Windows 10

I used Windows 7 before, but my first computers all ran Linux. (Raspberry Pi 2b with Raspian; First 64-bit PC ran Ubuntu Mate)

Windows XP pre-SP1 at home. For Work I always had to use Windows.

First moved from 7 on home PC as a daily driver

And then later once I stopped distro hopping (stopping at Arch) and could do my work in full from home… ( by porting time tracking app to Linux )

Moved from 10 on work PC

Was using Tiny 10/modified Windows 10,but switched to Linux Mint beacuse of low system requirements and low resource usage,as I have 15 year old PC

Vista. Tried to make Ubuntu work for a while but that was a shit show back then… Moved over to OS X and I was home - a beautiful UNIX where everything just worked. Stayed there for close to a decade (Lion-Mavericks-El Capitan-High Sierra-Mojave), mostly on non-Apple hardware.

Sadly, the iOS-ization ramped up so I had to rip tons of iCloud related stuff everytime I did a fresh install and then Catalina killed off 32-bit apps and brought other irritants, so I tried Fedora 35 and escaped with close to no issues.

And here I am, on Fedora 40 five years later.

I had Windows 8.1 but as the end of its maintenance was approaching I saw the writing on the wall with Windows 10 and especially 11 and I wanted no part of that. When 8.1 was put to pasture I returned to Linux and I have been content ever since. Seeing where Microsoft is taking Windows I’m more and more convinced that Stallman Was Right. I control my software, not the other way around.

!stallmanwasright@lemmy.ml

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I had dabbled with Linux before, both at home and work. Stood up a server running Ubuntu LTS at home for serving my personal website and Nextcloud. But, gaming kept my main machine on Win10. Then I got a Steam Deck and it opened my eyes to how well games "just worked’ on Linux. I installed Arch on a USB drive and booted off that for a month or so and again, games “just worked”. I finally formatted my main drive and migrated my Arch install to it about a week ago.

I’m so glad that I won’t be running Windows Privacy Invasion Goes to 11.

For me it was the jump between Windows 7 and Windows 8. I hated the UWP apps, the “simplified” control panel an d the full screen and tiled start menu. It worked great as a phone UI but terrible on desktop. I used it for like a month and switched to Linux Mint, which I felt was closest to W7 at the time.

Windows wasn’t my first operating system. I don’t even remember what my first was, but it ran on top of DOS and had a 5 and a quarter inch floppy drive. I’ve used pretty much every windows desktop version since 3.1, but really only installed or maintained XP, 2000 server, and Windows 10 on my own hardware. But I’ve also installed and maintained various Linux and BSD distros since about the turn of the millennium, including a brief relationship with a Mac laptop with OSX.

There was never a switch. I always ran whatever I could get working that would get the job done. For some tasks that was Windows, either because it was good enough and came pre-installed or it was required by the software I needed to run for school or work. I’ve handed in many assignments on 3.5 inch floppies. I haven’t maintained a server with windows since Windows2000 server. I’ve tried Slackware and Corel Linux. I bought SUSE Linux in a box from a big box store. I’ve gotten those brown Ubuntu install CDs in the mail. I remember being delighted with the development of BitTorrent because now my downloads would check themselves for consistency as they downloaded the ISO. No more getting to the end of a download only to discover the md5sum failed to check. I’ve used Knoppix and Clonezilla for system recovery.

There was never a change. I’m a tech nerd that likes Linux, not a Linux nerd that likes tech. But, it was the way windows kept destroying my Linux partitions that drove me away from dual booting and installing windows on anything in general. Also the windows situation with viruses, updates, and lack of security that drove me away unless compelled. Now windows lives on its own hardware or in a VM for me.

XP…my laptop was an old Acer my mom passed to me and couldn’t run vista so I never got it… Hopped on Ubuntu 09.04

The last Windows I used was Windows 2000 Professional. I bought a new PC, didn’t like XP so I switched to Linux full time as I’d been using it more and more anyway. Windows has only gotten worse since then so I’ve never looked back.

Windows XP. The moment I realized the mess Windows Vista was going to be, I knew I had to switch over.

I used 11, but had tried linux when I used 10. I was never really trying to switch, more just distrohopping with windows in the mix, and eventually I just never went back.

Windows XP. Windows itself was fine, I only moved because the programming languages I wanted to use ran better on Linux and ran in a way that was more likely to be the same as in production.

Win7. I use LMDE+Cinnamon now and I have it looking suspiciously like how I had Win7. Old habits and all that.

Though you didn't ask, Win2K was the probably the best Windows, IMO. Then came the bloat and the ugly UIs. (I've kind of got used to bloat these days. Storage is cheaper than it was, and LMDE isn't exactly the slimmest distro.)

Maybe I would have liked Win10. Similar to how it was with the old Star Trek movies, it seems like every other version of Windows is terrible, and if that remains true, maybe 12 will be better than 11. Probably not going back to find out though.

Greybeard here.

I worked for a company with a wild mix of DOS, Win 3.1, and Win 3.11. Then we got new PCs, some ethernet hubs and switches (instead of the damn coax cable with terminators) and started to move to Win95.

Win 95 was a beast. It came in a bunch of floppies. It took ages to install, and you’d find after one hour that the last floppy was corrupt. Also, on our cheap hardware (Siemens-Nixdorf Pentium PCs) sometimes the sound card or the ethernet card would go missing. Nothing short of a reinstall would solve it. Temporarily, of course.

