Hey everyone,
I am exploring switching over to Linux but I would like to know why people switch. I have Windows 11 rn.
I dont do much code but will be doing some for school. I work remote and go to school remote. My career is not TOO technical.
What benefits caused you to switch over and what surprised you when you made the switch?
Thank you all in advanced.
These days, Windows constantly gets in your way with ads, forced updates, crappy apps that install themselves, useless features like Cortana, forcing you to make a Microsoft account, etc. Linux or the BSDs, however, usually give you a bullshit-free and distraction-free experience. Plus, no spyware, completely free, endlessly customizable, and low resource usage (if you use a lightweight setup, but even “bloated” distros like Ubuntu and Mint are often light compared to Windows).
And what surprised me? I guess the only thing that surprised me is how easy the experience is, especially for things like gaming, which Linux has historically had a bad reputation for. Also, how nice it can be to use the terminal, not that you have to, especially as a novice user.
Word is Microsoft quietly killed Cortana, so Windows has that going for it now!
They are just gonna replace Cortana with the gpt4 powered assistant
Windows still got 99 problems, but that removed ain’t one.
I was around when Clippy died. Fuck that bent piece of recycled pop can.
Then they gave us Cortana.
Just wait till they bring it back, now powered by Chat GPT!
Cortana had funny jokes, and would actually do passable imitations of characters like Darth Vader, but that was the only thing I ever used it for.
Things you mentioned about windows before “etc” can actually be disabled through group policy or other means. It’s an annoyance nonetheless. But after ~30 minutes of tweaking after a new install, windows is not that bad these days.
Anyway, if I don’t play games I’ll probably be Linux all the way. Most things today are web based anyway.
But how is gaming on Linux nowadays, if you may elaborate? I have top of the line hardwares but the games I play easily max out their usage. I know there are things like translation layer, but I’m afraid the performance hit may be not ideal…
Wine, DXVK, and other compatibility aids have made gaming a relatively trouble-free experience. Most of the time, if you use Steam, you can just click play and your game will work out of the box with Proton. Performance hit is usually not a big deal, and some games even perform better on Linux. Some games I play also have decent native ports. Outside of edge-cases, the only issues tend to be games with aggressive DRM or anti-cheat, which is hard to get around (though the situation is getting somewhat better with some forms of anti-cheat starting to be Linux/Proton-compatible). Though, personally, most of the games I play are at least a few years old, and most of the new games I play are indie, so I can’t exactly attest to the performance of new AAA games. I tend to hear they work well, outside of the previously mentioned issues, however.
I have a lower-mid tier (Ryzen7 2700 or 2700x, I don’t exactly remember right now, Nvidia GTX 1650, 16gigs of RAM,) and I can game just fine at 1080p. Granted I’m not exactly worried about 4K or 666 FPS or whatever the hardcore gamers are into these days, but most games work well with proton and steam. Some even run better through proton than they do in Windows natively.
I don’t have ads within my OS or start menus, I can do whatever I want with it, I can customize it with different desktop environments, if I mess anything up and need to clean install I don’t need to worry about license keys.
Also chicks dig penguins.
Also chicks dig penguins.
And foxes
The telemetry and ads baked into windows. I’m so sick of ads creeping into every corner of my life
Apparently, if you go through the “privacy” settings in Windows and turn everything off, it still collects more data than KDE with all telemetry turned on 🤯
And there’s a chance they turn it all back on with an update.
YES this.
Back when I was on Windows 10, I meticulously deleted all pre-installed crap (candy crush, Netflix, etc.), and turned off all tracking, ads, etc.
About a month later they pushed a major update and all those pre-installed apps were back, with more. All the settings I turned off were reverted.
I won’t ever go back. The only games I really can’t play are all online (League, etc.), and TBH good riddance. Wasn’t adding value to my life anyway.
I switched because after every Windows update they reset some settings and installed tiktok icons.
Also, when i blocked OS from pinging home every time i clicked start, it made windows freak out to a point where it affected PC performance.
I am tired of being treated like a cattle as paying customer.
PopOS was free and respects its users…
installed tiktok icons? seriously? lmao
I got tired of windows pretending it knew better than me what i wanted, whether that was updates or security scans or fuck knows what else.
The final straw was when they shitted up the start menu with garbage and tried to shove their app store down my throat. At that point i was done.
That start menu is so bloated it takes time to load.
yeah it’s absolutely ridiculous. Whoever decided that the start menu, of all things, needed to be encrusted with garbage should have been fired on the spot.
But they get to advertise NETFLIX! Guy probably got a bonus.
Call me a filthy casual or whatever, but I use Windows, Linux and macOS equally. My preference is Linux but I don’t limit myself by just pretending the other two options don’t exist :)
Nah, I’m with you too.
Sorry but you aren’t special, everyone here already used windows or Mac and the fact that I’m not using other systems righr nowmaybe is more related to I not liking/needing it than pretending they do not exist.
For me it was the philosophy behind Free (as in freedom) software. Call me a Richard Stallman fan, but I would love to live in a world were everyone is free to:
- Run the program as you wish, for any purpose.
- Study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
- Redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.
- Distribute copies of your modified versions to others.
Learn more at fsf.org
I have to use Windows for work, and I choose to use Linux for all of my personal devices. Windows is trying very hard to corral me into using bing, edge, cortana, etc. and gets in my way when I try to use the tools I prefer instead. It intentionally obscures what its doing with updates and security. That is unacceptable. This is my computer, not theirs.
No Linux distro that I’ve tried does any of that shit. They have never tried to push my behavior in one direction or another, they aren’t watching everything I do to help their product teams develop an even more annoying desktop. The various Linux distros I’ve used have felt like nothing but a way to let me use my damn computer.
