Why Windows (8) drove me to linux

[shawnw]

I had an old system I used for, get this for 9 years. i used windows 2000 from 1999 to 2008. When I got my new system in 2008 it had vista on it. that was a bit of a learning curve. Then I heard of a free trial of winows 8 that you could download and use before windows 8 came out. I thought great. I just built a new desktop system and was useing my old vista copy. And online said that the new windows 8 OS was going to be cheap.

Ok now it gets good. 1 first download of the iso was properly burnt to the dvd but wouldn't boot. 2 second download would boot but would ask for a password and the microsoft password on their web site would not work. 3 third download finally worked but took three installation attempts to get it up and going!! I was pretty pissed but glad it was finally over at this point. boy was i wrong.

As stated above I had a bit of trouble adapting from 2000 to vista, this was a complete culture shock. I was totally lost. No start button. the power off button was in settings?! windows movie maker was removed and now you have to pay for a bunch of stuff you did get free with vista or 7. Just about everything was counter intuitive. they had terrible help and tutorials. I used it for about a month and did like the tiles. but for a desktop invironment it totally sucked in my opinon. Had i owned a touch screan or tablet it might have been different. But microsoft should have had a desktop friendly version. I thought do I really want to pay money for this crap? Nooooooooooooo!!! So i ended up buying a copy of windows 7 professional for 60 bucks.

i thought is there any alternatives out there? Then I remembered i had a college roommate who loved linux (this was back in 96-98). I tried ubuntu first. I had some trouble with intallation but got it up and running. Well back to culture shock and i was totally lost again. Did more research and found zorin os. i liked it but gave me trouble with my video card (nvidia 210). then i found mint. All hardware seems to work execpt my wireless network card (belkin G) so I am using a 50 foot cable intead. Love mint so far. Its easy to adapt to. I've been learning alot. I removed libre 3.6 and put on 4.0. i pretty proud of my self for having previously 0 experiance in linux. Although i need to get a book on all the terminal commands. so far i am very happy with linux mint but will need to keep windows 7 around because my lexmark 8350 printer has no support in linux Other wise I would give up windows entirely.

So whats your story?

[dee.]

Although i need to get a book on all the terminal commands.

http://linux.die.net/man/

So whats your story?

I got to reading stuff about windows and microsoft's corporate abuses, and was also getting tired of windows XP's limitations, weekly antivirus scans, etc. So I started using Ubuntu back when 11.04 came out, the buggy Unity back then turned me off - luckily I found the LTS version, 10.04 which worked nicely for me, but I didn't fully move to use Linux until 12.04 came out - after I installed it, I never booted into windows again (except a couple of times when I had to shrink the partition to get more room for Linux). Then recently I switched to Mint 13 because Ubuntu started going in a direction that I couldn't abide. Now I'm happy with Mint 13 with backported Cinnamon.

[JWJones]

Happily, Windows has never driven me anywhere. I started my computing life in 1977 with an Apple II. From there, there was a break in computing until I began using Macs in 1986. I am a prepress technician in the commercial printing industry, which is ruled by Macs for workstations for prepress, Windows servers, Windows desktops for the sales, customer service, and administrative folks. I spend a lot of time cleaning up the Windows PCs of those folks, removing malware, and switching them from the crap-combo of IE and Outlook, to Thunderbird and Firefox. I began using Linux in about 1999-2000, out of curiosity. In prepress, we tend to have an abundance of new, used, and decommissioned PC hardware to play around with.

I started out by actually buying Red Hat from a brick-and-mortar software store, and tried a long succession of distros over the years. I still use Macs daily for work, and have an iMac at home for the family. My personal rig is a ThinkPad T61, with LMDE Cinnamon on it (right now, anyway ). At work, I have two Linux boxes: one with Debian Wheezy (Xfce) and one with Slackware 14 (Xfce). I pretty much stay close to the source distros of Debian and Slackware, with occasional forays into Arch territory. I do not use *buntus.

[igor83]

I had an old system I used for, get this for 9 years. i used windows 2000 from 1999 to 2008. When I got my new system in 2008 it had vista on it. that was a bit of a learning curve. Then I heard of a free trial of winows 8 that you could download and use before windows 8 came out. I thought great. I just built a new desktop system and was useing my old vista copy. And online said that the new windows 8 OS was going to be cheap.

My experience is much the same as yours, except I used MS-DOS 3.1 back in the 1980's which gives you some idea how long in the tooth I am. I spent over a decade using Windows 2000, and I can't tell you how many times my registry got corrupted on that thing, requiring long and tedious interventions, until I finally upgraded to XP which was far more stable, and I used that for a long time as well, but then Windows gave me trouble with a new 2.5tb hard drive, so I reasoned that I could try Linux, since my only purpose with the large hard drive was for an htpc. I tried Linux Mint and found out that Linux had no problem handling it.

