I started a masters program and I was assigned an an office computer with MintOS that contained all the software and data for my research project. Unfortunately, my advisor couldn’t remember the password so my first task was breaking into the computer. You’d think being able to externally reset the root password would turn me away from Linux, but the ease and functionality of the terminal shell really made sense to me. Plus now I know how to better secure my Linux systems.

It’s a long story. But back in the time, when there was a company called Commodore, I used Amiga computers, because I didn’t like Microsoft and MS-DOS. When Commodore went bankrupt and my Amiga started to fade away I was forced to buy a PC. And because I didn’t want to have Windows 95, I bought S.uS.E. Linux and that’s the way I am now. And I’m happy to be Linux user all these years.

I really, truly, seriously hate modern implementations of AI and am willing to make concessions in my life to avoid using it. Windows 11 forcing Copilot was my last straw for using Microsoft.

I got a job writing software for Linux servers.

After spending my workday on a mature stable operating system, going home to Windows or Mac became frustrating, to me.

Various challenges required paid-but-still-kind-of-buggy software on Windows or Mac, that I had mature stable solutions for on Linux.

I spent many years installing free software recompiled for Windows (in cases where it was available) so that I would have the same quality of tools at home as I had at work.

Eventually Ubuntu and Linux Mint hit an ease of use that made me feel silly last time I went through the effort that comes with activating Windows.

It was a challenge I wanted to conquer too but also I increasingly felt like I didn’t own my computer. The software was increasingly cutting me out of the ability to modify and use it the way I wanted.

I spent a lot of time in Gentoo early on where patching software was an overlay and recompile away and it was great testing early amd64 bugs and pushing the limits with gaim and reverse engineering chat protocols.

I was doing some dual booting then but as i built a career in web development, it became more and more my solo driver. Running the same platform you’re developing for is incredibly convenient and Linux runs the web.

Now I can’t imagine running windows. Using it and helping people on it is just a miserable experience for me.

I saw fvwm in a magazine and it had a really cool 3D look to it and I wanted that. I had never seen anything like that. We were very poor and I only had an old computer, a 486, so it was either pirate software (and there was no version of Windows in our language) or use Linux.

I ended up on Red Hat from a magazine and then later Slackware. I liked Window Maker so I stayed on that for two decades. Learning Linux gave me a constructive hobby, introduced me to free software philosophy, and gave me technology skills. We moved to the United States. When I was 15 or 16, I helped a college math professor install hardware on Linux. When he found out that I was dropping out of a very racist high school, he provided support and I ended up graduating from their college. Those Linux skills came in handy and helped start a career.

I have only ever used Windows to upgrade firmware on a laptop or to download an ISO so I could replace Windows. Like everyone else, I was enamoured with macOS back in the 2000’s but couldn’t afford one and when I finally could, it couldn’t do sloppy focus and that was a pet peeve of mine so I just returned it and got a used ThinkPad.

I moved back to Asia. Now I use sway on Debian and get to ride my bicycle to work and my kids grow up better than I did, so life is good.

Built a new computer and Microsoft was pushing thoes full screen win 11 ads. That was the end for me.

I was not about to put up with windows co-pilot or recall and had already put up with enough ads and bugs.

I had been running Debian on my laptop for a year without a problem and then finally Windows 11 started doing this when I was trying to update:

Click check for updates? Same result. Wait a week and try again? Same result.

I could no longer trust that the OS was secure from even 3rd parties, so I pulled the trigger and installed Debian 12 - later upgrading to Debian 13 when it released.

There just is never any going back now - Linux is just waaaaaaay too good.

Now I just need something similar to happen with phones.

Had a 6-year old Macbook Pro that was increasingly difficult to use due to the small SSD-drive (I think only 128GB?). Coudn’t really update the OS without uninstalling most stuff due to this. In addition, I had started to get the urge to tinker with stuff again, but ran into roadblocks often (often following a guide to do something in the terminal only to get stuck at inatalling something from apt). Same time I got more and more fed up with Big Tech, so when I was buying a new laptop to replace it, the choice to avoid Apple and Microsoft was obvious. Having used a terminal on macOS, doing work on HPC-clusters (which obviously ran Linux) and moving an increasing amount of my workflow to Got Bash on Windows on my work machine (all three of which reinforced my level of comfortability with the terminal and desire to use it), the prospects of the terminal was more enticing than frightening.

Now I have been a full-time Linux user for three years, my partner, brother and mother have since switched, I manage some bare metal Linux servers for work and IT has finally agreed to allow me to ditch Windows for Linux (although they are taking their sweet time setting it up, so I am still waiting to actually get it).

My first Linux PC was a steam deck. The next year I got a laptop for school and thought I might as well install Ubuntu to learn a thing or two. The next year I broke my Ubuntu install and decided to graduate to Arch just because I had the opportunity. That year was 2024 and after November 5th I decided that technofascists and proprietary software could fuck right off because that was one thing about life that I could control at that point. I stopped using windows entirely a few months later.

I bought my son a cheap little computer, basically a windows version of a Chromebook. When windows needed an update there wasn’t enough memory to perform it, and the computer would no longer connect to WiFi. I thought this was very dumb so I figured out how to remove windows and install Mint. Was impressed by how well it worked.

When I needed a new computer I bought a $150 thinkpad and installed Fedora. Been a fedora main ever since

I had a not-very-computer-savvy friend with Windows 7 who didn’t want to upgrade to 11 but Steam and some other programs stopped working for him, so I tried out Mint as a dual boot option and told myself that I’d switch back to Windows when I needed to.

I ended up never booting to Windows again; everything I needed to run worked just fine in Linux, either natively, or with Wine, or with alternatives that were actually better than what I was using in Windows.

I’d dabbled with Linux and multiple distros in the past and while I liked what I saw I had my frustrations. Various distros had their pros and cons and I wasn’t as technically capable back then.

After Windows 11’s unnecessary launch I gave Windows 10 LTSC a try. I don’t think it was LTSC specific but my experience was buggy as hell and would BSOD every other day. So I thought I’d force myself to use Linux and have used Arch or other flavors of Arch ever since. No sink or swim, I was just going to live with it and not deal with Microsoft’s bullshit anymore.

Back in the day I wanted to be a 1337 hAx0R so I installed Linux to get my wifi adapter into monitor mode so I could pwn wifi. Eventually I just didn’t leave Linux, probably in part because a few friends of mine ran it and refused to run Windows, we used to have LAN parties fairly regularly so yeah just convenient.

Copilot.