Same as most people. OSs have just evolved to become systems made to serve their creators rather than their “customers”.

Windows wants to steal all your data and then use it to shove ads in your face.

Apple also constantly tries to push their own products and services through the OS, not to mention continually pushing the boundaries of irrepairability and locking you in an ecosystem. And just being extremely expensive.

I heard two talks around 2001 or so. one by Wolfram, after which I swore never to use mathematica again. and one by stallman after which I switched completely to Linux and never went back to windows.

still on Linux 25y later. went from days when getting sound working was a challenge , to today when even obscure tablets work out of the box.

started with red hat. used Gentoo for about 5y. then debian for 10, and now arch.

went from the old “crux” and metacity, to openbox to fvwm to gnome to kde plasma

i remember the old days I was envious of Mac users for transparency and the present windows features, and I ran this utility called Skippy that would screenshot windows and present them… all these features are now built in to the wm now, so no tweaking needed

I got sick of my devices spying on me

1. I’m a lifelong contrarian.
2. I refuse to overpay into the locked-down Apple ecosystem.
3. Windows has become worse with every release.
4. I use Arch btw.

All schools here teach free software. No other choice for now

i switched from ms dos to parabola because im afraid of the nsa getting their hands on my cp files.

I started dabbling in around 2000, getting sick of the instability of Windows, and it seeming like the next logical step of geekdom.

I tried a LOT of distros. Mandrake, Connectiva, Red Hat to Fedora Core, Slackware, Debian Woody, Crux, etc etc. I drifted in a Debian-centric circle until I finally landed on Arch. Lost my way for a bit during my IT career, supporting Windows I ended up just using that. But I’m back to Arch now as my daily, Debian for some networking projects, and a bit of Fedora from time to time when I need to spin something up quick.

1. fun, I like trying out new software
2. I love the philosophy of free software.
3. fuck Microsoft and windows.
4. It’s actually just better

(I switched last year)

Around 1998 in middle school that’s what I thought all the ‘hackers’ were using.

I think we used damn small linux cds to bypass computer stuff when I was in school, then I finally completely switched when steam dropped support for windows 7. I like tinkering, but I am very much of the philosophy that I just want my hobbies to work, so I never thought about linux until windows really started trying to harvest me.

I used them side by side for nearly two decades, don’t really remember what was my first distro or why I needed it, but when I tried Bazzite I finally realized I had absolutely no need for Windows anymore and finally got rid of it.

I was using windows 2000 and suddenly got dozens of popups in internet explorer. I didn’t even use internet explorer, I used Netscape for all of my web browsing. I had dabbled a little with BSD and Linux so I just took the plunge. My local bookstore had a SuSE book with CDs so I bought it and never looked back. I’ve distro hoped a few times but keep going back to Suse.

This will date me, but I first developed a hatred for Windoze when they used their monopoly power and political payoffs to illegally crush Netscape. I switched to Linux in 2003 and never looked back.

My first contact with Linux was via amateur radio. I didn’t want to hook my radio up to my main PC in case I wired something wrong, so I got one of those newfangled Raspberry Pis, circa 2013. Raspbian Wheezy was my first distro.

Not long after, my old laptop died and I needed a new one. Bought a Dell, it came with WIndows 8.1. Holy shit what an unusable pile. I hated that OS a lot. And then the laptop outright died. I was going back to school, I needed a PC to do school work on, and I’ve had flesh wounds I was satisfied with more than Dell’s warranty support. It took them pretty much an entire semester of “We’ll fix it in three weeks or so, when the one guy who does field repairs in your state will look at it”, “it’s fixed” it breaks almost instantly, before I finally demanded they replace the entire machine. Which they did, with a different, lesser, model. I am no longer a customer of Dell.

This left me doing all of my school work on a Raspberry Pi 1B, and then a Pi 2, for about 3 months. So I got a bit of a crash course in managing a Linux system.

Once I finally got a working laptop, Windows 8.1 felt more alien to me than Linux Mint did. It would actually have been more work to learn Windows 8.1 than Mint Cinnamon. So I became a full time Linux user.

Back when I was a freshman in college, I had a regular laptop (Sony Vaio) and at the time netbooks were popular and my girlfriend (now wife) had got me one for Christmas.

Win 7 starter was garbage, XP was fine, but not ideal. I ended up trying out Ubuntu netbook remix since it was supposed to be lighter on resources. At the time I was a pre med student and wanted something for knocking out documents, and reading papers with enough battery to get me until I had to go to work. The iPad wasn’t out yet so that wasn’t an option.

I had a ton of fun getting it working, even the Broadcom chip was a fun challenge. Once it was working, I just really liked the look and feel. I preferred the Unix file structure to windows as well as the terminal experience, using bash vs powershell.

I ended up writing a few programs and apps for myself specifically for that netbook, and it quickly became my primary way of interacting with a computer. I eventually ported my Sony over which had the challenge of writing a couple drivers to get some things working with minimal compatibility.

Following this, I switched from pre med to software engineering and eventually graduated with a degree and I have now been working with software and using Linux ever since. Even now, I am the sole Linux system administrator in the company I work for and manage a handful of servers and deployments.