Enshittification. I never had any technical reasons for leaving Windows. It has its share of annoyances but so does every other OS. What really got to me was the constant pushing of their own products over others. And I don’t even want to think about switching to 11. Without the enshittification I would still be using Windows, just because of inertia.

It’s not like I hate other operating systems, I just really like the idea of FOSS and try to use it whenever possible.

Windows kept shoving their stupid Edge browser down my throat. Tried every way to remove it and it kept popping back up like malware. Kept annoying me with “upgrade to Windows 11 popups.” I’ve used windows 11 on other people’s laptops and was flabbergasted that there were ads on paid software. In addition to that I heard 10 will stop getting security updates next year so I bit the bullet and switched to mint full time. It’s worked well for me so far.

I didn’t want to have spyware for an os.

Windows 98 really sucked and running Unix at home became an option.

i was a starving college student with $20 to my name and a dead windows me desktop computer that had an entire semester’s worth of school work trapped inside of it.

i had read about linux before and saw that i could buy a couple of mandrake cd’s from a magazine at circuit city for $5 or borrow $169 from someone to buy a windows xp installation disk.

i bought the magazine; installed linux; and taught myself (with google’s help) how to copy all of my school work onto a usb drive. i finished those papers using the school’s computer laboratories; and then kept on using the linux installation from then on in 2002 until now.

Been 100% Linux on all my personal devices for about 4 years.

I just got tired of being treated like I was either an idiot or a criminal by Microsoft. Plus the way they kept forcing their bloatware and trash ads on the OS that I already paid for!

I decided I didn’t care what I had to give up, it was worth it to be rid of Microsoft’s clutches forever. Switched to Linux and I’ve never looked back.

Turns out, I actually didn’t have to sacrifice much at all, and the few things I don’t have anymore are nothing compared to the benefits of using Linux and FOSS software.

Everything works better for me too, more stable, updates are rarer and wayyyyy faster when I push them. No more fighting with AMD driver hell in Windows, no more weird lockups or crashes, a million times more customization options, and zero bloat or spyware installed by default on my system.

Solid gaming support

The final straw for me was Microsoft reinstalling software I had removed with updates, as well as installing crapware like Candy Crush, all in the background and without permission or notifying me. I left Windows back in August 2021 for Arch.

Until recently I had kept a Windows VM with a GPU passthrough set up until I decided I was done with Destiny 2. Now the only remnant of Windows in my life is a simple desktop in my living room that has a game I can only play on Windows, which is currently being ported to PS5. Once that port is released, it’ll be converted to a server running some atomic distro and become a fully dedicated server, and Windows will be fully removed from my life, ignoring PCs outside of my control like embedded systems.

I got a new PC. I installed Windows on it. I felt dirty, so I said fuck it, and installed Linux instead.

It wasn’t any one specific thing, but a lifetime of windows frustrations adding up, on top of a growing frustration with enshittified tools and services in general

That was 4 months ago.

At first I was tipping my toes in Ubuntu but kept coming back to Windows as I kept running into stability issues. Googling my issues very frequently kept sending me to the Arch wiki, and I thought “well if they have so much covered, why not use this distro instead”. That and 196 subreddit (rule) made me try Arch, and my experience was noticeably better. Barely any crashes and improving Proton compatibility made me use it more and more. I kept a windows install for VR and anti-cheat enabled games until late 2023.

During my transition period (both in Linux and gender lol) between 2021 and now, I kept getting comments “why are you making your life harder with Linux, just use Windows where everything works”. Well, nowadays tables have turned and now I get to say “weird it works for me on Linux”. Except VR, it’s still a mixed experience.

Two things coming together finalized my choice to leave Windows:

• the ability to play almost every game on Linux thanks to Valve
• the fact that you couldn’t create a local account during a Windows install (back when I discovered this you still technically could with some workarounds; I don’t know if you still can but you shouldn’t have to put in any effort IMHO)

it rebooted itself while i left it overnight doing an important render.

thats after i fucked with it for hours to turn automatic updates OFF.

i would probably still be on windows 10 if it werent for microsoft going out of their way to make it shitty.

Two things:

1. I have an old refurbished Thinkpad that I originally bought as a backup navigation computer for a month-long sailboat voyage. It had Windows originally and was “fine”, by which I mean slow but acceptable for navigation purposes. When I was forced to update to Windows 10, the performance was no longer tolerable, so I hardly used it for about four years. I also had a Windows gaming PC, so no big deal.
2. About a year ago, I got a shiny new Windows gaming PC. I was trying to decide what to do with my old gaming PC, which had the same problem as my laptop: it could barely crawl under the weight of years of Windows OS “upgrades”. I got it into my head that I should build a media PC with it since Netflix kind of sucks now. That lead me down the self-hosting and Linux rabbit hole.

Before I knew it, I had my old gaming PC running Proxmox and attached to my main television, I bought an old Dell Poweredge server (also running Proxmox), an old Compellant storage shelf with 20 SAS drives, a Tripp-Lite UPS, and a 24-port network switch. I also discovered Docker. So, now I fucking love Linux and I’m a fiend for self-hosting and media streaming. And how do I centrally control all of this infrastructure? That’s right, my old Thinkpad got a new lease on life running Arch and I can run all of my server infrastructure using the terminal, emacs, and web interfaces. Fuck yeah.

And what happened to my beautiful, expensive new Alienware Windows gaming PC? After playing a couple hundred hours of Cyberpunk, it just sits there. Now I’m addicted to Dwarf Fortress on my old Arch Thinkpad and I don’t think about high-spec AAA games much.

I had no idea this would happen when I started this Linux journey. Life is strange.

Wobbly windows, rotating cube workspace switcher, and a flaming bonanza animation when a windows was closed.

The year was ~2003