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
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.
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.
I installed Linux and the feeling of freedom and privacy hit me so hard that I immediately began committing crimes, knowing that the FBI could never track me. Piracy, sexual assault, trademark infringement, petty larceny, tax fraud, you name it. I also own several fully automatic firearms even though I live in the state of California, but it doesn’t matter. Ever since I removed Windows 10 from my computer and replaced it with Arch Linux, and began using a PinePhone as my daily driver phone, police can’t even stop me in traffic. Windows may have a lot of video games, but the benefits of Linux should not be understated.
I tried Linux when I was younger. I decided to try Gentoo on underpowered hardware with zero Linux experience. I credit that uphill battle for teaching me Linux! I used that until I got into dependency hell and switched back to Windows for a while. I needed PowerShell and stuff for my old job, before it went cross-platform. It was fine.
A few years later, I was dual-booting again. Then, Windows 10 began blue-screening randomly. I couldn’t figure out why. Reinstalling didn’t work. So I started using Linux full-time and I’ve never looked back.
Even when I found out that one of my memory sticks had been half-inserted for months, and that’s probably what made Windows crash all the time. How did Linux handle it? Obviously, because it’s better.
Dark mode back in the day (XP/Vista era). I wanted to theme everything and have cool UI/visual features in a non-shady download-this-third-party-totally-safe-theme-engine-wink-wink way.
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.
I got into Linux because I used a shitty Acer laptop in middle school and I couldn’t stand how slow it was. Somehow I ended up stumbling on some article or video about Linux being faster and installed Ubuntu WUBI (I think that’s what it was called, it let you install Ubuntu in Windows). Then I found myself on IRC and became a distrohopper for a few years.
When I was younger I was probably obsessed and proselytized a bit but not so much anymore. An OS is just a tool and people should use what works best for them to solve the problems they have at the time.
But I still daily drive Linux so I guess it’s my preferred tool.
Windows is boated and eventually becomes unusable or unsupported.
Linux has no such issue.
That was my initial reason for trying it.
Since then I’ve revived countless computers with Linux.
Curiosity. It began while trying to play around with programming, and finding a lot of talk and resources about Linux, and then trying it. 3 broken Debian installations just for messing around, then Ubuntu as a more permanent install, all of this alongside Windows.
Then I began using less and less Windows until I just deleted the Windows partition because I needed more space.
I didn’t have a lot of money and went dumpster diving for parts. Changed out a bad capacitor and got a system booting. This was back in Pentium 3 and 4 days. I found a 512MB stick of memory that had some bad areas. Linux was able to map around it with some kernel options at boot. Since I had limited storage I used knoppix and had a print out of the needed kernel options and memory addresses.
Once it was up and running I was able to do anything and everything I wanted. I did built a better system and got gentoo going a year or so later.
Eventually I got gaming mostly working with the project that eventually became crossover. First software I ever purchased too. I started dual booting less.
I bounced back and forth between windows and Linux and when I built a system around 2010 I didn’t even bother configuring it for dual booting.
I haven’t really touched anything windows since around the release of Windows 10 and only used windows 7 for work reasons prior. These days I’m pretty useless with anything on that end.
So I’m an evangelical fan of Linux. I use it everywhere I can and the FOSS philosophy resonates with me. I advocate for it where it makes sense and works. I’ll go out of my way and spend time & money helping people move into it too.
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