what caused you to get into Linux?

I was on windows and I was forced to update and then it bricked my computer and I had to reinstall windows except when I did it asked me for a windows license key. I tried everything to recover my license key but wasn't able to.

This was around the time linus texh tips was teasing his upcoming month on linux series so I was like fuck it I'll give it a go. Spent a week on mint and wifi was broken then tried Endeavor, Garuda and fedora and settled on manjaro. Manjaro was amazing to me. Everything worked out of the box and kde plasma looked so clean and I could set it up exactly how I wanted.

Then I watched linus tech tips video on linux and I was like wtf how did he have such a bad experience is he dumb?

I was fucking around with my windows pc.

And then i found out that you can fuck more around in linux, and that was the story of my first ubuntu iso burned on a cd.

I had no clue about anything but was blown away by something "different"

Windows kept doing things I didn't want it to.

The last straw was when I had a 24 hours render running, and Windows decided to update and reboot 1 hour before it was done. I was using the computer at the time, RAM, CPU, and GPU were all at max, the mouse was being moved, I clicked "later" every time the update pop-up appeared, and it still rebooted.

Linux does what I tell it to, and doesn't do what I tell it not to do. I didn't think that was a big ask until Windows.

I joined the Fediverse and it seemed like everyone was using it!

I’m unable to fully convert at the moment, but boot it up every so often to experiment.

I use Linux for about 2 years

Up until February this year, I was still using a 14 year old DDR2 desktop. Windows 10 started to get quite slow and had some annoying crashes (mainly the fault of my goofy old hardware, of course)

I learned about Linux as an alternative through a Linux Tech Tips video about gaming on Linux, and Valve's announcement of the Steam Deck, I was also interested in FOSS apps as alternative to proprietary ones.

Decided to try Linux Mint. With no prior experience with Linux, lack of luck finding good tutorials, and some weird thing happening with my games not launching, I had a very rough start.

But thanks to Mint, suddenly my DDR2 desktop got a lot smoother :D also, all of my drivers worked out of the box, and I got very surprised with Linux's plug-and-play hardware capabilities.

So I decided to learn how to use it, tinkered alot with my system, and broken it alot! It was kind of frustrating, but fun at same time.

And without noticing, I had already learned lots about Linux from a more technical, and then, philosophical point of view.

Now I'm a great fan of Linux and FOSS, and have been helping friends to move to it by giving support with issues I had in the past.

Windows Telemetry at first. Then Windows browbeating various products - "Edge please download Firefox" - Edge: "Why, I am better than Firefox" Me:"Do as I say" Edge: "But -blah blah nah" and so on. I know there are ways around it, but if someone can force an update against my will on my machine, it is not my machine. This leads to questions of what else can they do without my permission. Linux is my machine. I control when and how and what. Also customization.

Windows 10/11 happened.

Microsoft anti-consumer shitfuckery. I've never had any problems with Windows on a technical level. It has its share of annoyances, but so does Linux. But the ever increasing drive to take away control from the user in order to squeeze out the last penny of revenue just got too much.

Windows 95 crashing for the 5th time that day corrupting another high school paper.

I knew nothing about Linux, but bought a red hat 6 cd and installed it. I never dual booted or ever went back.

This was in the day of getting a modem that actually worked on Linux was a PITA as everything had turned into software based winmodems. And it wasn’t like you could just order one online. You had better have hoped Best Buy/circuit city/compusa had something.

I was learning C/C++ back then and although the nostalgia is strong with this one, Turbo C++ was obviously shit (and Borland quickly killed it later anyway), and while looking around for alternatives I found DJGPP which introduced me to the GNU toolchain and so the jump to Linux to have all of that natively instead of running on DOS was very natural. My very first distro was Redhat Linux 6.2 that I got as a free CD along with a magazine (also got a Corel Linux CD the same way that I was excited about given how their WordPerfect was all the rage back then but I was never able to install it, I don't remember what the issue was) and it looked like this (screenshot from https://everythinglinux.org/redhat62/index.html ):

Back in the 90s when I was in uni, it was the only way to have a unix-like development environment for C/C++. I also spent an inordinate amount of time testing linux on exotic hardware, like 386 laptops or older Macs. There weren't many distros back then, but I tried them all: Debian, Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE, m86kLinux and even (shudder) Slackware.

It was (and still is) an extremely fun way to tinker around. But I have to say, I'm not complaining that pretty much everything works out of the box nowadays!

Most people want to stick to Windows or MacOS, and that's fine for them if they want to put up with it. Pushing Linux or OSS in general is counter productive IMO and just puts people on the defensive. I'd rather plant a seed here and there. If someone complains about Windows on a kid's laptop, then hey, I got an old laptop for my daughter and put Fedora on it. It was easy to install and maintain, unobstrusive and she can get everything done for school she needs. Or talking about gaming - you know the Steam Deck? You can game without Windows - Linux is a painless, drop-in replacement!

It pains me that a lot of Linux users were pushy elitist neckbeards that spent so much energy defending their distro of choice and Linux in general. The community tends to make Linux appear like some difficult, arcane way of using a computer. "First you must pass the initiation rite and choose the correct distro!" Seriously, fuck that mindset. Just download whatever, install it and enjoy hassle-free computing!

The Foss philosophy and being poor

For me it was all the frustration I had trying to disable Win11 telemetry and other non-essential distruptive things like adds in the start menu.

Switched to Debian with GNOME. I have been super happy ever since. Seamless transition and awesome experience using a OS that is not adversarial.