The Win 98 came along. All our problems were solved. It was a 32 floppy install job, if memory serves. No, no CDs on our company. Still, it crashed a lot, and Microsoft Office had a tendency to simply destroy 100+ page documents when it was not crashing.

At home I used Windows, because how else am I going to play games, right? But I kept experimenting with Linux, and liked what I saw. There were many pieces missing (no USB for a very loooong time, for instance), but what was there was rock solid compared to Windows. And you could COMPILE YOUR OWN DAMN KERNEL, fer chrissake! How powerful was that?

Eventually, distros started to emerge that made some pain points go away. I remember Corel Linux, Caldera Linux, Mandrake, RedHat, etc. I settled with Debian because ‘apt-get dis-upgrade’, of course. Then Ubuntu came along and made Linux more pretty and usable for simple folk. They even sent you a free CD by mail if you asked them.

I got ever more tired of Windows nuking my boot sector, the viruses (virii?), the hunting around for drivers, the having to throw away good peripherals because windows thought were too old to support.

I made a choice and dropped Windows. I missed a lot of the gaming scene until Wine and Steam caught up with the state of the art. In the mean time I made use of emulators and had a good time playing console and arcade games.

Oh I was teased about it. Fellow IT workers (proper MSCE type people) would give me a hard time because “Linux has no future”, “Unix is dying”. I guess the future proved I was right. I now earn more that they do.

I’ve flirted with Linux for years, all the way back to Fedora Core 6. I still use Windows, so 11 is my most recent version, but it’s stripped down using the AME playbook. I use it to play some games with anti-Linux anticheat. I also have a minimal Windows VM on my desktop for playing Destiny 2.

That being said, my primary computers run Arch (custom built desktop) and Fedora (Framework laptop) and I have zero intention of ever using Windows as a primary OS ever again.

For personal use it was probably Windows 98 SE.

For professional use i’m currently forced to use Windows 10.

Windows 10. It was during the pandemic (late 2020), and I saw a Mutahar video of his desktop (at the time, I did not know of KDE Plasma, just gnome, unity and cinnamon) and I was like “Whoa, his desktop looks so much better than when I remember using linux. I should install Arch because that is what he used to get that desktop.”

I have used linux before on Fedora, Mint and Ubuntu, so installing arch using a youtube tutorial was not going to be that hard. Although it did take 2 days (Mostly procrastination and fear).

I will say this: I have a 98 computer and an XP computer for me to use, and I found those UIs better than in Windows 10. When I switched to linux with KDE Plasma, the oldschool UIs could not compete. Plasma is just THAT good.

I was also madly in love, with me calling KDE Plasma like being in a dream, and using Windows 10 is like waking up to the cold old stale office life.

What great timing too, with Proton kicking off right at the same time too, eventually me removing the need to dual boot.

TL;DR: I switched because I found out about KDE Plasma, and linux gaming was becoming infinitly better.

Last Windows I ran full-time was XP, ran Win7 for a couple of months before switching Ubuntu 10.04; still used Win XP and Win7 in VM’s for years for specific applications.

Win10 is the OS on the work machines, some of it is really nice, but so much feels backward. I don’t get why there is still control panel and the settings app. Why is notepad so shit…

I used Win11 recently, it looks quite nice, more consistent than 10 at least. But everything I have read makes me want to stay away.

Ran Ubuntu LTS’s finishing with 20.04, have since been running Mint. Snap’s made Ubuntu a worse experience for me.

I was still using XP when Ubuntu 5.10 was released, and when I saw my audio worked out of the box, I switched :-) I had been using Mandrake Linux (since 1999) but only for servers and other work related stuff.

Windows 7 starter

Windows 2000

Windows 98 second edition By then i was bored with windows and a friend told me about Linux and i haven’t looked back.

The last Windows version I used was Windows 7 I guess, but merely to play some games. In daily use, the last Windows version I used was Windows XP

I left Win8 to go full time on Linux. For several years before this, I used to host web sites professionally and build them so I was used to Centos and Debian servers but not comfortable enough to be able to manage them deeply. In other words, just enough to make them work, but more complex troubleshooting was not my strong suit.

I later landed a job where their primary systems are Linux based and through that training and learning, I became more comfortable in the CLI and have never looked back.

Windows was but a brief interlude between AmigaOS and Linux.

Win10. Because I don’t liked ads in my tile menu. I switched my PC in 2018, and I also switched my laptop. Though I found a 2015 MacBook Pro on which I hackintoshed MacOS Sonoma through OCLP.

Vista bricked my laptop after a year without a reliable way to recover. Made the switch over in 2009.

Um, iirc it was Win8? I’ve had to open a couple Win10 installs since then (mostly to prep the machine for a Linux install) and I can tell it’s only gotten worse.

Back then I could probably hack a Windows install down to my preferences in a week or so, disabling or removing as much bloat and spyware as possible — but the amount of hoops I had to jump through to have a tolerable system was just becoming oppressive.

Like many, it hasn’t been a clean “yesterday windows, today linux” thing for me. In 2004, I switched from a Dell Latitude (Windows) to a Mac, but continued to use Windows for work (because it was required), then I switched my most recent Macbook Air to Linux, kept another Mac around running macos, and still use Windows at work (because it’s a requirement). I expect I’m going to be Linux-first from now on (so macos’s days are numbered around here), but still use Windows at work.

