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!
I was around when Clippy died. Fuck that bent piece of recycled pop can.
Then they gave us Cortana.
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.
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 🤯
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…
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.
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.
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
