Personally, I’m not brand loyal to any particular OS. There are good things about a lot of different operating systems, and I even have good things to say about ChromeOS. It just depends on what a user needs from an operating system.
Most Windows-only users I am acquainted with seem to want a device that mostly “just works” out of the box, whereas Linux requires a nonzero amount of tinkering for most distributions. I’ve never encountered a machine for sale with Linux pre-installed outside of niche small businesses selling pre-built PCs.
Windows users seem to want to just buy, have, and use a computer, whereas Linux users seem to enjoy problem solving and tinkering for fun. These two groups of people seem as if they’re very fundamentally different in what they want from a machine, so a user who solely uses Windows moving over to Linux never made much sense to me.
Why did you switch, and what was your process like? What made you choose Linux for your primary computing device, rather than macOS for example?
I first started running Linux in the early 2000s. I wasn’t solely using Linux, but it was very much a situation where I used it for what it was best at and used Windows for where I needed Windows. Mostly that was for games, but it was early in my IT career and Windows was a skill I needed to build, so I did a lot of dual booting. It really propelled my understanding of computers running and breaking multiple OSes.
I fully made the switch a couple of years ago when I realized I hadn’t booted my Windows install in six months. Linux has come a long way, and has also been helped by so many things being browser-based these days.