I’m kinda bummed about moving on from macos, but the iOSification is just awful. The OS feels confused and bloated now. I honestly think Apple is due for a pretty serious reset and consolidation of operating systems.

Vista because of license shenanigans. I tried to upgrade from XP and the license wouldn’t activate. Support told me my upgrade license wasn’t compatible with my XP license, like pro vs home or some crap. I was reinstalling Vista every 30 days for a while, I even got it down to like 15 minutes using a slipstreamed DVD with all the stuff I cared about being installed with the OS. It was manageable but annoying since I paid for the OS and the upgrade but couldn’t really use it. Then I took intro to unix and found out linux is free, I’d heard of linux but didn’t know it was free. I didn’t know what a distro was, I wasted a bunch of time trying to download linux from kernel.org and I couldn’t figure out how to get linux to work. Eventually I stumbled upon Ubuntu. Folks, you might not believe this but once upon a time Ubuntu used to be great for newbies. I can still hear the startup music (which was the style at the time) and the african drums. My printer just fucking worked. Firefox and libreoffice just worked, although I quickly learned to turn in deliverables as pdf exports. There were some learning pains but nothing that was any more difficult than random shit that pops up in windows, at least with linux I might get a useful error to point me in the right direction and there was always someone out there smarter than me that posted how to fix it. I haven’t looked back.

This includes the Linux greybeards too.

I never switched to Windows, but switched directly from AmigaOS to Linux, in 1994.

Windows 8.1 was my last version before I made the switch. Windows 8 was horrible. The Metro UI broke all my habits from Windows XP from 7 while also making it harder to tweak my system. By the time 8.1 came out, I’d found enough ways around the main annoyances that its improvements were moot, but many issues remained, such as the bloatware bundled with my PC, and frequent slowness and instability.

As for why I switched, I was attracted by the free software ideal, and trying to get away from Windows, and I had watched and read several things that further convinced me it was superior, but I think the ultimate reason was that I had become hyperfixated on Linux. Thankfully, in this case, autism did not steer me wrong. My level of obsession with Linux has declined, but I still enjoy using my computer much more than I ever did or would on Windows.

Windows 10, about 6 years ago. My main PC shit the bed after a Windows update. I’d been getting more into Linux through work so I figured I’d give it a shot since I was going to have to reimage it either way. Turned out I didn’t need windows for anything I wanted to do, so I never went back.

Windows 10, but before Windows 11 was even leaked I believe.

Windows Vista

I switched to Linux permanently in 2008. Last OS I used before Linux was Mac OS X version 10.4 “Tiger” (if I recall correctly) which is what came with the Macintosh PowerBook that I had bought roughly in the year 2004. I have never used Microsoft software unless someone was paying me to, but at the time, Windows XP was still all the rage even though Microsoft was trying to get everyone to switch to Windows Vista. (Vista got a lot of well-deserved hate too, sort of similar what we see with Windows 11 right now, actually.)

Anyway, I was a die-hard Apple fanboy, but getting more and more into free software and I kept on using Macports/Homebrew to build Linux stuff I found online, but back in those days a lot of apps I wanted to try did not have good support for the Darwin kernel build of GCC which was pretty old compared to what Linux was using at the time. Occasionally a build would fail, and I would try to port the software on my own, with the idea of maybe submitting a package to Macports. But after a while I realized, “if I want to use Linux software, why not just use Linux?”

So I bought a Netbook (Dell Inspiron Mini 10) with Ubuntu pre-installed. I really loved that little computer, I used it for a good 5 years until I needed a more powerful computer. I still have it, actually. I never went back to Apple until this year when I took a new job where they wanted me to use a MacBook Pro. (Again, not using proprietary software unless I am well paid.)

I can say with confidence that Linux is considerably better than Apple’s operating systems. I use Aarch64 Debian 12.5 in a QEMU on that MacBook for most things, only switching over to Mac OS when I really need to.

What was the last version of Windows you used before hopping on over?

Windows95

I got sick of constantly dealing with the BSOD.

Changed only a few weeks ago from Win 11, all the AI crap was creeping in. Using Ubuntu and really enjoying it!

Windows 7 Ultimate for me. I still kept it as a boot option on my main PC until about a year ago because I thought I still needed it for a couple windows apps and games.

I tried Win8 at one point and hated the changes. I also tried Win10 and one of those “forced bloody updates” bricked my machine so I said ‘fuck that’ for good.

I’ve dabbled in Linux for 20 years, and run Ubuntu on my living room HTPC for at least a dozen. My main PC runs EndeavourOS now and even gaming has been pretty great.

Windows XP. Jumped onto the Linux bandwagon in 2007. I've used newer versions on other's PC's and don't get why people tolerate that shite.

Same as you, I was somewhat already leaning towards Linux but seeing Windows 10 EOL announced around 3 years ago and seeing what new “features” are going to be implemented to Windows 11, I decided to hop ship.

The main reason for switch was privacy concerns, got redpilled by Mental Outlaw while he was still making regular Linux videos.

windows me

i think it should be pretty self explanatory why a switch was necessary. lol

Windows 7.

I dabbled in Ubuntu long before.

But when they removed focus stealing prevention, I got extremely frustrated. And as soon as Steam had a beta client for Linux I completely jumped ship.

…microsoft.com/…/4ee5be7d-31ef-493b-b092-f6f6139f…?

I actually switched from OSX Snow Leopard after college. But several years prior, the last version of Windows I used, on the family computer, was XP.