Windows 10. I was happy with Windows 7, got prompted to 'upgrade' to Windows 10... I declined. Next morning, my PC had Windows 10 installed. I got this crazy idea that my PC belonged to me and that I would be the one to decide what OS to use. Hello Linux Mint.

Windows

Windows. Windows caused me to get into it.

Started at college in 08. Multiple Debian internal servers, and now daily driving PopOS since 2018.

No ragrets.

Just windows, I had windows 10 installed on my laptop and was constantly fighting with windows update so when the system broke (wouldn't boot) I finally installed Ubuntu. These days I use arch BTW.

Being poor. In college in the 90s, my lead sysadmin couldn't afford Minix for this system we had, so we tried to compile Linux on it. Three days later, we still failed, and gave up, but this was kernel 0.93 or something, so it had a ways to go. But I learned so much from that experience without paying for a university course or something.

Years later, I bought a copy of Red Hat 6 at a Costco. Windows 95/98 was big, I didn't know how to pirate it, so I went back to Linux and it worked great on my "franken-puters" cobbled together from spare parts dumpster diving. Steep learning curve back then, though. Then I brought it to my workplace, went from UNIX admin to Linux admin, and soon I preferred it to Windows. Been my daily driver for decades, now.

Am I an evangel? A little, but I find that "right tool for right job" is a better approach. Linux is great for everything, BUT a comprehensive system like MS Office AND Active Directory simply does not exist in FOSS space yet; everything is cobbled together and a kludge still trying to catch up.

Obsessed? Kinda. I just assembled some ansible scripts to roll my own distro. Why? To see if I could.

Steam Deck. Now I have a Framework running PopOS too.

Saw what windows 11 was going to be like and figured I should bail and learn Linux before I had to move over. Been just under 2 years on Linux. Don't regret my decision.

End of Windows 7

I'm a cheap bastard.

Free is free

Hated Windows. TechTV had a download of day that "works on both Windows and Linux!"

"I don't know what Linux is but it can't be worse that Windows."

I've been on it ever since. That was 20+ years ago.

I honestly don't know how windows works.. I only ever used it for about a year and some change when I was a teenager in the 90s.

I was all in on the Apple Eco System. I had a MacBook Pro, Apple TV, Iphone, Apple Watch etc. Then my 2010 MacBook Pro stopped getting updates because Apple said its hardware couldn't keep up with the new features they were adding.

I loved that thing. I had put extra RAM in it and replaced the Hard Drive with an SSD. Even though Apple said it was 'too old to receive support', it ran like a dream for several more years when I installed Linux on it. It was great for my constant distro hopping. I used it until it died in 2021.

I think it was around 2017 when Apple stopped supporting that generation of MacBook. High Sierra was the last Mac OS version to get native support. At that stage, I already had to use third party apps to do things like set 'night mode' to reduce eye strain at night and control my Apple TV because Apple refused to add these features natively.

Now in late 2023, you couldn't pay me to use an Apple Product. I'm all in on FOSS. I went from an Iphone to a Fairphone. From A MacBook Pro and Apple TV to a Tuxedo Aura 15, Steam Deck and running my own Jellyfin server on an Asus laptop with a headless Ubuntu installation.

I also went from iMessage to Signal, Apple Keychain to Bitwarden, Safari to Firefox etc

I have Fedora installed on my main desktop but I don't use that much these days. My gf has been hinting at getting me Fairbuds XL for Christmas and I honestly can't wait for the day that Linux will be viable instead of Android.

TL;DR Apple's greed drove me to try Linux, and now I'm never going back lol

I thought maybe Minecraft would run faster on it. It didn’t, but it kicked off a learning process.

Just curiosity really, it was when I first started learning Java from my father's old textbook. The "Getting your environment setup" had instructions for both Windows, OS X, and Linux/Ubuntu.

Of them all, the instructions for Ubuntu were the simplest (sudo apt-get install openjdk or a similar package), in order to get the Java dev tools installed.

Ended up giving Ubuntu a look in a VM since I hadn't heard of "Linux/Ubuntu" (which was also the first time I used a VM) during the 8.04 days!

Funnily enough I actually put Java down for a bit since I just couldn't get into it. IIRC though, my first project on my GitHub had something to do with Python+GTK. Then eventually I got back into Java when I discovered I could make Minecraft plugins/mods.

Of course I was pretty young at the time, maybe 13 or 14? So I didn't know (or would've cared) about the whole privacy aspect of Linux - that came much later. But ever since then, like many others, I've always maintained that Linux is the best development environment for me.

I bought a Steam Deck

I got into Linux because I used a shitty Acer laptop in middle school and I couldn't stand how slow it was. Somehow I ended up stumbling on some article or video about Linux being faster and installed Ubuntu WUBI (I think that's what it was called, it let you install Ubuntu in Windows). Then I found myself on IRC and became a distrohopper for a few years.

When I was younger I was probably obsessed and proselytized a bit but not so much anymore. An OS is just a tool and people should use what works best for them to solve the problems they have at the time.

But I still daily drive Linux so I guess it's my preferred tool.

Bought an eeePC on WinXP that ran like trash and barely could handle simple tasks. Dropped numerous flavors of GNU/Linux on it in a few months. I remember thinking "wtf is this" because the settings and interface felt so bare without the WinXP clutter but things ran much better. Fell in love with the repository model of updating everything with a single command, found the UI was actually simple looking on the surface with a ton of depth available to me when my tinkering became more comfortable and experienced. Stayed because I don't think everything in our lives needs to be stuffed full of micro transactions and ads.

