My one thing I feel like I can brag about in tech circles is that I switched to Linux in 1995 (Linux kernel version 1.2.1), and I haven't looked back since. This was even before Windows 95 was released.
One of the biggest reasons I switched was of all the MS telemetry bullshit. That and I don’t know if I ever legally paid for a copy of Windows and I was tired of playing the key gen / cracked ISO game.
I’ve used Debian flavors of Linux for servers before so switching to it as my full time desktop OS was not hard. That, and, I don’t really use my desktop for stuff that uncommon. Most of the stuff I need I can get out of the box from the software center.
I've been occasionally giving Linux a shot since bubuntu 5.04 and it would never stick. I guess many things aligned at some point in 2017-18 when I just gave up on windows and microsoft in general. I've been sticking to my beloved gnome, fighting it to do things it wasn't built to.
And then came 2019 and sway 1.0 got released. It felt like reddit imploded. Decided to finally give this "tiling nonsense" a try. A week or so later it finally clicked and I've not been fighting my system anymore.
Fast forward a few years and I'm now a Gentoo, OpenRC, OpenRC-init and Hyprland nutter :)
I am also an on/off Linux user since Debian. Windows 10 has been fine for me and I would live here forever in the blissful ignorance of OS apathy but when support for it stops in 2025 and I am force marched into the Windows 11 I may jump ship and run off into the wilds of Linux again.
You're absolutely right. Microsoft has systematically killed every reason I have for having their software on my pc. I'm not switching to linux because linux got better (although it certainly has). I'm ditching windows because windows now sucks more than I can bare.
I use Linux because the Steam Deck convinced me that gaming on Linux is a thing. Before that i was hesitant to make the jump, even though I've used UNIX before Windows 3 even came out
It makes me happy to read this same basic message repeatedly. I've been a Linux enthusiast since the late 90s, but back then it definitely felt like it was never going to be a mainstream replacement for Windows due in large part to gaming.
I know Valve isn't getting nothing out of their investment, but all the same I'm so appreciative that they didn't abandon their Linux efforts after Steam Machines didn't catch on.
This is why I didn't switch until this year. Valve really did a great thing by driving this adoption and I feel like with Proton in the state it's in, there's really not much you're giving up by going to Linux these days.
The list of actual pain points is ever shrinking now. I can't imagine switching back in 95. You had to put up with so much inequity for a lot of that time.
Great to see the hipsters who switched before it was cool still need help fixing their permissions. Gives hope to the folks, like me, who just want to learn about computers but came to Linux after it was mainstream. Like an idiot.
