What was the last straw for you leaving Windows/MacOS?

oh man i'd love to but i'd just get ripped apart lol

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I think you'd find there are actually quite a few people that would agree with you on this forum.

Wow, Im sure you have some stories to tell.

I had my very first experience with computers on an Apply II way back in the mid 80's, the NYC public school system was all Apple back then. Actually all through High school I used software like Quark Express and the like, and was only pulled away from Apple because my brother bought a PC for my father's business in '97. I built a web site and learned a bunch. Although Linux was coming up I was a 'Windows man' then, but things started to change as I perused a career in IT/Programming. I was doing some PC maintenance for people (incl. friends and family) and more and more the privacy issue came about, people concerned with their data and looking for alternatives, I had none to offer but Mac... (shame on me) then I was presented with this dilemma and I jumped ship. I watched videos like Evolution OS, and talks from ERS and RMS. Linus was also inspirational. That reaffirmed my desire to leave. I knew it would be a bumpy road at first ( thanks to a pair of idiots on the Linux Mint iRC ) but I have learned so much about how Linux works and why. I also have picked up more languages and continue to learn more about the system. I'm very happy on Linux with all it's quirks, but I also know I am in control.

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Windows was always horrible. The one least horrible was Windows 2000 Professional. After that it got worse and worse. But at that point in time I wasn't ready for linux or linux wasn't ready for me ... or both. So I went with Apple and from Panther on I was very happy with the OS for almost a decade. I am very into photography, so it was a natural fit. With Apple becoming a phone company that sometimes also makes computers (and straight up killing aperture, their photo software), I was looking around again and found Linux to be great for basically everything except image editing. But everything else, tons of games, hardware support, web, media consumption.... yeah, it just works for me.

For me, Linux has been an interesting love/hate endeavor. In 2002, i got my first laptop, a Toshiba, and it had windows XP, i think. I had it for a while and just hated the updates and viruses. So much BS and lagging of the Toshiba. A friend of mine informed me about Ubuntu and tried it back in 2003/04 with the Toshiba. I Loved it! Up until my laptop died; it stopped booting, couldn't pasts post. At the time, I was not savvy with electronics and blamed Ubuntu for the death of Toshiba. Fast forward several years of using Windows thinking Linux killed my only laptop. I reached the last straw 2 years ago, Win 7 with the F*ing updates and malware. I just got tired of it. I was running Linux at home but Win 7 at work, Because Win is standard issue. I gave up, i asked if i could install Linux on my work laptop and got the go ahead. Been on it for 2 years at work running Fedora 25 now and I love it. I only have Windows for games, cause Battlefield 1. F* Windows!

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My experience with Linux began when a windows laptop I had was trying to update, was unable to update, and then was unable to revert. Essentially trapping windows in a loop of updating and reverting. So I nuked the hard drive to reinstall windows and discovered that the laptop did not have a windows key on it. A teacher of mine told me about linux and thats what I used got used to. Eventually though i got a macbook and became frustrated with the outdated bash and having to use homebrew with its limited, but useful, packages. I suppose there hasnt been a last straw for me but rather what drove me away was the choices of MacOS to cater to people who only need an overpriced computer solely for social media, and Windows always updating or reseting preferences or spying or generally trying to screw over the end user. For me, Linux is the best platform to get things done.

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I started to leave windows when they replaced vista with Windows 7. For the average home user there was nothing wrong with Vista and Windows 7 was implemented to begin their spying programs. Windows 7 allocates memory for doing stuff in the background, I don't know exactly what but that is what prompted my move. Also I started college and at the time the University I went to used apple for almost everything, so that also added to my reasons for moving away from windows. So for several years I ran OSx and Linux on a couple of different machines, never really happy with either, but tended to use OSx because of the connectivity between the computer, ipad and iphone. However, ever since apple has started their crap about walled gardens and forcing hardware up grades by ruing your equipment with forced updates I made the move to use linux for everything. I have even dropped using apple phones because of their crap with dropping a headphone jack. I now use linux for my daily and only use windows for gaming.

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Have you seen Linux Sucks before?