When I left the church, I started directing what was my tithes to nonprofits of my choice including FOSS projects instead.

Here I am a decade and a half later and if I didn't have Linux, I probably wouldn't use computers except in the rarest of circumstances. Its just a high quality experience that commercial software can't measure up to because they have different goals.

A local hero was saving women from Windows by installing fresh Linux distros on their dated machines. I wanted this superpower.

Curiosity at first after it was mentioned a few times by others. This was back in 2007, and I've been off and on with it over the years and being pleasantly surprised with the amount of progress it had made each time I used it.

I switched for good when I built my new PC last year. I didn't actually mind Windows until it began to get filled with crapware, which has really gotten out of control more recently. It's just as well that Proton has eliminated the last reason I needed to use it.

I was just a tech-obsessed teenager who thought it seemed cool. Messed around with it but since gaming was a pain in the ass I shelved it and went to Windows. Eventually administering Linux systems became my career.

Windows 11 is hot garbage. I haven’t had anything outright break, but with my hardware my machine should not be as slow as it is. Installed Ubuntu since it’s what I messed around with as a teenager and here we are.

However, now that gaming is even relatively painless in Linux, it’s here to stay on my personal desktop. A couple tools still require a Windows install but 90% of my usage is Linux and I don’t see that changing any time soon.

EDIT: I wouldn’t say I’m an evangel or anything. I don’t preach Linux to people, nor would I want to get my friends and family into it. The last thing I want to do is troubleshoot their botched install because they fucked around with system files and broke something.

I wouldn’t really say I’m obsessed either, it’s an OS. It allows me to actually do the things I want to do, and quickly. I enjoy it but I don’t plan on distro hopping, making low level tweaks, or anything. It just works and lets me work and play games. That’s good enough for me.

NASA.

I was PMing a student project for NASA and the sheer number of tabs and files I had open on my PC killed Windows.

I had a week until the deadline and I'm in a situation where things may or may not save, basic functionality was questionable and I had literally thousands of pages information to format and get out.

Once I turned it in I installed Linux and never looked back.

Resenting Microsoft more than I hated Linux basically. When Windows started pushing malware-like popups and automatically "upgrading" peoples OS without asking I started using Linux as my main OS. At that point I disliked Linux because I had had some bad experiences with attempting to use it in the past, but it was becoming clear it is the lesser of two evils. Over the years it got more tolerable while Windows just got worse. Not an evangelist or obsessed at all, I actually still dislike it, but there's no way I'm going back.

I am interested in tech, and also watched a lot of YouTube videos about different topics. Somehow I realised how much data windows sends. Since I was planning to buy myself a new pc(my old one was a Celsius W370 from 2009 that took 20 minutes to boot windows) I decided to not install Windows on this pc but to install Linux. I went the classic way and chose Mint with cinnamon.

That was about 1.5 years ago.

I wouldn say that I'm somehow obsessed with Linux and there's definitely no way back. I got completely sucked into FOSS. My next phone will be a Google pixel where I will install Graphene OS on. Fuck big tech.

i came because of microsoft paranoia, then stayed for the customization

win10 EOL support. Genuinely hate the incorporation of AI into the OS.

I tried it out and discovered none of the annoyances I had with windows existed here, then I started customizing things, redesigning my interface from the ground up to make everything as optimized as possible, to an extent that would never be possible on windows.

Plus I have massive ethical concerns regarding proprietary software.

Now I can't leave.

I needed LaTeX, and in the early 1990s, the Dos version sucked, and Scientific Word on windows 3 was very expensive.

/Oh yeah I'm old

On an old laptop of mine that has pretty piss poor specs I ended up messing with the regedit on win10. On the only account on the laptop, I lost admin access and couldn't change it back. I tried fixing it using a solution online that required downloading Linux and booting it up on a thumb drive. After that failed and I found out that Best Buy was just suggesting reinstalling win10, I just said "fuck it" and installed Ubuntu, which was what I had on my thumb drive. That was a couple years ago. Since then I have switched to Sparky Linux, even though I rarely use that laptop anymore thanks to my desktop.

I'm definitely not ultra obsessed with it, but I do find it's nice to have.

Afterstep on Red Hat 5.1

Story: I started a new job as a system engineer in December 1998, it was the heyday of Windows 9x and NT 4.0. First day on the job, the guy who was sitting across from my assigned desk was running something strange and insanely cool looking on a giant CRT monitor. I was mesmerized by the spinning window animations, the virtual desktops, the cool icons, the falling snow... I struck up a conversation with him, asked him what kind of system he was running there. He told me he was running Linux and this was the Afterstep window manager. Turns out he was the local sysadmin there as well as a Linux evangelist and someone I got along with instantly.

I had already been curious about Linux and wanted to try it, so he gave me a copy of Red Hat 5.1 to install on my home PC and I started my journey there. 25 years later I still run Linux, the expertise I developed with it has helped me immensely in my career and I'm still friends with my former coworker.

I got tired of windows breaking its self. Windows XP would get very slow after using it for a while and would need a reinstall to fix it.

Curiosity. It began while trying to play around with programming, and finding a lot of talk and resources about Linux, and then trying it. 3 broken Debian installations just for messing around, then Ubuntu as a more permanent install, all of this alongside Windows.

Then I began using less and less Windows until I just deleted the Windows partition because I needed more space.