Windows 2000 was my primary desktop at the time, though I continued to use Windows XP, 7 and 10 both at work and home for various reasons. I still think Windows 2000 was peak Microsoft. Classic shell, minimal app spam, solid gaming performance, etc.

Windows vista. Terrible operating system. I liked the transparent windows and discovered compiz and emerald

Been messing around with Linux ever since

Windows 3.11 or Windows for Workgroups. Maybe they were the same thing, I don’t really remember.

I needed reliable networking, the ability to process large documents (which word couldn’t do at the time), and actual multitasking was nice. The system was a bit rough but quite usable. It’s not as if Windows was great at the time anyway.

I used Windows XP not for too long after switching from Windows 98. It was that time when Vista was just released and I knew this is not what I wanted to put on my brand new PC.

Straight from the Amiga to Slackware in 97. Never been a Windows fan.

I still have a Windows 10 or 11 PC that I only use for gaming so I don’t really “use” Windows anymore. I basically use that computer like a really kick-ass game console. Which is why I neither know nor care what version of Windows is on that PC. All my other computers run Linux now.

I had played around with Linux back in the day, but it never stuck. It was the “upgrade” from Windows 7 to 10 that pushed me to commit to Linux permanently. Now my daily driver is EndeavourOS on the laptop and Proxmox on my servers.

What was so bad going from Win7 to Win10? Win10 is painfully slow and shockingly bloated on older hardware, and doesn’t provide any new benefits that I care about. I would have had to replace my laptop for no good reason to stay with Win10. Anyway, once I installed Linux and KDE, I saw how awesome the Linux desktop experience has become and that was that. I will never go back to Windows now, even when I get a new laptop. Windows just isn’t a good operating system anymore while Linux has improved tremendously in terms of user experience.

I last used Windows NT 4.0

The internet was just starting to get interesting. Windows had software to browse and do e-mail.

Linux had the stuff to power the whole internet. It was just a whole lot more interesting if you wanted to be more than a consumer of the information super-highway.

Windows 11. One day my system just shit itself & I’d heard about Microsoft adding ads into Windows. So I figured if a SteamDeck can run games on Linux, so can my PC. Looked up what version SteamDeck ran, downloaded EndeavourOS since it’s Arch like SteamOS, and have been gaming on Linux since.

Looming back it was probably Windows XP as the last time I used Windows as my main OS. I switched not because Windows was enshittified like it is now, but because the FOSS movement sounded interesting to me. I loaded Ubuntu on an old laptop, and once I got drivers working it covered everything I needed besides gaming. As I became more of a casual player I used Windows less and less until now where I only use it at work. It’s been an interesting journey.

Windows 10. My PC doesn’t have TPM and I’m not buying new hardware to accommodate Microsoft’s nonsense so that’s that. Plus I only keep Windows around as a dual-boot option for like 2 things that don’t run on Linux anyway, so it’ll get phased out eventually.

Switched around the time Windows 7 was out. The reason is Windows Update. It took FOREVER to do its thing. And it was janky as all hell. I distinctly remember clicking on the “check for updates” more than once, because it didn’t find any updates the first time dor whatevee reason. Anyway, I had one update breakage too many and I snapped. Had Linux as my main OS since then and a few years later it became my only OS.

Basically, I wanted an OS that stayed out of my face and Windows wasn’t it.

Windows 10. Last time I used Windows at home was in January. I’ve completely de-googled and was looking to get rid of as much privacy invasion as I could.

So what’s your reasoning for the change to the reliable and funni penguin OS?

I sold my laptop and was waiting for a good deal on PC parts. I was using my Steam Deck as my full time PC and had a really good experience. Decided to try Linux full time on the new PC.

Honestly, I’ve tried Linux many times previously (last was a year prior) and could never get over troubleshooting problems. The online community helped sometimes. Other times they told me go look up how to compile my own drivers and I got stuck. I would say the whole reason I’ve been able to change permanently has been down to AI. Now when I get stuck, ChatGPT just tells me how to fix a problem in 2 or 3 commands. Once the initial setup was done and I solved the setup problems, I don’t have to go back to AI at all anymore.

The last property OS I used before Linux was OS/2 warp.

Windows Vista. I absolutely decked it out with free/open source software (LibreOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, KDE for Windows) before I dual booted Windows and eventually made a more permanent switch. Never looked back.

I did have to use Windows for my old job (Win10 from memory?) but now I have a job where I can use Linux.

Next step is to switch my partner over from Windows 11 (she’s already on board with the idea).

Windows Vista. I absolutely decked it out with free/open source software (LibreOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, KDE for Windows) before I dual booted Windows and eventually made a more permanent switch. Never looked back.

I did have to use Windows for my old job (Win10 from memory?) but now I have a job where I can use Linux.

Next step is to switch my partner over from Windows 11 (she’s already on board with the idea).

Vista on one machine, 10 on another.

Vista was actually good, it just started running slow because the computer was old. Switched to Mint and Lubuntu, those ran faster.

I got a new computer, and went, gasp… BACK TO WINDOWS! Kept planning the switch to Linux for years, because I liked the operating system, then got an SSD and just did it. Installed OpenSUSE, currently on Debian.

Last Windows I used exclusively was 98. I dual-booted XP at home but gave it up when I realised Linux had everything I need and I never used the Windows partition. Still had to use Windows 7 at work for a few years but since then I’ve worked in a position where I can bring my own OS.

