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.
Yeah, this is a really nice feature; on the couple of rare occasions where an update completely borked things I was able to go from unbootable to everything back up and running in half an hour.
For me, I was a curious and inquisitive 15 year old that wanted to try out something different to Windows. I didn’t really have any gripes with Windows at the time, so I tried Ubuntu and it went from there. I mostly remember after that installing Xubuntu on everything because it was just so lightweight and to this day I still love Xfce.
Back in 1999 I came across a copy of this book. Not a great book, I wouldn’t recommend it even if it weren’t decades out of date at this point. But it came with a CD-ROM with Red Hat Linux 6.2 which I installed on the family computer and never really looked back. I haven’t had a Windows install since 2004ish.
I’ve never really been an evangelist about it, though. And I would say that I was obsessed at one point but that’s waned quite a bit in the last few years. I’m still Linux only but messing about with computers generally quite a lot less.
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
Visual Studio for Mac is rebranded MonoDevelop which actually started on Linux. It is even deader though as MS stopped releasing code to MonoDevelop even before they killed Studio for Mac.
If you are doing C# on Linux though, check out Jet Brains Rider. You can try the Early Access Program for free. Some people ( like me ) consider Rider better than Visual Studio. It is certainly better than Visual Studio for Mac.
I wanted to see what the fuss was about after windows 11 came out, because I was sick of Windows intrusive UI and shady business practices.
I still use windows for some things, but now I duel boot to cinnamon and it is my daily desktop driver. I vastly prefer the clean interface and speed of Linux over windows, and I now play most of my games on it too. I was shocked when I realized that Elden Ring runs great, and looks better, on Linux while it was unplayable on windows at release.
I also installed Fedora to my surface pro after a windows update made it impossible to use without severe slowdown. I’ve had my surface for 6 years and it runs great on Linux.
The only downside to Linux is that, as am artist, the apps are limited. Blender is fantastic, Krita is catching up, but there is no way to use clip studio, harmony (toon boom, storyboard pro), or Zbrush (yes I can sculpt in blender but it is not quite there yet.)
I was using Fedora for about a year and it was great. Nice and stable, almost everything worked out of the box. Then I goofed up an update and had to install something new, and I chose Arch. Arch is working mostly fine, of course I had to learn a thing or two about how some subsystems worked but the Arch wiki is a wonderful resource. We’ll see how long this install lasts, it’s been smooth sailing for about a month now.
The year was 2002. I was told about Gentoo Linux by a college. I saw it as a new, shiny toy and immediately wanted to try it out. I realized that it was better than Windows, so I stuck with it. (Not with Gentoo, but with Linux. I still use Gentoo sometimes today, but I also tried out many many other distros throughout the time and I don’t use Gentoo exclusively nowadays.)
are you an evangel
Yes, I believe that Linux is far superior to Windows and I tell people about it
Cost and price … I could never afford much in terms of tech purchases 20 years ago.
Always collected second hand systems, first learned to find and use cracked windows copies, then when that got too complicated and difficult, found Linux and have never looked back. The amount of money I’ve saved not to paying for proprietary software, went into buying better hardware that I used to install Linux and OSS software.
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