Plex

At the time, Windows was updating and restarting whenever it felt like it which would stop my Plex server from running until I logged back in. Windows and Macs are now just thin clients that allow me to connect to all my Linux servers.

Linux user group at my uni. I love Unix like systems, especially Linux.

I had always used Windows for the longest time. I used a certain cloud service and was impressed with how easy it was to manage services with docker. Fast forward a couple of years and I got a small mini-PC with Windows. I tried to install docker on it but Windows back then had no way of using Docker without virtualizing it with Hyper-V, a Pro feature. I thought let me give this another try. I tried to replicate the same setup with NSSM tools. It kinda worked eventually but it was a dirty hack at best and I did not like this solution.

I thought to myself, why would I pay Microsoft to use a feature I can use for free with Linux and get better performance while at it.

Here we are 7-8 years later.

Ham Radio, the Raspberry Pi and Windows 8.1.

I first heard about a Raspberry Pi on the 2 meter band, someone mentioned making contacts in Europe with one. Sounded intriguing. I wanted to work digital modes but didn't really want to hook up my laptop to my radio for fear of wiring it wrong, so I bought a Raspberry Pi. Which runs Debian Linux. I learned how to cd and ls and sudo and apt-get.

Then that laptop I was being so precious with suffered a monitor backlight failure. And it was time for a new laptop. This was in 2014, Windows 8.1 was on the shelves at that point.

I was enjoying using the Pi at the time, and decided to try running Linux on my new laptop instead of Windows. And I've been using Linux Mint ever since.

On the list of reasons over the years.

1. High School friend showed me their install, and how it had these sick spinning cube desktop. Ditched it once I realized I couldn't do anything I wanted on it.

2. In University, the ComSci labs all had networked machines with Ubuntu installed. It was cool, but again outside of coding, I couldn't do anything I wanted on it.

3. 2022, I got a new Laptop, couldn't use Windows 11 without an account (I know of the work arounds). MS has Windows 10 with a EOL in 2025, and Valve is pushing the Steam Deck hard. Gave it a second shot. I now can do everything I want on it without issue. I even made a 1 year retrospective video about it.

I use arch btw /s

My dad gave me a laptop running ubuntu as my first computer many years ago and I have never found any non-linux operating system I really liked. There are some things I love about Haiku, but it just isn't quite good enough to replace Linux for me, at least not yet

Windows 11 was so buggy that simply plugging in a USB device caused it to crash, I joked about installing Linux then I actually did. I have not looked back since.

programming! I had heard that programming is better on Linux so I gave it a go and quickly realized it was better for everything else as well

I could just do more with it.

I didn’t have a lot of money and went dumpster diving for parts. Changed out a bad capacitor and got a system booting. This was back in Pentium 3 and 4 days. I found a 512MB stick of memory that had some bad areas. Linux was able to map around it with some kernel options at boot. Since I had limited storage I used knoppix and had a print out of the needed kernel options and memory addresses.

Once it was up and running I was able to do anything and everything I wanted. I did built a better system and got gentoo going a year or so later.

Eventually I got gaming mostly working with the project that eventually became crossover. First software I ever purchased too. I started dual booting less.

I bounced back and forth between windows and Linux and when I built a system around 2010 I didn’t even bother configuring it for dual booting.

I haven’t really touched anything windows since around the release of Windows 10 and only used windows 7 for work reasons prior. These days I’m pretty useless with anything on that end.

So I’m an evangelical fan of Linux. I use it everywhere I can and the FOSS philosophy resonates with me. I advocate for it where it makes sense and works. I’ll go out of my way and spend time & money helping people move into it too.

curiosity, originally. this was back at the very earliest days of slack and debian, some 30 years ago.

i am not 'obsessed' with linux itself, but i have a definite preference for FOSS over proprietary solutions.

The year was 2002 & I was fed up with windows for various reasons. Connected to the internet looking for a windows alternative & ended up finding slackware. Installed slackware & got it somewhat working. Happily used it for a short while, before moving on to Fedora Core when it was released....

I was on windows 8 and 10 was out my pccwas old slow i really didnt want a pile of spyware with my os. I asked around and found Linux mint.

A combination of:

• I was very curious about computing and trying different applications
• I liked customizing and tinkering with my setup: Launcher, window manager, icons, etc.
• I was a poor teenager

On the windows side, there were neat apps like Stardock Windowblinds, for the most part, everything was paid and expensive for someone with no disposable income.

Mind was blown when I realized everything I wanted was available for free! My first install was actually from a CD that came with a book I checked out from the public library

Windows begging me to create a Microsoft account on start up everyday, even making me unplug my ethernet to get past it. I'm not obsessed with Linux.

Cost

McAfee Antivirus.
Got so tired of the software slowing down the computer and freaking out over non-virus programs. Also the price to renew was stupid.
No need for AV running 24/7 on Linux.
After using a few different distros over a couple of years I decided to never go back to Windows (and I detest Apple so that will never be an option), and I settled on Kubuntu.
So. Damn. Happy.

Windows 3.1, 3.11, 95, 98, ME, Vista...

Stopped evangelising when I realised people hate evangelists telling them what they should do. Started leading by example instead. Curious people approach you if they want to learn.

Won't be going back to proprietary OSs.

Two things made me leave. Both having to do with Windows.