On the subject of large hard drives, I used to think UEFI/GPT/"Secure boot" was great, but now I think it's just another Microsoft of the consumer. I prefer whatever solution Linus Torvalds & Co. come up with. I don't think I want to trust any large drives to the whims of Microsoft.

I've played around with OpenSuse too, but I think Linux Mint is pretty great all around. I'm not very interested in any other distros besides OpenSuse and Linux Mint. And when it comes to Linux Mint, I use Xfce for htpc, and KDE for the laptop.

I kept an open mind about Windows though, and do have two Windows systems around, because I felt like I needed a good image editor and of course Call Clerk. But for my laptop and my htpc, Linux serves admirably. In fact I would never in a million years switch from Linux. There are two things Linux is great at--Internet surfing and serving up multimedia. It's pretty good at word processing and programming, too. I think the LibreOffice suite serves all my modest needs and when I need to use macros on plaintext, I fire up Jedit.

[nomanjim]

my brother told me that there's not only one OS for computer .. and i just search and using and using various environment ..... (F for windows)

[mike acker]

Windows users really should implement a program called "WinPatrol". it's kinda shocking to find out what's really going on in your Windows system.

the anecdotal evidence regarding windows vulnerabilities is monumental. the damage from hacking is bad enough but if you add in all the efforts made to patch their thing up you end up with a lotta bucks. G$ -- that's Giga-Bucks, probably,-- and what good does it do?

it really isn't much fun to even write about the Trouble with Windows; it certainly doesn't do much good. Those who recognize the trouble will move away from it as it is natural to move away from trouble. So, preachn' really isn't needed

end

[The Old Timer]

I can't say anything bad about Windows OS. I have never had to purchase any Windows OS as Windows OS have always been available through work to use on my own computers.

As I read all of the horror stories and problems others seem to be having or have had I have never experienced on my Windows computers any problems that weren't easily solved.

I decided to give Linux Ubuntu a try. I like it and I decided that Linux does what I need and here I am a Linux user for over 1.5 years and use several different Linux distros. For myself I find Linux to be a great alternative to MS Windows.

My migration to Linux has been an enjoyable learning experience.

IMO whatever OS works best for you use it and enjoy it.

Life is good.
The Old Timer

[DeMus]

Started with Dos 3.1, just as igor83 wrote already, changed to Windows 3.1 and 3.11, then 95 and 98 (taught myself how to make a network where 2 computers could "see" each other), XP and then, at least at home, it was over. In 2008 during the Vista debacle which I never used myself, I started using Hardy Heron 8.04, then 9.04, 10.04, then jumped to Mint because of Unity, first the Gnome versions Mint still used till it was definitely over. When Cinnamon and Mate arrived I skipped to KDE which I still use. At the moment I use SolydK and I love my setup with 6 independent desktops, all with their own background, wonderful themes and no matter what people say, my computer is fast and furious.
I moved from Mint to SolydK (which is the KDE version of LMDE2 so to speak) cause I am not a big fan anymore of *buntu's. SolydK is based directly on Debian stable which has advantages and also disadvantages: it is rock solid (ah, that's where the name comes from), it is fast, but it does not have the PPA system. Well, I don't miss it. I've got a butt-load of programs I use and they are all from the regular repo's, all tested and accounted for, with the exception of Google-Chrome which added its own repo to the list. Just love it.
I'm a very happy computer user, I make back-ups very regularly, I installed the system (/ and /home) on a RAID 0 built on 2 SSD's, and have a /Data and /Music partition on 2 "normal" HDD's also in RAID 0. Home now only has the settings files, while /Data has all .... my data.

So for me Windows died in April of 2008, it was a glorious day ...........

[killer de bug]

So whats your story?

Windows Vista for me.

It was obliging me to click several times to authorize it to do something: 'are you sure you want to do this?' 'Are you an admin?'
There was constant updates, and the system was rebooting without my consent when I was not looking at it. Finally, one day, I had trouble to save a file on my HD. Permission refused. I installed Linux Mint the next day.

[Chiefahol]

So whats your story?

Windows was expensive because i kept changing my motherboard, i got tired of having to crack software, long updates, non specific error messages i couldn't copy, having to deal with a newer uglier interface every 3 years, my PC constantly crashing and having driver issues, progressively more BS software included by default.

Then Windows 10 file telemetry came out in 2015 and i no longer disliked Windows, i absolutely hated it. Luckily i had 1 machine that ran LinuxMint at that time, so i knew there was alternatives.

I now run Debian flavors for all my personal machines and can't imagine going back.

[Rosko]

The subject line says it all "...Windows drove me ... "

With Linux, I do the driving!!