Why I left Windows

-Windows Update is a piece of crap
-I don't want to buy my games from the stupid store
-I don't have a Microsoft account
-I can do all my word processing in LibreOffice or Google Docs

Why I left MacOS

-I bought a Retina Macbook Pro and have never used MacOS other than pressing Alt during the first boot to select my USB drive and install Arch
-Don't have an Itunes account

PCI passthrough is what allowed me to drop windows almost entirely. Before that I had been dualbooting off and on since Vista. Now I run almost all nonfree software in a VM. I have not run Windows outside of a VM on any of my computers for over a year. I have a windows 7 VM that I use when I need to use a program that will not run well in wine, and I have a windows 10 VM just so that I can see how terrible it is. The start menu is almost unusable. I work at a computer repair shop, so I use windows every day at work, and I get to see how terrible it is when it breaks.

I also have a windows 7 VM on my server that I use as a print server. I have a PCI ethernet card passed through to it. The cannon drivers for GNU/Linux were terrible, and they put dots all over the page sometimes.

My laptop is a libre x200. I flashed libreboot onto it with my raspberry pi around a year ago, so that every single line of code on there is free software.

for me it wasn't kind of last straw - rather that software I use for work (Modo) has become available on Linux.
My only regret is that I can't get all the PCs in the workshop to run Linux. There are still some major gaps in software availability (for me - video editors and industrial design grade CAD) .
I'm also a tad annoyed that hardware vendors also often do not provide Linux support (even though it got better). For example one of the 3d printers I use has all the control and job preparation software made with gtk - but still it is Windows only. And running it on Windows 10 is a pain - forced update restart during the print job is not uncommon (ok, was not - did the fiddling with the settings to prevent it ,but the point is I shouldn't have to deal with it).

Customization and not getting ripped off or spied on.

The last time I had Windows installed as my main OS, was around 9-10 years ago, after which I switched to Mac OS X. I got my hands on an old PowerMac G4 and really enjoyed the simplicity of the OS and the lack of annoyances that I was used to from Windows. A year later I bought my first new Mac based on Intel and never looked back. The main reason I enjoyed it so much, was that as a computer science student I was now able to do so much more using the Terminal.

Now few years after Steve Jobs died, Apple seems to have changed into a company that is not interested into their customers at all anymore. Prices are going up and functionality is going down. I used Linux alongside Mac OS X for a while, so I got to know it quite a bit. I also built a hackintosh on my tower PC and worked with that for half a year and it was surprisingly good, but it was still not the real deal and there would be issues here and there that you wouldn't have, if it was made by Apple.

But if I had to pin-point the exact reason, why I switched from Mac OS X a.k.a macOS to Linux was their IMO stupid move to get rid of the "remaining battery life" status indicator. Now all you get is a percentage. (I know there are ways to work around it, but at that point I had enough.)

So today I am working with Xubuntu on both my MacBook Air and also my custom-built tower PC where I run the specs that I wrote in my forum profile. I really like Xfce for its light-weight UI and also customization. Now I can buy whatever hardware I like and it will run nicely in most cases and if I do need to change things to make it work, I can find the resources online to do so.

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I haven't had a last straw per se, I use windows when I actually need to. However most of the time and update kills it, or a new rollout of windows defender shit says that rainmeter steam and all my games are viruses, doesn't keep dvorak keyboard, restarts whenever it wants, doesn't control my gpu fan correctly, doesn't close tasks in task manager all the tine more like 50%, fails to manage ram properly unless its a brand new install, slows down after 3 months, changing apps in startup works half the time......

No actually I have a lot of reasons that most windows users seem to think are stupid.

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I still have not found an OS that is better then Windows7 if iĀ“m trully honnest.
But noway that Windows10 will ever be on my system.
Because its garbage.

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Blasphemy!

Inquisitors, please escort this heathen from the Holy Land.

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lol what?

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When you take off the hatred blinders windows is a good operating system. The only thing bad about it at this point is the privacy invasion. Windows 10 was terrible due t crashing issues for me but after I recently went to 10 enterprise and it's been better. It's pretty decent... not 7 or 8.1 but it's getting there.