Windows 10, been a year and a half now. I tried ditching windows at least 10 times since 7 came out and I always ended going back because of gaming. Now, my experience is better than it was on windows and every game I go to play works flawlessly. I love it, my computer is mine and my os does what I want it to do.

I still use Windows for work, but the last version I used on any of my personal computers was XP.

Right after Windows 8 got released, I upgraded to it on my 2011 budget laptop. I don’t know what exactly the problem was, I think there was both a problem with there being a high chance of not getting any output on the display after waking up from hibernation, and it also frequently bluescreened when booting. I was playing around with various distros before then but that was when I nuked Windows and switched to it as primary OS.

(That bluescreen bug on the laptop still wasn’t fixed with Windows 10 when that came out. Lmao)

Since I was personally called out here, Windows 10 was my last home version of Windows, but it was earlier days of 10. For work, however, I manage about 1700 Windows workstations and servers, so I know all those problems still. To be fair, I’ve been running Linux in some form since before Ubuntu existed. I think it was Debian in 2001 or 2002 that was my first Linux desktop.

The extremely short version is: I started playing with Raspberry Pis and learning a bit about Debian right about the time my old Win 7 laptop died, I got a new laptop with Win 8.1, which A) sucked and B) had major hardware problems for months, during which time I only had a couple Raspberry Pis to do my work on. So by the time I got a reliable Win 8.1 machine, it felt less familiar to me than Debian, so I switched, ended up running Linux Mint 17 on that machine.

Windows 7, but newer versions were already a thing. If I recall correctly, I made the final switch around the time Windows 10 started becoming available to the general public, but I had been dual booting for a while then.

Started with Mint, btw.

Windows 10, still using it but am browsing distros and aim to switch before August. Most likely candidate for me right now is Pop! OS, but given that they have halted development for it to work on their own DE (by the looks of it at least) I may go for Fedora or regular Ubuntu instead.

Windows 95, I am ashame to admit I touched it

I still use windows. Theres a bunch of stuff which needs it.

Seriously though, for about twenty years Microsoft has released patches on Tuesday. Don’t wait till Saturday, go ahead and restart on Tuesday. It’s easy and predictable and more often the patches are important.

Windows 11.

And I still use it at work, and will continue to until I take the time to test out the things I need to make sure I can get them to work correctly.

I don’t remember exactly what the tipping point was, but I just got so sick of every little issue, and the copilot crap certainly contributed. Basically got tired of my computer that I paid for being treated like they own it instead of me.

I came very close to switching back around 2009/2010, but Windows 7 and PowerShell got me to stick around and they really seemed to be turning things around for a while. Other than the start screen, I even really liked Windows 8, and 8.1 fixed the worst parts of the start screen.

I’ve used Linux for servers and just messing around since about 2005.

A few months ago, I rebuilt my PC desktop and got two nvme drives so I could put Linux on one and Windows on another (I know I can put them on the same drive but I knew if I did that deciding how to slice it up would lock me up and risk me never being willing to actually take the plunge)

Installed Linux on the first one. The second one is still unformatted and I’m now planning on using it for additional space for my games. I have no desire to go back. Only just yesterday figured out my graphics driver was not working right/was operating at a very basic level and even with that everything just felt so smooth overall (and got even better after fixing that)

XP.

Windows was getting to be too much trouble to 🏴‍☠️, Vista didn’t look that great, I couldn’t afford to upgrade my hardware to accommodate the bloat, and desktop Linux was a lot more mature and ready to go out of the box.

Just because I daily drive Linux doesn’t mean I don’t have windows around.

I have used every version of Windows all the way up to 11.

My first attempt at Linux was in the days of Windows 3.1

My first successful conversion over to daily driver was in the XP era

I went Mac for a couple years around the windows 8 time frame.

I change jobs and went back to windows for a a few around win10.

I went back to daily driving Linux and the windows 11 era, but I still have three win 10 boxes and a win 11 box that I use pretty regularly.

XP, to OS X 10.4-10.8, to Linux

Windows 10 before I used Linux full-time, though I did try out Windows 11.

Sadly I can’t help but use windows at work. But in my personal life, that was around 2003. So, XP? Or something like that.

Privately? Win7

Professionally? Win10 currently, looks like it’ll have to be Win11 soon. I get no control over my work laptop’s OS

Windows 98. In the meantime I’ve also used BSD, though not in a few decades.

Windows 10. I originally tried Linux out of morbid curiosity and because KDE plasma looked cool… And when windows 11 got announced and later released, I just sorta decided stick with Linux, as by that point I was quite familiar with it…

I haven’t seriously used windows for things other than piracy gaming in a long time… I can do everything I wanna do on Linux and my Mac so yeah.

What was the last version of Windows you used before hopping on over?

Windows 10. But I knew that I won’t have issues adjusting to Linux because I used WSL everyday and I had gallium os sideloaded on my chromebook.

So what’s your reasoning for the change to the reliable and funni penguin OS?

A series of unfortunate events in the span of a month or two along with long persisting issues that made me crack.

I had 2 machines then, a hp laptop and a PC. I used my laptop for school and financial stuff (which was shared with my father) and my PC for programming.

The first issue. The laptop had an update for a long while which it would randomly start and I was not able to put it off. But it always kept failing. It was basically a tradition for me to start my laptop on the tram to school so if there is a pending update, it will try and fail before I need it for schoolwork. I finally cracked, googled the issue and tried to trouble shoot it. The first step was to run a system integrity check. This never finished because when I went back to check up on it, an update had been started. My laptop didn’t boot after that because bitlocker couldn’t find the keys, even after I would manually input them on the prompt.