1. Microsoft themselves.

2. My Windows install was just...bad. I'm not sure how else to describe a Windows that frequently crashed and just gave up and Blue Screen. Sure, both probably happen to any normal Windows install (well, the 1st thing. If you get the second, yeah that's a problem)--but not at the frequency it happened with mine, I'm sure. Besides that, it was slow for no reason (AFAIA, anyways) and doing anything took a while. Yeah, I eventually reinstalled it after some hassle, and after that it was just slow, but then i made the fatal mistake of trying Windows 11 and was like "if this is what I'm eventually ganna have do deal with...no thanks." Tbf, Microsoft was promting it, so i assumed it was an upgrade to Windows 10, not a wannabe chromebook with some baffling "lets fix what isn't broken and works great as is" choices.

Well, thinking about it, there was a third reason i ususally neglect to mention:

3. I had a choice. I like looking at all my available options and choosing what to go with instead of having something chosen for me. I'm a big boy and can make my own choices for myself, thank you (looking right at you there, Bill). As soon as i heard "there's something else besides this or an Apple Product. And it's much better than some people like to give it credit for" i researched a bit on the differences, the requirements, and a good place to start, and well, here I am.

As for what I am, IDK. I'm a happy Linux user, but i also get some people are perfectly happy Windows users (or aren't, but are locked into the ecosystem regardless) and hey, as long as we agree that both OS's have their quirks, you let me keep my penguins, and I'll let ya keep your...erm, Windows (does Windows have a mascot? I doubt it, but you never know)

I was trying to run a forum in the early 2000s and was pirating Windows Server with IIS to do it, and I discovered this entire other free, legit OS to do what I wanted to do with ease. Back in those days you could install a "LAMP" stack during install which gave you Apache, MySQL, and PHP automatically configured, whereas in IIS I was having to install a seperate PHP interpreter and figure out how to send php scripts to it and back, the whole thing seemed janky.

After that Linux became my go-to for any IT related project, and even more so when I started my electronics hobby due to how you can just make it do any damn thing you want.

In 2020 it became my desktop permanently after Microsoft decided they didn't want their OS running on my perfectly fine computer anymore.

Wanting to make a custom ROM for a phone.

It came to me in a dream

I've been using Linux for a long time on various other systems but what caused me to finally ditch Windows completely on my daily driver was:

A nonconsensual Windows Update which caused my bitlocker encryption to become corrupted and I lost everything on that disk.

This unscheduled reformat combined with all the other shady practices on Windows lately cemented my choice.

It's been several months now and I couldn't be happier!

The quality of gaming on Linux has advanced an incredible amount in the last year or so since I've tried it. Most of my games will either run natively or require a few extra clicks to use proton in steam. A few outliers that aren't on steam required Lutris.

On average I find the performance in games is better on Linux, even for non-native games using proton/wine.

Definitely would recommend giving it a shot if you are on the fence. Particularly if you've tried gaming in the past and were disappointed.

The constant reinstalling of windows. I actively resisted it because I wasn’t interested in learning something new. My laziness eventually kicked in and it was easier to learn Linux.

Curiosity. I was in primary school in mid 2000’s looking forward to learn more about computers. I only had access to the internet in school but whenever I could freely use it, I mostly spent time reading about history of software and hardware. By the time I received my first PC, which was slightly outdated (late 90’s), but overall fun. The only thing I knew was different versions of Windows and question on alternatives appeared naturally - I was wondering if that’s the only OS that can be used with the hardware. Around 2005 I was conscious of Linux existence, not really sure what it is and how is it possible that it’s free. I didn’t try anything until year later when I ordered free Ubuntu 6.06 CD, but it didn’t play nicely on 128MB of RAM. I managed to make it work anyway by creating a swap partition, however without internet connection there wasn’t that much of use. It wasn’t until 2007 when I finally got in house ADSL and upgraded the PC. Soon after I tried newer version of Ubuntu, struggled to make internet work on it (over tiny little ADSL USB modem that wasn’t well supported yet) but eventually succeeded. Fast forward 16 years later I still daily drive Linux and now work as a Linux admin.

OS2/Warp

IBM showed us there could be a superior OS that wasn't Windows or Mac. Been chasing that dragon ever since.

Basically servers and Pis.

If you wanted to host your own site and services, a Linux vps was (and still is) the only choice. Back then it was Debian, nowadays I use Arch on everything. Same with Raspberry Pis when the first one became available in 2012. With university I started using Arch on my laptop and later when Proton and Wayland became good, I moved to it on the Desktop as well.

Servers in school. Learned how to setup a website, Linux tools test. Then at home how to setup a Counter Strike server.

How to dual boot linux mint and windows (ended up accidentally ended up just having mint on my drive).

Linux is foss

and gnome looks neat!

I don't really have any one stand out reason. I first introduced myself to Linux in the late 1990s, buying a Red Hat CD and phone book sized manual that at the time cost a lot, especially as I was poor student. I think one of my tutors (I as doing computer studies) said that he ran Linux and I got nerdy and curious. It sadly didn't last long as too much of my other study was based around Windows.

Over time, Iecame to despise corporate monopolies, spying, manipulation, billion dollar advertising budgets, and turning people into products (not just Microsoft, but Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc.) more and more, so I decided it was time (early 2010s) to give Linux a go again. I'd read people saying it was more usable for gaming than it used to be. Still required giving up some games since Steam Proton wasn't a thing yet but for me, I was making an concious choice to only support gaming that was Linux native (or games that I already owned that worked on WINE).

I distro hopped bit before settling on Mint. Used that for about 2 years and then got a new PC. Wanted to challenge myself more and went with Arch. I have enjoyed the customisation, freedom, privacy and ethically conscious choice ever since.

