc. I like FOSS and using FOSS software, and I can use it on Windows, but I have to have so much other stuff too. Debloat scripts exist, but they can only do so much. There’s always gonna be something Microsoft owns on the system
Complexity and control. Linux is simple. Binaries go in bin, and the settings for them are usually in ~/.config or somewhere in /etc. Want to adjust some obscure setting to fix some issue in a program you installed? Oh go tweak this clear config and explicit setting to fit your hardware or whatever. Easy to fix. On Windows, all the system stuff is not only hidden, it’s restricted, and also so many times on Windows when you run into issues the solution is you have to edit shudder the registry, or worse you have to do a PC reset. Overtime your system slows and blue screens become more frequent too, and there’s nothing you can do. On Linux, you can learn 7 or so folders and understand how your entire system works, keep it maintained, and run it for years. Had a prof in college who was on like a 20yo Gentoo install.
Tiling. There are ways to do tiling on Windows, but they’re all bad and glitchy. Nothing on Windows comes close to i3, and I can’t go back to a non-tiling workflow. Windows wants you to do things the Windows way, and anything outside of that is always lack luster. People talk about Linux balkanization as a problem. It’s not. Those people are just ignorant and stupid. No system can ever really fit all use cases, so it’s important to support choice. Windows doesn’t just promote one way to do things a la GNOME, it actively works against doing things other ways.
Programming. Compilers and dev tools on Linux are so much easier to install and set up than on Windows. If you want to program, you’ve gotta be on Unix/Unix-like
Windows weirdness. There’s so many things on Windows that are just weird decisions. I’ll be using Windows and be like “why the heck did they do it this way?” I’m constantly left scratching my head. Windows has made me lose all respect for Microsoft engineers. They’re clearly stupid. On the other hand, everything on Linux makes sense and has good reasoning behind it. You need to learn very little comparatively to understand your entire system.
Stability. Not talking about applications/upgrades here, but rather Linux will never crash on you, but I can’t go a week without Windows blue screening.
Freedom. I like owning my computer. With Windows, Microsoft owns your PC. Does this directly effect everything constantly? Is it the end all reason for me to switch? No, but it’s icing on the cake. On Windows I feel stuck and miserable. On Linux I feel free and happy.
So I still technically use Windows, but only because I need it because of some software for school, but I still use Linux most of the time. It’s mainly the small yet super annoying things in Windows that caused me to switch. Like how everything has to automatically try and back up to OneDrive until you dig into the settings and disable it, or how it constantly badgers you to use insert Microsoft product here instead of what you want to use. Plus as a computer science student, and someone who spends a lot of time in the terminal, Powershell and the Windows command line feel so old and incapable compared to the Linux terminal (WSL has helped with some of that, but not all of it.) It’s just small issues that cause big issues when you run into them, because it just makes simple things harder to do than they need to be, usually for the sake of pushing their products.
It came down to right-to-repair/upgrade. I’ve been a mac user my whole life. The 2012 MacBook pro was the last model that users could upgrade themselves. I got a decade plus out of those machines because I could upgrade them. They actually still run quite well, but Mac no longer includes those models in their software updates and no longer allows users to easily upgrade any of their laptops manufactured since. That was it for me. Got a System76 laptop and made the move. Couldn’t be happier.
I have to use Windows for work, and I choose to use Linux for all of my personal devices. Windows is trying very hard to corral me into using bing, edge, cortana, etc. and gets in my way when I try to use the tools I prefer instead. It intentionally obscures what its doing with updates and security. That is unacceptable. This is my computer, not theirs.
No Linux distro that I’ve tried does any of that shit. They have never tried to push my behavior in one direction or another, they aren’t watching everything I do to help their product teams develop an even more annoying desktop. The various Linux distros I’ve used have felt like nothing but a way to let me use my damn computer.
I do have a small partition with Windows on it to play the occasional game I can’t run on Linux with Proton. Thanks, Valve!
Is faster. I don’t care about the extra bells and whistles, and I want a straightforward functioning system that allows me to do what I need to do. I also like that I can customize my desktop experience to my heart’s desires. I can literally change the way my system looks if I get bored of it. Most importantly, the lack of tracking/telemetry and being a smaller target on the web.
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