The second issue was with my PC. I used WSL everyday. But it would randomly just fail to boot. This was annoying, so I had a script to delete WSL, install it again and install all the packages I needed.

The third issue was also with my PC. I use a us keyboard layout despite not being from the us. This is because the international English keyboard does not input quotation marks when you type them, which makes it difficult to use for programming. But windows switched me to the international keyboard every now and then which made it annoying to code. I tried removing it, but I was not allowed to for whatever reason. What I did was admittedly stupid, but I used regedit and some online help to remove the international keyboard. That didn’t work, but all system apps stopped working. I kept using it like this for a bit. Eventually, I got an update. Now I was terrified because I was not able to open settings to postpone this update. I didn’t wanna have a repeat of my laptop incident.

So I just finally broke and installed Linux mint. Never looked back, ever. I use arch BTW.

TLDR: laptop got wiped due to a windows update and windows was forcing me to use an international keyboard.

What was the last version of Windows you used before hopping on over?

Windows 7

So what’s your reasoning for the change to the reliable and funni penguin OS?

After years of heavily customizing and debloating Windows, i got the itch to create a custom ISO. At that point i realized, Linux would be less work.

Had to use 10 in work, there i used Chocolatey and scoop to manage my (t)rusty toolset.

Well, my beard is the right colour… But none.

I had an Acorn BBC B (running Acorn MOS), then an A3000, A5000, RiscPC (all with RISC OS), then I switched to Linux. I have occasionally used DOS and Windows at work, but never as my main home OS. (I write Linux software for work, but do use a windows laptop to connect to my Dev box)

WinX. If you are asking what was the catalyst. Their seizmic change from attempting to listen to what customers want. To Cloud and AI first to exploit the customer. Security, and privacy means little to nothing.

Every product team no longer targets what the customers want, none. Everything is to extend AI and rent charging at all cost. A small team infiltrated Microsoft in early 2000’s and warped what success looks like within the company to profit, at any cost.

Technically I still use Windows at work, but I don’t manage that machine. At home the last version was technically Windows 7, but realistically I only had that out of reflex. The last Windows I daily drove was XP.

Vista. Why the change to Linux? See previous answer.

I switched two times. WinXP to Mandriva, because of devastating rootkits. Win8.1 to Mint because of performance decrease.

Windows 10. The reason I switched was pretty funny - I had previously bought a cheap SSD and moved my install over to it, and installed Arch on my HDD hoping to experiment with it.

I never really did that, but one day before Christmas my computer booted straight to Arch to my confusion, and after a while I figured out my SSD failed. I ended up installing gnome to have something to use in the meanwhile, since I wasn’t gonna be buying a new SSD in the next few days, but then I just decided to stick with Linux. As I learned more about it I realised I was barely missing anything, and I preferred Linux for what I had.

I actually still end up using Windows 11 on occasion because work.

But the last windows I daily drove was 8.1

Prior to that, Linux was “the other OS” and Windows the daily driver. I started using Linux for the first time in the Windows XP era.

Windows 10 when I made the switch last summer. A full year now on EndeavorOS and I’ll never go back.

Windows 10. End of life, constant nagging to update to W11 and my SSD dying created the perfect environment to change over.

Windows XP, but I was dual booting windows 95 and red hat 5 (not RHEL 5) in the 90s :)

Windows 7 I think? I don’t really remember tbh

Windows 10.

I wanted customization. Windows provided customization, sure, but like in the worst way possible. Want to change the system colors or what buttons look like? Download this third party theme and apply it with bloated tools that are probably malware in disguise!

Meanwhile on Linux (NixOS), I can just change a few lines in my dotfiles and it works. Sometimes it’s inconvenient but I’m not really looking for convenience.

It was Windows 10 for me but it was not my first attempt.

The first time I failed to install linux was when I was a teenager in 2003. I don’t remember which Windows version I had then, maybe 98, but I was hating it with a burning passion which hasn’t improved with the next versions. It seems every new Windows version was specifically made to piss me off even more and make the experience of using my computer worse. I tried installing linux as soon as my parents bought a new computer and gave me the old one, chose Red Hat (not RHEL) because it had an installation guide that was marginally more understandable than what I found concerning debian, but it was still pretty lacking and I failed :(

Then last year I finally tried again after accidentally letting through a Windows 10 update (“accidentally” because I had a firewall blocking everything, especially Windows services). That was the update with fucking EdgeView, which broke all my work flow by breaking the CTRL+Arrow keys+Space to select multiple files and requiring to release and re-press the CTRL key each time. This came six months after I had to wipe my entire drive and reinstall Windows after getting infected, probably by cryptomining malware, by running a random exe from github to remove the Edge browser, which I only did out of desperation after all the other solutions to remove it failed (command line, powershell, registry, etc). To be fair to the malware though, it did remove Edge, and I can respect malware developers with professional ethics. I’m much less mad at the malware than I am at Windows for stressing me so much to resort to running randoms exes. Besides, there were so many times where random exes from the internet saved my sanity from Windows induced breakdowns…

As for the why :