I wouldn't say I'm obsessed but I certainly try and free other people from the shackles of non-floss software as much as I can.

in high school i saw this xkcd and didn't understand the joke. next thing you know i'm trying to dual boot ubuntu, writing down error messages so i can look them up on the library computers and download alternative gpu drivers onto a flash drive (we didn't have internet at home back then and i couldnt drive yet... so debuggging issues usually took multiple days). weirdly, i enjoyed that experience and here i am ~16 years later. i use linux at home and at work :)

Back when the world was young, I had to produce a fairly large chunk of documentation which I started to write in MS Word 2.0 (which ran in Windows 3.11 or Windows for Workgroups).

However, at around 100 pages, I started to have trouble with file corruption. So since the company I worked with had contacts with Microsoft, I got in touch with them. "yes that's a known bug, there's a new version on this FTP site" (we were in the nascent ISP business).

So I got Word 2.0c. Which promptly crapped all over my document. "Oh, yeah, I guess the bug isn't fixed then".

Around the same time, a coworker had been telling me about those guys who were busy writing a Unix from scratch (hah, so silly) and who had, already gotten a usable and stable system (wait, really? cool!). So I grabbed a copy and tested that. It ran fine (it did help that I already knew a bit of Unix). And I did my document there, I don't remember in what, if it was LaTeX or Applixware (maybe that came later).

Since then, Linux has always been on my desktop, with Windows coming and going on a secondary disk or partition, mostly relegated to the running of games.

ADHD, and Pablo Vazquez from Blender.

Lemmy. Thank you guys

Certain games wouldn't run in Windows, but ran perfectly fine on Linux. This was the tipping point for me to fully switch to Linux. Gaming never been so smooth and pleasant for me as it is on Linux now. No more random crashes, driver shit, etc.

I worked with Unix before Windows was a thing. I've worked on windows, saw what a shitshot it was (and still is), and work with Linux instead. I do have Windows PCs at the lab for some renitent software, too, but it is always a step backwards when it comes to data procession.

Something felt wrong using Windows. It felt right when I switched to Linux.

Ubuntu used to ship out free installation CDs. Since it was free, I figured why the hell not. Played around with it, loved it, but didn't use it for much more than messing around.

A decade later those fond memories enticed me to buy a Raspberry Pi and play around with Linux again, and a few years later it became my main OS. It's just so much fun to tinker with in a way that Windows never was, and nowadays it runs almost everything without a problem.

Lack of money, I couldn't afford to pay for a Windows license. After discovering how to install Linux more than 25 years ago, I became eager to learn it and never looked back.

Privacy, Windows 11, and the fact that my system is more stable running Linux. I could count on a BSOD happening once or twice a week due to a driver issue with Windows 10. I still get strange crashes on Linux, but much less often.

Two friends in college recommened it while I was sick of Windows bloat/tracking & setting up programming tools seemed a lot easier

one too many BSOD
this was 2005 ish

I wanted to switch to Linux for several years because I was very sick of how Windows did things.

With Valve doing Proton and Windows 11 being a much shittier Windows 10... With rumours of it eventually becoming a FORCED update!... I decided to actually switch to Linux last November.

Haven't regretted it. Haven't used any other OS since.

RIP Windows 7

My OS, shipped with the PC, became slow.

I was tired of Windows, so I tried Linux for a month, then switched to Mac OS for a decade.

When Mac OS started to become iOS, I started leaning towards Linux.

When my MacBook keyboard caps started falling off and Apple told me to replace the entire keyboard, I left them indefinitely.

And now I've been here for a few years. So far, so good.

I ended up replacing windows with Ubuntu. I liked it a lot but I couldn’t use it because I needed to use FL Studio on windows. I started dual booting Linux with windows to get a sense of the terminal. I’m not the most experienced user but I figured out how to get around and I enjoy using Linux. I have tried Arch, Nix, EndeavorOS, ArcoLinux, Manjaro, and Ubuntu Unity. I want to try OpenSUSE since I’ve been reading up on it and it seems to be my end game distro imo.

I had been using Linux on servers for years, and finally also decided to give it a shot on the Desktop during the Linux challenge from linustechtips. Went to PopOS first, then Fedora and Debian and am currently on OpenSuse.

I’m just now getting into it. Set up a laptop with Ubuntu running Plex media server. Been taking some real baby steps watching basic Linux tutorials.

It did take me about 4 hours to figure out how to mount an ext HDD so that Plex would have proper permissions to find the media. It was very rewarding to finally frickin resolve that! I’m still gonna keep pecking away and learn as I go while watching I keep watching tutorials.

Windows 10. I was originally okay with another windows version rather than just updates, and then my dad put it on his as an "upgrade" from 7. It was utter shit. Took an old but serviceable pc and turned it into fucking molasses. And that's not even the worst of the bullshit, as it turned out.

So, I grabbed some CDs and burned on some distros and tried shit out. I liked what I found, with the exception of audio.

I'm definitely not obsessed. I don't have brand loyalty, even when the brand is free as in beer. And I'm not evangelical in that I don't inject linux into every fucking computer related conversation. But I do speak up for the fact that we aren't stuck with only windows and no other options, and that I prefer Linux overall.

Now, I am a bit zealous about how much I fucking hate Microsoft and windows, but that's a separate issue imo. But, again, I don't inject that into every conversation.