Sick and tired of all the viruses that were out there. I was smart enough to use sandboxie to cover my ass. However in the end I needed more freedom and less spying. I am able to do everything if not more in linux. If I am missing something special windows runs or does (itunes syncing), I just spin up a vm. KVM is your friend. I don't use apple products anymore cause of everything is locked down.

My suggestion with people needing certain apps for windows, spin up a vm and take a snap shot for certain reasons. I have been a Arch user now for 2-3 years and force myself to learn something new everyday.

For the gamers, PCI Passthrough to a windows 10 vm.. nuff said till Vulcan goes full affect.

PS I am a Windows Enterprise Admin

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So, I left a rant up towards the top, but there's plenty of other things and some of which have been pointed at by previous replies

I once bought a laptop. An HP 2000 Notebook (AMD E-300 @1.3Ghz, 4GB RAM (DDR3), 15.6" 1366Ɨ768 display, 500GB 5400RPM HDD, and an allegedly six hour battery). This laptop came with Windows 8 out of the box, and though I rather liked Win8 despite the mobs with their pitchforks and torches against it, I was not impressed. One of the feature sets of Windows is its mass hardware compatibility, in the sense that even if it doesn't work perfectly, it almost always will work. The issue I have with this, is that it leaves little room for optimization, especially on lower powered machines. The hardware is just fine to be honest, it's the software. Sitting on the desktop with no active windows should NOT take up 2.1GB of your RAM, especially when you only have 4GB available. Well, I can get past that, sure. Or can I? Besides dealing with Windows 8's background process bullhonkey that quite frankly should have been our warning for Windows 10, the window management itself, especially with the new fullscreen menu, was a menace on system performance and if you expected to multitask at all, you'd better get a refund. -tl;dr Windows is very inefficient and makes it difficult to effectively use low-power hardware.

What if it's not a 'last straw' situation? I knew what Linux was, I knew I could get it and I knew it for quite some time, but I'd never tried it. I was curious one morning before school, and I decided to give it a whirl. I was honestly so displeased with my experience with Windows 8/8.1 at the time, I didn't even care about wiping the hard drive. Xubuntu was my first Linux experience, which I had chosen because I was so sure my hardware was terrible that I went for the short end of the stick. I liked it, but I wasn't quite happy yet. It seemed faster than Windows but at the same time, felt like someone just tweaked Windows 98. I distro-hopped for a good six hours and by the end of it, I had found that each and every distro was miles better than the OS I started with. Went with Mint for a long time until Solus came out, which was an incredible experience for almost all of my machines.

MacOS isn't terrible, well it is, but it's terrible in it's own, lovable way. It just didn't appeal to me overall. Not that I didn't like it per say, it just didn't feel quite right or suit my needs. I was also a little disappointed with the way the system functioned overall whether it be filesystem architecture or hardware lockdown. Just wasn't right for me.

All in all, I've been happy with Linux overall, having a few frustrated moments when developers do stupid things between point releases and then wait until the point release to realize how much no one liked it before they actually fix it, but that's a story for another time. I believe though, a Linux OS is truly an operating system when it isn't trying to be Linux. This is why I do have a place in my heart for Ubuntu (yes, with Unity) because they're providing an end-user experience rather than focusing on marketing as Linux. I'm quite happy with it tbh. I think people hate on Ubuntu sometimes because it's actually successful beyond just being 'Linux' and I think it makes people uncomfortable to see something different in this way. Nonetheless, out of every operating system I've used, my heart goes to Solus for incredible performance, out-of-the-boxiness, and the strive and dedication to be an operating system rather than a distro.

Choices, I love choices. But with choices, come people trying to take the shit you have and give you 'options'. No thanks, I can choose any OS and I choose this one, I don't want your filthy desktop environment or poorly packaged/tested software.

So that's that. Linux overall is just empowering to the user, whether it be choice, control, or support. There's nothing else like it. Also, BSD is our lab rat.

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I wasn't very happy with using a proprietary OS to begin with, but I stuck with it for the games. When Windows 10 rolled around, and it seemed more and more like Windows was going to make me fight against it even more in the future, I got fed up and switched to Linux full-time. Some things just are more important than games.

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