What caused you to get into it, are you an evangel and are you obsessed?
Windows.
In my case, specifically Windows 95.
98 for me. One day, it borked the file system one last time. Never looked back. Have to use Win 10 at work, though, and I hate how cumbersome and slow it is
Microsoft has been trying to make me hate computers since the 90s lol
In my case, specifically tiling windows. I use i3, btw.
Yeah. On the same hardware, Linux (Knoppix back then) worked much better than Windows (the 98/XP era).
Same. More specifically windows 8.
I used a bootable Ubuntu usb to save the contents of my windows hard drive after it failed. I successfully brought the files onto an external drive and installed Linux after. It was so fun. It still is.
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New copypasta just dropped
Edit: also, username checks out
It gets deleted on another post so you have to paste it elsewhere in the same community
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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?
He’s pretty much the quintessential QA tester. He wants to do things his way, regardless of whether or not the OS wants him to do that. He’s usually skilled enough to fix anything he messes up, but he doesn’t know enough about Linux to do that, so he ends up breaking things. I feel like most people have a better experience than he did, but his technique uncovered a ton of bugs and usability issues that significantly improved the Linux desktop to have fixed.
Knows enough to be dangerous and confident enough to dive in head first. Deadly combo
So basically the Dunning Kruger effect.
He wanted to do things his way
This quote alone tells you how Linus acts
So basically the Dunning Kruger effect.
Love those videos, mostly because it is my perfect argument on why the Linux Desktop isn’t ready yet.
Was Linus an idiot in those videos? Yes, Luke even said so, stating he installed in and in the month chose not to use his machine (recent wan show)
However it shows, just how easy it is for a novice to break the distro, and how much work is needed to get it to the point of Windows for general population usability. Granted the issues Linus had with POP_OS was dumb and shouldn’t have happened. But it showed me that Manjaro existed, which I am using to this day.
I think linux desktop is ready for open minded people who see interested in a new way of doing things. I don’t think it’s ready for people who can’t use a computer or troubleshoot. Windows breaks often so I’m not as harsh when I see linux break.
Agreed, I am surprised how often file explorer crashes on Win 10. Or I need to restart windows for random reasons since moving to Linux. Its to the point I want to gut my desktop and put Manjaro on it too.
Compared to when I started using Linux in the late 2000’s, Linux has matured to an unbelievable point. To someone who is even slightly interested in learning, its perfectly usable as a Windows replacement… depending on your Distro, Desktop Environment, etc.
It’s this depends which makes recommending Linux hard for me, since when a problem occurs, I find its not as easy to troubleshoot especially with how many flavours of Linux exists.
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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”
That is exactly my story, too! I’m glad we both found our way here like that. Fun stuff :)
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.
lmao, i mean fediverse, opensource, descentralized, and need a linux server to run, overlap very much
Well……ummm….yes.
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.
Having to disable protected services to stop updates from rebooting in the middle of a nine hour encode was it for me. Checking on my encode at what should have been 90% and find my PC at the login screen was it for me. Handbrake works better for me in Linux, too.
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 10/11 happened.
Windows 7 was cool, windows 10 was trash, didn’t think it could get any worse until windows 11. Holy fuck
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 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.
The Foss philosophy and being poor
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.
This so much. It’s like, you’d think when you shell out cash to pay for a license (or well, I did anyways. But tbf, most PCs you buy come with a valid license), you’d at least be entitled to do as you will with your copy of the OS (within reason, i mean. Yeah, less than legal stuff, go off Microsoft, but stuff like settings and such?) But, well…Microsoft just loves telling you “you opted out, but what you REALLY meant was to opt in. Source: because we say so” with basic settings, not surprising the do it for an OS…of course they would. My bud said it best at the time: they don’t care how you gain it, they just want everone to be on Windows 10
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!
