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.
A complete and total lack of bullshit.
If something is wrong, there's a concrete reason, no matter how deep the cause and you can always dig far down enough to catch and deal with it.
this had been an unexpected benefit to me when I first jumped ship from Windows. Linux may be daunting to troubleshoot as a newbie, but as you learn to navigate the system's ins and outs, it really becomes apparent how user friendlier the deeper than surface level troubleshooting is compared to Windows. you still have to build that knowledge though, no way around it.
Originally because fuck windows 10
Since then it's the sheer joy of it all. It's just fucking cool that a bunch of people just get together and make something that benefits everyone, with dozens of forks that allow for freedom of choice.
powershell sucks. RegEdit sucks. Start menu sucks. Can't use Niri. Slow. Can't use it while updating. Inverted backslashes for paths are horrible. The only useful feature is WSL, and if you get rid of all other bullshits, you get Linux.
I want to use open-source software, developed from people for people. I don't want corporates to exploit my data and take away my freedom.
Windows decided my perfectly functional PC couldn’t run 11, and Linux Mint has no issues running. I’m not getting rid of a perfectly good computer just because Microsoft wants me to. My husband has to use Windows for work and it seems like a huge pain in the ass. I’m not into fiddling with computers, and Linux is at the point now where it feels no more complicated than Windows (and often significantly less complicated).
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.
I got a new PC and was really upset at the idea of putting windows on it. The ad lack of ownership of my own hardware, I couldn't do it, and so I installed Linux (again), but this time, it stuck.
My values
Ah, well, it is less shit than alternatives
Windows: too much ads, AI, telemetry, and just nonsense bullshit in general. MS is a malicious company and this is malicious software.
MacOS: too much Apple bloatware. It mostly stays out of the way but the fact that I can't uninstall it makes me very angry. Also the vast majority of software requires a connected Apple account. The bigger problem is the overpriced and intentionally irreparable, unupgradable and disposable hardware which is inseperable from the software.
Linux: mostly just stays out of my way, requires no account for anything. You know, the way operating systems used to work.
Because I have self-respect.
I subscribe to the philosophy that information should be free, and that computing should be a collaborative effort, driven by community. The world is better when we all work together to improve it.
These days, I’m less gung-ho about the technical merits of free software; I just prefer using systems that feel like they’re trying to work for me rather than exploit me.
Cus fuck microsoft/windows, thats why.
I really like the control and malleability
Independent to the above, using windows feels really, really bad these days.
Privacy performance and fun
It does more of what I want, with less time and work to maintain, more reliable and lower cost than the commercial alternatives.
I find that reinstalling and setting up Linux again is a lot quicker than Windows. I put Windows 10 on a spare drive fairly recently, and the amount of restarts it needs to get all the updates is flippin' nuts. Windows nearly crashes for the first few hours, until I get all the updates installed and drivers set up. Too much background crap. In linux I can be ready in about 20 minutes.
I also have a plethora of technical reasons, but I'm sure others will cover them. Just this ideological and philosophical reason is enough for me to be using Linux.
I started using it 'cause I was working with a lot of Linux nerds and they convinced me to try it out. I liked the politics of the GPL and the potential in the Free ecosystem.
25 years later I refuse to use anything else. Windows & Mac are built to take options away from you, to force you do use your hardware their way, and I hate it. My machine does exactly what I want it to, with hundreds of keyboard shortcuts and a solid UI built atop transparent subsystems. Windows ties my hands while pushing ads and AI into my eyeballs. Mac only "Just Works" if you're using it precisely the way that want you to and exclusively with other iShit. No thanks.
Because Windows 10 installed candy crush without my input and interrupted me to tell me how edgy it was.
Same reason as with Google Android. These genocide supporting companies take the liberty to collect and sell my data, manage my hardware and frequently break core functionality with updates to push their slop on me, while adding ads to EVERYTHING. Most updates are not even about security. There is like a 100 reasons, really. I could sum it up as "annoying".
I got tired of Microsoft. I had seen that Linux was now good enough for what I wanted to so, so I decided to jump ship.
It wasn't a quick decision. I only transitioned from Windows because I finally got around upgrading the PC.
So far? I mean, there was the kerfuffle with the AUR recently. And I still haven't figured out a few issues here and there. But damn it just works and there is no worrying about updating or not updating or anything like it.
I switched to Linux full time because I didn't like Windows Xp. Windows has only gotten worse since then and Linux has only gotten better.
Freedom.
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.
i like having a usable desktop and a nonblinking disk access led within 30 seconds, including bios and bootloader.
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.
It's better.
Im a hater and spite is a powerful motivator
Freedom. Having my computer not actively work against me.
I just like a working, customizable PC that I'm in control of. KDE Plasma Desktop is everything Windows should have been, and it's actually for me to control, it's free, and it doesn't push BS on me. Fedora btw
I fucking hate windows 11
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.
I am using Linux since the 90's, so my reasons might be different from "to leave Windows".
I started coding at an early age, so for me, having access to all my tools free-of-charge was a big plus. Add to that the possibility of read the source code of everything, the learning potential was mind blowing.
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.
Linux works better then Windows 11. If you don't need Windows for specific software needs, I recommend Linux. If you do need Windows, buy a license off of ebay for cheap.
All games work unless they block you with anti cheat, which are usually the big AAA games like cod/battlefield.
Coding is better on linux.
microslop started being cringe. tried linux on a whim. never looked back.
When the internet was new, hip and cool in 1997 it was the best way for a poor student to really get knees deep into networking and hosting. I just haven't seen much reason to try anything else.
I did use OS X for work when doing iOS development a few years.
And in a perfect world I'd rather run a UNIX certified operating system. Linux support is just so good at the moment that I can't really be bothered.
The Windows key that I had been using for years stopped working. It was an old Win 8 key that I had updated to 10 then 11. Had to refresh the OS due to a random corruption and my Windows key wouldn’t verify. When I contacted Microsoft support they told me that since I don’t use a Microsoft account my registration wasn’t backed up. They don’t accept upgrades from Windows 8 anymore, so I would have to buy a new key. Instead I found a new OS.
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.
I started running foss apps and loving how small and efficient they were in comparison to what I was used to. At one poit I realized that everything I was using could be used on linux, so I migrated and never went back!
For me, I got fed up with Windows 11 updates resetting my settings and even reinstalling copilot. I felt like I had no control over my computer, so I put Linux on it to get some control back.
I care what my computer does the same way I care about what my brain does. Since my computer is just an extension of my brain it needs to be transparent and ownable.
Windows 11 was stress. I was spending far too much time keeping it the way I want it - stable, no cloud, no AI. A four hour call with MS tech support (that went in the most idiotic circles) kinda sealed the fate of my new desktop build (old one had a failing MB, no choice but to finally upgrade hardware) and switched both it and another desktop the next day.
Much less stressed now, even when things go weird and wonky.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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