Embedded Linux is such a huge part of embedded software in every industry. I’ve done a bit with build root but mostly Yocto. There is just no replacement for the Linux kernel. If I need to know how the kernel actually handles a platform driver, I can just look up the relevant source. This is just impossible with Windows (IoT or otherwise)
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.
Same. I heard MS was checking out the possibility of adding advertising in the file explorer. I don’t know the veracity of the reports or where I saw them, but it spooked me enough that I knew I needed to get started familiarizing myself with something else before I had no options.
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.
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.
Windows 9x was really, really unstable. I couldn’t believe how much more stable and convenient (packages managers) this free OS created by volunteers was. And around 2000, once I started building machines with Linux support in mind it’s been all I run. I’d say I’m obsessed.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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