I do have a small partition with Windows on it to play the occasional game I can’t run on Linux with Proton. Thanks, Valve!
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You may want to dual boot, especially if your classes are online. I’ve seen issue after issue using a Windows VM for online exams. But, for me it’d be worth asking a buddy or using the computer lab to get around an invasive OS as your daily driver.
Maybe have both. Dual boot is not as helpful as a VM, or st least it wasnt when I was trying to make the switch.
For sure, but online exams for college see VM’s as a cheating option since the base OS isn’t accessible by the exam software to restrict. I’ve seen on going workarounds, but these exam programs always adapt, making more settings changes required for a VM to work on a test. As if a difficult exam wasn’t tough enough. Windows provides the exam software’s the lockdown capabilities they desire, so alt OS options aren’t allowed.
I switched because Microsoft just keeps getting worse and worse, and I like having complete control over my system. And limiting the amount of my data going out.
Linux in general uses much less system resources than windows, and I like being able to easily change my workflow (desktop environment, window manager, etc).
Better privacy, control over the operating system, fully free and open source, practically impossible to get a virus (you still can but Linux viruses are rare), less system utilisation and I was surprised by how easy it was to use. My first reaction when I installed my first distro was “Wow it’s almost as easy as Windows”. That being said I did run into a bunch of problems early on but there’s extensive guidesout there. My first distro was Manjaro but recently, since I started getting angry at the fact that even the smallest system update broke my install and I had to run timeshift restores very often, I had made the switch to Nobara and so far I’m really enjoying it
Linux doesn’t try to sell my elderly mother a subscription to onedrive
- Package managers are a godsend and there’s nothing like them on Windows. Chocolatey is okay, but it’s got nothing on Linux pms. This discontinuity between installing and upgrading some applications, other applications, Windows apps, drivers, and system software makes me want to cry.
- Customization. Man is Windows lame here. Colors on Windows is about all you can do, and it’s so limited. I bought the machine I should be able to set it up how I like. There are some deeper ways to theme and adjust things more directly, but they’re hard to use and risk breaking your system. On Linux, customization is easy, even on a more pro-default-option DE like GNOME. I just want things to work, and Windows fights me to get it to a usable state.
- Bloat, telemetry, ads, proprietary garbage, etc, etc, etc. I like FOSS and using FOSS software, and I can use it on Windows, but I have to have so much other stuff too. Debloat scripts exist, but they can only do so much. There’s always gonna be something Microsoft owns on the system
- Complexity and control. Linux is simple. Binaries go in bin, and the settings for them are usually in ~/.config or somewhere in /etc. Want to adjust some obscure setting to fix some issue in a program you installed? Oh go tweak this clear config and explicit setting to fit your hardware or whatever. Easy to fix. On Windows, all the system stuff is not only hidden, it’s restricted, and also so many times on Windows when you run into issues the solution is you have to edit *shudder* the registry, or worse you have to do a PC reset. Overtime your system slows and blue screens become more frequent too, and there’s nothing you can do. On Linux, you can learn 7 or so folders and understand how your entire system works, keep it maintained, and run it for years. Had a prof in college who was on like a 20yo Gentoo install.
- Tiling. There are ways to do tiling on Windows, but they’re all bad and glitchy. Nothing on Windows comes close to i3, and I can’t go back to a non-tiling workflow. Windows wants you to do things the Windows way, and anything outside of that is always lack luster. People talk about Linux balkanization as a problem. It’s not. Those people are just ignorant and stupid. No system can ever really fit all use cases, so it’s important to support choice. Windows doesn’t just promote one way to do things a la GNOME, it actively works against doing things other ways.
- Programming. Compilers and dev tools on Linux are so much easier to install and set up than on Windows. If you want to program, you’ve gotta be on Unix/Unix-like
- Windows weirdness. There’s so many things on Windows that are just weird decisions. I’ll be using Windows and be like “why the heck did they do it this way?” I’m constantly left scratching my head. Windows has made me lose all respect for Microsoft engineers. They’re clearly stupid. On the other hand, everything on Linux makes sense and has good reasoning behind it. You need to learn very little comparatively to understand your entire system.
- Stability. Not talking about applications/upgrades here, but rather Linux will never crash on you, but I can’t go a week without Windows blue screening.
- Freedom. I like owning my computer. With Windows, Microsoft owns your PC. Does this directly effect everything constantly? Is it the end all reason for me to switch? No, but it’s icing on the cake. On Windows I feel stuck and miserable. On Linux I feel free and happy.
I wouldn’t ever go back.
Windows became unusable for me. Forced updates, unremovable adware, resetting user preferences, and shockingly stability.
I mostly game and tinker on my PC and for the most part everything’s just works these days. Sometimes I run into a game that has poor performance or something I need to tweak. But truth be told that was not unusual in windows either. I would frequently need to mess with ini’s and config files in games to make them work right or have FOV not designed for consoles.
Linux is not perfect but windows is also not perfect the big difference is your used to it’s quirks and the methods to fix them. If you use Linux enough and long enough you will get the same sort of skills.
There are a small list of programs I can’t replace like fusion360, Photoshop, and Visio.
If those Gimp is good enough to replace Photoshop for most my tasks but not always.
I just use Photoshop CS6 (cloud subscriptions can get fucked) through wine the odd time I need it and so far I haven’t encountered any problems. Fusion360 is still super janky though, and I don’t know visio.
Citing gaming as reason for Linux is … unusual.
They only stated what they do on the pc , not it being a reason why
At a certain point I’ve heard that being a developer on Linux just feels more comfortable, and I’ve decided to give it a shot. Never looked back since then. My enjoyment of using a computer skyrocketed, and it gave me flexibility to do a lot of things I couldn’t do properly before