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).

The telemetry and ads baked into windows. I’m so sick of ads creeping into every corner of my life

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.

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 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.

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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!

You can make your computer your own. You bought it, you deserve control for it, you do not need a corporation to decide things for you.

The benefits of Linux is that you can simply multitask much better, and do things more efficiently. It’s honestly not the same and the two are just not comparable, but not everyone can appreciate or take advantage of that.

For an inexperienced person to set it up, of course it’s not that simple. Those that are comfortable with Windows find all of these benefits trivial over the perceived amount of effort to transition.

For an experienced person like me, Windows is much more of a nuisance to set up. I really like my setups clean, I just can’t stand how dirty Windows gets. To clean your system effectively, you’d have to reformat it. There are things like Scoop, MSYS, Docker, etc. I had to use Windows on my laptop for school. The way I use Windows is like how I use Linux, except Powershell commands are just non-intuitive. It just feels really awkward over Bash.

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 :)

It’s just a better operating system. It stays out of the way and doesn’t bother you with a billion alerts about shit, and it doesn’t update your computer when you don’t want to, it doesnt install ads you don’t want…

I could go on but you get the picture. Linux is freedom from dealing with Microsoft shit all day.

My reasons:

• You can completely customize linux to your liking. In win it is hard to customize even such a basic thing as keybindings.
• You can fully control what is installed, win had tons of stuff, that cannot be uninstalled.
• Things like proprietary software, telemetry etc. is opt-in, no need to deal with windows spying on you for example
• System is leaner, less bloated (you can fill it with processes if that is what you need ofc)
• Dev environment is a lot more comfy than linux

The biggest downside:

• Gaming is rough around the edge, even though it gets better and better.

Windows: This pc belongs to Microsoft and you will use it how we say you can use it.

Linux: Your wish is my command.

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).

Linux doesn’t try to sell my elderly mother a subscription to onedrive

I think the straw that broke the camel’s back for me was when I learned msvc compiles telemetry calls into every binary.

It took a few years after that incident for the linux gaming ecosystem to mature to a point that I could switch over entirely, but I’m there now. EVERY time I use windows now, I groan at something it tries to do without me asking. It’s so nice knowing that my PC will only do what I ask it to now, and that I won’t get pushed into yet another garbage UI overhaul I didn’t ask for.