My interest started in my physics classes. They teach you the basics of Linux since it gets used for simulations and solving other math problems as well. I’m not 100% sure why, but i remember not even finding windows versions of some software that we used. I think it’s connected to supercomputers almost exclusively running Linux, and I had a couple of professors that use them.

I built a computer and didn't have high speed Internet about 18 years ago. Couldn't get Windows activated so a friend gave me a (Debian?) CD so I could get something going. Been keeping old machines alive with it ever since.

The desire to learn something beyond DOS, beyond just BBS', beyond RIME and FIDOnet email, wanting a UNIX like operating system that was like what I had at university, to be able to natively run talk, ytalk, IRC, ICB, Gopher, FTP, and NNTP.

I had known what Linux was but I never really was interested in finding out what it was. That was, until, 2021 came around and I became more privacy conscious. Learning more about Open Source software and it's philosophy, switching completely to FOSS software (besides ROM) on my phone and then slowly looking into Linux. I was fascinated by it, this wholly new world as it seemed to me... ready to explore and learn so much from. Of course, someone who's used windows most of his life will definitely think of it as a challenge to learn to use Linux and adapt to it. I started supporting and using more and more OSS and loved it, so naturally I also had became a bit more interested in Linux. After I became privacy conscious, I also wanted to get away from Big Tech and I already hated using Windows by that point. That was because I've had a low end PC most of my life, I stuck around with Windows 7 until 2019 where it became EOL and I had to switch to Windows 10. It was an awful experience, running windows 10 on older and low end hardware.

Then came 2022, I had a new upgraded system and it was more mid-range than low-end now. I started using Linux in VMs and learnt more and more about it, I tried to switch full time but couldn't because of a few things that I just cannot live without. Truth be told I'm still using Windows, there's just one thing holding me back and all other things I've either adapted to, learnt or have found an alternative for. I know some people will hurl insults at me for saying I dislike Big Tech but also use Windows and call myself privacy conscious but It is what it is. I use Linux part-time in VMs and I really enjoy it. As soon as that use case is covered, I'll be making a full switch to Linux.

Apologies if this went a little off-topic haha, couldn't help myself I'm afraid

Back in the day I was heavily invested in microsofts ecosystem,Until they killed windows phone. At the time it really hurt cause I loved the platform after that I grew resentful if Microsoft. My uncle gave my sister an old laptop and she gave it to me for uni, the thing. Didn't even run windows 10 right so i tried Ubuntu on it and it worked perfectly. I used that laptop until it died. Then I installed Ubuntu on an external hard drive and booted it on my unis pcs. Then my sister gave me her dell latitude and I installed ubuntu on it and have loved every single second of it

Dark mode back in the day (XP/Vista era). I wanted to theme everything and have cool UI/visual features in a non-shady download-this-third-party-totally-safe-theme-engine-wink-wink way.

Messing around with a Raspberry Pi was what got me over the threshold of learning enough to utilize Linux primarily, and then eventually exclusively.

Obsessed? No. Persistently interested though.

I communicate Linux as an option when the circumstance are appropriate. It is often not worth getting involved in other people's tech decisions. My mother is now a satisfied Mint user, after she asked me if there was more pleasant and private way to use her computer. It has been great for me, because my providing tech support has gone to basically zero.

I've been using Linux for something like 27 years, I wouldn't say evangelical or particularly obsessed.

I started using it because some of the guys showing up to my late 90's LAN parties were dual booting Slackware it and it had cool looking boot up messages compared to DOS or Windows at the time. The whole idea of dual booting operating systems was pretty damn wild to me at the time too.

After a while it became obvious to me that Slackware '96 was way more reliable than DOS or Windows 95 at the time, a web browser like Netscape could take out the whole system pretty easily on Windows, but when Netscape crashed on Linux, you opened up a shell and killed off whatever was left of it and started a new one.

I had machines that stayed up for years in the late 90's and that was pretty well impossible on Windows.

I used Unix workstations in college. After graduation my choices were MS-DOS and Windows 3.1, or a real OS. Started with Slackware in the mid-1990's.

A friend in high school gave me an Ubuntu live CD and told me I should try it.

windows 8 that came with my core i3 laptop. did not jump into the windows10 bandwagon for all the bad things i was hearing about it. gave up when some apps start doing crazy stuff because os is old. mucked around with mint, and distro hopping from usb. mind-blown. now i've acquired a fairly new laptop and dual booted with debian12. has never done a random restart on it for months (due to force-it-down-your-throat-win-update). i still use a win laptop for work and some games, but that will never touch my personal computer. it's fun reading all the comments here. thanks :)

Windows XP pissed me off one two many times.

Interesting how there's so many answers here, but no mention of the one I came here for (and I thought would be most popular) : ricing.

I got into Linux when I saw screenshots of all the cool desktops people made with KDE, XFCE, and tiling window managers. Even Gnome looked sleek and minimal. After a while I got bored of ricing but I stayed for the ease of use as a developer

Curiosity. Then starting development and figuring out most things non-MS specific assume UNIX/Linux based. I'm not obsessed at all, I quite enjoy macOS, and don't mind Windows too much for what I do with it, but it's my OS of choice for development machines, and any servers I control.

I've told this story on here before, but here it is again: I used to write for a very Windows-centric computer magazine, and after a couple of years I noticed that most of the content I was writing was about how to make Windows behave less like Windows. So I thought I'd give Linux a go, and I haven't looked back since. I've had phases when I tried convincing all my friends to make the switch, but I've realized that it's just not for everyone. I don't think I'm obsessed, I don't customize my desktop much, I just want my system to work smoothly.