• I don’t want my OS deciding how I should use my computer.
• I don’t want it to serve me piss and tell me that I should like it.
• I don’t want it deciding what configuration I should be allowed to do, what needs to be hidden to make it as inconvenient as possible to change, and what it won’t let me do at all unless I try third party apps to basically hack my system.
• I don’t want it to stress me so much with the lack of control, transparency and understanding that I am often left in a burnout state, too mentally exhausted to attempt to change anything with my setup, all from the strain of constantly having to find very convoluted hacks for simple things while having no clue as to how or why anything works or doesn’t work.
• I don’t want it to prevent me from doing what I want to do. Even if what I want to do is incredibly stupid, let me do it and learn why it is stupid.
• I want to be able to actually understand how it works, at least somewhat.
• I don’t want pre-installed apps, if I want something I am perfectly capable of installing it myself thank you very much.
• I don’t want to have to spend 1-2 weeks debloating at each new reinstall.
• I don’t want updates running automatically and installing random stuff, reactivating features I had disabled or resetting stuff I had configured, all without ever telling me what it’s doing. I don’t want to get so stressed by updates that I set my firewall to block the updater, and security be damned.
• I want to be able to choose how I interact with my computer and not be forced into one way decided for me.
• GIMME BACK MS-DOS ! Or any non graphical session. I don’t care if I can do the same thing more easily and efficiently in a GUI, I want the option not to use one if only because it makes me happy. When I was a child and I thought computers were like magic, my parents showed me the magic spells to type in the DOS to run games from floppy disks or to launch Windows 3.11 and I felt like a computer wizard. I even read the MS-DOS manual that came with the computer, in secret because I wasn’t supposed to actually use the DOS except to launch games or Windows, but it was just too fascinating to resist. Then Windows 95 came along and since then I’ve felt like a child being constantly condescended to.
• I don’t want it to be a RAM blackhole.
• I don’t want it to collect information on me.
• I don’t want it to require an internet connection or an account that is not local.
• I don’t want it to be controlled by a corporation.
• I want to be able to play video games (that’s mostly what kept me from trying again to install linux for 20 years).

Since switching to linux and distro-hopping a lot I have added the following, which I hadn’t even know were even possible before :

• I don’t want anything at all preinstalled or preconfigured. Just give me a tty and let me waste my time building my system from there and learn how it works, maybe I’m crazy but it’s fun (yes I ended up on arch btw).
• If I ever again

Windows XP. I worked MSN tech support the year Blaster hit. I remember droning through the same repair steps every 15 minutes with caller after caller in a neverending stream that lasted for weeks.

After a couple of weeks of this, my coworkers and I had a weekend off together and we planned to party it up and blow off some steam with a LAN Party with Freelancer and beers. I had my comp all prepped and ready, it was freshly reinstalled and the game had been tested and benchmarked.

I came home from a long shift to find the one of the new Blaster variants, which used a new vulnerability that had not been patched until I had been at work that day. It had triggered so many reboots while I was at work it triggered NTFS corruption somehow. I had to reinstall… And I had done nothing to deserve that.

That virus fucking broke me. I went to work after that weekend and went to the Linux guru in Tier 3, and said “Teach me”.

I have never looked back with the exception of having to install it for a specific reason, and I’m usually appalled at the state of it. I just had to install Win 11 for a Google Cloud certification exam (DaFuq!?!?!) and with all the issues I encountered it took about 6 hours to get it ready for the exam. Win11 doesn’t come with network drivers anymore? Two NICs and a WiFi card in my machine, and none of them had drivers in the install. Nice to see we’ve gone full cycle back to Windows ME, except the OEM bloatware is a core part of the OS.

When my wife finally dropped Windows a month ago between the ads and recall, it marked the death of daily users of Windows in our house. I’m raising my kid on Linux.

I used Windows 11 on my tablet. Might I say 95° CPU when no applications are turned on is not okay. And the fans being 5000 RPM with NOTHING turned on since buying the tablet. And all the telemetry, tracking, ads, abuse, bloat, malware, spyware, blah blah blah. After switching to Fedora, I can barely notice the fans, and even in games they are really silent. The tablet is NEVER hot. Though battery got killed by Windows already, I guess if I’ll replace it, I will get more of my tablet.

I moved to Linux full time about a year after windows 10 released

My “main” OS timeline was:

• Apple II/C64
• MS-DOS
• OS/2
• Linux

Technically I used windows 3.1 at times in DOS and OS/2 for some specific piece of software, but it was never what I primarily used and I don’t consider Windows 3.1 a proper operating system, it’s just a desktop environment.

Not sure exactly when, but I know by 2000 I was fully on board the Linux train.

Started using Linux in the days of floppy boot and root diskettes. Lived through the days of hand-crafted SLIP scripts for dial up internet. The days of needing to pay for working sound drivers. Manually calculating modelines in Xfree86.

I have primarily used Windows at work, probably been 99% windows and 1% Unix/Linux. I have had windows laptops and virtual machines for certain specific use cases but it has never been my main.

I “switched to Linux” from Windows 2000 but I have also had machines running with Windows and macOS during that time. My last work computer was Windows 11 ( but I hardly used it ).

Hard to really put into words what kept me in Linux. At times, it has required work and knowledge Windows would not have demanded of me. At the same time, Linux has been largely free of “nonsense”. It just always felt like home.

