Linux

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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'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.

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.

Windows 98

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.

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 “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. ]

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

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.

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 have to use a desktop cluttered with shortcuts or a start menu I'm going to scream. I used to Windows+R most of my apps because I can't take the time wasted by endlessly clicking everywhere, but even that was a pain (rofi is great, rofi is awesome, rofi is god)
• I'm NEVER going back to floating windows. You'll take my tiler from my cold dead hands.

Definitely not going back =D

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Privately? Win7

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