Username and password.

Windows 10. When your OS no longer respects your choices and you have to fight it every minute, there is something wrong. The creeping invasions on privacy have only cemented my use of Linux

Truthfully, I'm not sure if I would have ever switched over if Microsoft kept the Windows 7 paradigm. But I started my search for alternatives when Windows 8 - already too adventurous for me - came with the computer I bought.

Towards the end of my time using Windows 10 as my primary OS, the realization that the UI is not an inherent component of the OS sealed the deal. As a Windows 2000 fan, I fell in love with the way Chicago95 Debian replicated the look and stability that I had sorely missed.

I got this incredibly busted hand-me-down that was having issues running windows, so I installed Linux mint on it and then distro hopped until I started daily driving arch on a new machine.

I used Linux on my jailbroken Chromebook during school before and I slowly started using more and more of wsl when that came out.

Then one day a windows update which started automatically on my laptop ended up wiping the encryption keys, I lost all my data including a lot of organised financial documents. This happened while I was having trouble with wsl where it would just delete itself on my pc. Then there was the issue of my pc having an English international keyboard which I was unable to remove and windows kept switching me to it every 2 minutes. Which makes programming harder due to how it handles inverted commas. I ended up doing some regedit to remove it, but then all windows system apps stopped working, including settings. And guess what, there was now an update ready which I could not skip because settings won't open. And did I mention my laptop wiped itself again?

I did not have a single issue since I switched about 4 years ago, I never looked back. Not even for gaming, I exclusively use Linux and I am proud of it. And this is saying a lot, because I always mess up my system when doing random experiments for fun, but there is also always a clear way out. (I use arch btw, and rtfm really helps a lot)

My philanthropic beliefs and love of freedom. I was absolutely amazed when I found out about open source and free software. Then I got to it and loved it even more, the community, the UI and DEs, how much you could customize everything and how much choices you had. But mostly it is the philosophical beliefs that makes me love linux. Even if it is not better than some alternatives in some aspects, I willl still stand by it.

Windows becoming completely hostile towards power users.

I used to LOVE Windows, I even made fun of friends who were using Linux, which I only used on servers because I thought the desktop experience was sub par (and at the time it was, we're talking 10-15 years ago). Then Windows 8 came and I stayed on 7 because the experience was bad. Then 10 came and data collection started getting out of control, so I had to jump through a bunch of hoops just to make it usable and "private enough". Eventually things got so bad around 2019 that I realized that I was spending more time fixing that pile of crap than the average Arch user and I decided to give Linux a serious try.

I was somewhat annoyed by some UI/UX flaws but eventually I got used to it, and with the coming of Linux gaming I started using Windows less and less (it's an AMD system so the Linux experience is excellent), eventually last year I realized that I hadn't booted it in months so I just wiped that drive and started using it for games. I've also gotten a lot more paranoid about privacy and sandboxing proprietary software.

Now with Windows 11 things have gotten so bad that even my students are making fun of it so I don't think I'll be coming back.

My computer was trash. I migrated out of necessity. It took 40 minutes to boot into Windows XP. Old-timey Lubuntu kept that computer alive for another 5 years.

When I got a real computer, I found that using Windows was unpleasant -- So when Proton started to mature, I switched back to Linux (cuz hey, vidya gaems).

... Then I became an adult and the political radicalisation began.

I'm not "obssessed" so much as I am politically motivated, so I guess I'm an evangelist in a way. If there were ten other mature open source operating systems I'd shill all of them. As it is there's Linux and BSD. So those are the ones I shill.

Generally I'll pester anyone willing to listen to get as far from Big Tech's walled gardens as their life necessities allow them.

I'm not a tech person, I think most Linux people are? Instead I'm just someone who studied basic sociology and history, and can see the kind of power that walled-garden tech can (and HAS, in recent times) give to very few people.

Well, my experience was always on and off: In the past, I always had my phases of trying it out, be it dual-booting, or outright replacing my OS, but always went back to Windows after a couple of months at most due to some software being Windows-only and both VMs and WINE not being sufficient.

But this year, with Windows continuing to get worse (built-in ads, the fact that it eats 60+ GB on a base install, etc.) and me needing Linux for uni anyway: I made the jump and thanks to the work being done with stuff like Proton for games and FOSS software now being good enough for general productivity, I'm happier than ever.

Obsessed? I like customizability and being able to tinker around, but in the end, it's a tool like any other.

I got into Linux because BSD didn't have enough hardware support.

Back in the day, it was the cheapest way to get a company online. I built a slakware server with sendmail and squid on our isdn line

It was PHP and Laravel.
I started doing fancier things with websockets, redis, cronjobs etc.
Anything "designed for" laravel hosting wasn't cheap. So, I learned how to get a VM going and set it up for webhosting.
Windows is still my daily driver due to Office, Visual Studio and gaming.
But I have a bunch of VMs and servers, and they are all Debian.
I enjoy Linux, but I haven't gone whole-hog into a desktop environment or whatever. Everything has been CLI based

I think it was world of warcraft. As a kid I had a very bad computer, so windows (Vista I think ?) Gave me something like 15 fps while Linux+Wine gave me 20. It already felt like wizardry that I had better performance while needing a compatibility layer.

I have also some memories of discovering a new land of freedom. When i plugged a CD from the library, Ubuntu's default music player had a popup "wanna install anti-DRM plugins & make a copy of those tracks?"