[ Edit: thinking about I more. I have used Linux since 1992 and honestly moved from primarily OS/2 to mostly Linux. I really liked Windows 2000 though and used it well into the XP era. ]

Somewhat new Linux user Main laptop was win11, tested dual-booting on it slightly Fully committed to Linux when my laptop got infected with copilot Now win11 is just there as a tool for specific hardware while Arch Linux as the main

I was at work and I spent a full day trying to figure out how to do something work-related on Windows, but every program for it was for Linux. This was before WSL, so that wasn’t an option. I don’t remember exactly what the task was, but I remember growing increasingly frustrated before I decided to just dual boot my work laptop with Ubuntu. I never booted back into Windows a single time after that. I eventually deleted that partition to reclaim the space.

I didn’t install Linux on my personal laptop until about a year ago because of how awful Windows 11 is. I was reading about how Windows 10 is going EOL fairly soon, and decided to just make the switch now.

Windows 98

Win 10.

Slowly have been moving odd big tech platforms. Recently got a Fair Phone. Read win11 disasters. Trying Linux for the 20th time.

Its been longer than 3days now so that’s something.

Been making these moves over 5 years or so. Slow and steady.

I’ve also made the switch from win10. There are a lot of “small” things that add up. The constant nag messages. Updates. Start menu ads. That was mist of it on Win10. I’ve had some experience in win11 at work, and I can say the new UI is abysmal (honestly I couldn’t care less about the UI as far as look/textures go, but one thing I can’t stand is slow animations for every little thing. If I open the start menu, I want it open as soon as I press the keyboard button, not 0.5s later. When I snap a window, I don’t need 0.5s of my life wasted on watching the “beautiful” animation. I just want it on half the screen instantly. Whenewer I close a window, I don’t want to have it fade out and distract me, I want it either gone or a popup asking me wether to save, discard or cancel show as soon as I tried to close the window. I want the Control panel back. I knew how to use it, and navigating menus wasn’t animated to consume 0.5s for every screen change. The animations were what pushed me away the most. I assume you can turn the off, but I never bothered since I changed computers often and would just rather put up with it rather than spend time tweaking each and every computer I wanted to use. The UI is why I don’t like win11, and the MS requirement is why I won’t let it touch my computer.

I have to say, switching to Linux was very frustrating as I had to google every little thing and most sites are filled with ad garbage even with uBlock on Firefox turned in with most of the lists, so that was frustrating. But now, after just under 2 years of Linux use, I can say the switch has paid great dividends. I can do a lot of menial tasks much faster (highlights are fike conversion with ffmpeg, combining PDFs with pdfunite, navigating folders using cd and tab completion (I’m the type to have a lot of folders in one parent directory to whkch I know the names, so typing the name is faster than looking for it manuakly and clicking on it), not to mention all the programs I used that are on Linux open 3-5 times faster.

Another big quality of life improvement are updates - updating apt packages with one command and Flatpaks with another, not having to reboot while doing it and not having programs prompt for updates individually is all something I never knew was possible before switching over. Linux has really impressed me with how well it works and how much of a laid back attitude it resembles, as opposed to the whiny Windows forcing its will upon you with its updates, ads and bloat.

I’ve been a fan of the dual boot option (sometimes separate hard drives)

Boot PC. Press F8. Select Windows drive and boot to windows 10 for gaming.

Most of time it defaults to Linux and that’s where i live the other 97% of the time

I have the same setup on my laptop. There’s always something easier on Windows whether I like it or not and it’s good to have the option.

Never had an issue with them coexisting.

I’m trapped in Adobe’s ecosystem because my school contracts with Adobe to provide their softwares. Since Adobe stuff only works on Windows, I’m still on Windows.

Personally, XP.

Professionally, I’ve been subjected to Windows 10, but promptly installed Linux (and win 10 in a VM). I have refused job offers that insist on windows 10, and will refuse Mac centric press as well.

Early Windows 7. I was fed up with Windows and switched to hackintosh. 6 years ago I switched to Linux only.

XP when I started going main on Linux. Windows 7 was the last version I had installed for games on a dual boot. Linux was always just more fun. I always felt like it was my computer and I wasn’t constantly fighting the computer to make it work for me. Going to a tiling window manager was the point of no return though, my workflow changed so much that my productivity outside a tiling window manager plummeted.

Windows 11. It was just so damn frustrating. about once or twice a year it would randomly kill my wifi adaptor for whatever unknown reason. regardless of uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers, nope, would just prevent the wifi from connecting to anything and the ONLY solution was a OS reinstall.

also my main machine is a laptop. a gaming laptop at that. with Win11 I could average about 30 to 45min out of the battery. It was just such a hassle to go anywhere (I work remotely a lot) and always have to look for a plug. Windows just ate my battery like it was a t-bone steak. I even thought I had to replace my battery.

Then I just finally had enough and decided to try out Linux. Someone here on Lemmy suggested Mint as a good starter for me. Played around with it for like 3 days and decided to just backup everything and wipe my machine and install linux.

Used Mint for maybe 2 weeks beforce deciding to switch to CachyOS. Mint was fine and all but wasn’t great with my Nvidia GPU. CachyOS has been awesome. Everything is faster. my laptop boots up super quick now, games run at twice the FPS than they did on Windows and my battery…holy shit my battery WASN’T dying. I now get 4 hours (!!!) out of it. For that reason alone i’ll never go back to Windows.

I think it was win 8. I’ve dual booted excessively until dxvk basically made such a dent in the gaming exclusivity that I just stayed and enthusiastically followed it grow into perfection

What was the last version of Windows you used before hopping on over?

Windows 10

So what’s your reasoning for the change to the reliable and funni penguin OS?

Freedom and privacy