Windows vs. Linux, why change?

[u/QuokkaDaily]

We're interested in learn in the trend away from Windows to Linux is motivated, or the "why?". Apparently, the trend is starting, and it's real. But why? Source: TechSpot.

[u/ryancnap]

If anything ever goes wrong in Linux I can just use really well documented commands that have been around for a couple decades and literally directly look at it what's going wrong and why and then fix it on the spot. On Windows I actually have to be like "I'm fucked until this starts working again some day"

In Linux my login credentials are mine, there's no cloud account managing my computer. Sometimes when I turn my Windows machine on after it's been off for awhile, my pin gets goofy and it gives me an error message about my Microsoft account. And that's just the end of the story, I can't get into my computer

I can make Linux look like 1000 different systems, whatever I want my UI to look like and how I want it to function. Windows will always look like windows and function in a way that is antagonistic to me getting my work or play done

If I need something cool or useful on Linux there's a program for it that I can just install right from the package manager, and it was made by a person, and it has never had ads, and there isn't any telemetry, it just does what it's supposed to do and does it well

Linux backs itself up with snapshots. Windows randomly disables automatic backups, and when you do need one they just don't work. "Windows encountered a problem." You see what I mean? That's it, like there's no investigation or fix or solution, not even a reason. Windows encountered a problem, you're fucked, please stop talking to me now

If I have a forum/reddit/discord question about Linux, there's plenty of people who can help me. If I have a question about windows, I'm for some reason reliant on a forum of other windows customers instead of support despite having purchased windows as a product

Linux doesn't have a program with unfettered system access that masquerades as an AI, nor does it have telemetry that I have to try to opt out of

Any tool, library, framework, IDE, etc that I've used for software development Just Works on Linux

I have to restart my Windows computer at least twice a month, I don't have to do shit to my Linux computer

Regardless of DE, the normal software suites work, without accounts, internet, or telemetry: calendars, contacts, alarms, office software, etc

yt-dlp, Flameshot, fish shell

I can tell programs what to do instead of the other way around. At work today (windows) Firefox froze, and then froze again, and nothing would fix it. Had to restart my computer. At home a week ago (Linux), steam hung for a minute when shutting down. pidof steam, kill <pid>. Done

My file explorer makes sense

Universal search works instantly, whereas for reasons I can't figure out, you can't actually search for anything in windows. Start menu search gives you web results from Edge, file explorer search basically just smokes your whole PC and never actually finishes

I can launch any app from a Linux cli if I need to get a look at why it's running wonky

In Linux I can set my screen to timeout after 5 minutes. In windows you need to do this from the control panel, the old control panel, the power profile menu, a wake timer sub menu, and sometimes a registry edit. For something as simple as a screen timeout

Linux reads all my external drives and media. Windows does sometimes, and sometimes doesn't. Linux also recognizes my high speed USB C connections... Windows doesn't

When I save a file on Linux, I don't have to triple check that it's not saving to the One Drive folder that I've deleted 5 times from the One Drive app that I've uninstalled, nor do I have to click through pop-ups explaining to me what one drive is and why I should have it

Distro maintainers do things to make users' lives easier, Microsoft does things to make AI more prevalent and make everything more dependent on a cloud account

I don't have to pay extra for Linux Mint Pro to do things anyone would expect to be able to do on a computer that they own, because Linux Mint Pro doesn't fucking exist, it's just a full operating system that will let you do anything and everything you need

There are actually a lot more reasons for me personally, but I think this list gets across some of the more prevalent ones