I realize this is a Linux community, but I was wondering why you still hate Windows. I mean, I love Linux, but I will not argue that it’s more convenient to the average person in most use cases to use Windows, I recently had to switch back to Windows and I realized how convenient it all was and how I was missing so many things because of my love for Linux. But at this point, Linux is a part of my personality and my self-image and I will not leave it, but I gotta be honest, it’s pretty convenient being on Windows. So, why have you guys chosen to still stay on Linux? Some reasons I can appreciate include

  1. The terrible privacy policies of Microsoft. It sometimes makes you feel like your computer is not owned by you but lent to you by Big Tech.
  2. The community and the spirit of sharing
  3. The joy of “figuring it out” and customizing everything you want to the minutest details
  4. FREEDOM!!! sudo su Kinda ties into the previous points, but still one of the best selling points, the freedom to do whatever you want is liberating. You can run a server on it or you can create a script while knowing you have control over almost every FOSS app there is or just destroy your whole system with one command. Idk, feels good man!

These are the big ones, but one must realize you are sacrificing many things while not using windows too, productivity can be much greater there if you are a normie, it’s really convenient! So yeah! Give me your reasons! Also, how many of you dual boot?

  • Buffalox@lemmy.world
    0·
    8 months ago

    Hate is a strong word, indifferent is more the word I’d use.
    And I’m indeifferent because I have used (GNU)Linux as my main desktop OS since 2005, and (GNU)Linux exclusively for the past 15 years. And now even games run fine on Linux, so to me it’s all benefits now.
    So it’s just that Windows and everything Microsoft is irrelevant now, except for a classic game I still play occasionally with my wife.

    Obviously the proprietary nature with all the problems that includes, was what motivated me to shift originally, and it is also the reason I don’t even want to dual boot Windows, not if it was free as in beer either.

    1. The joy of “figuring it out”

    No absolutely not, I used to be an IT consultant, but like most people I like things to just work, and Linux has done that for many years now.
    I do however like the freedom, and that I am not prevented from configuring my system like I want to. I remember Windows having the most ridiculous mechanisms to prevent me from for instance replacing something as banal as notepad as default/system text editor. Absolutely bullocks behavior by Microsoft IMO. I am very happy to have a system where I decide, and not some company that wants to lock me into their ecosystem.

    PS: I have never tried anything Windows beyond Windows XP. But boy did Vista and Windows 8 convince me that I did the right thing switching to (GNU)Linux. Almost everybody I knew were absolutely pissed about both.

    Windows Vista was the most golden opportunity to buy expensive hardware for cheap, because it didn’t have drivers for Vista. Laughing my ass off about people who claim hardware lacks drivers for Linux, when it’s actually worse on Windows with every new release.

    • Subject6051@lemmy.mlOP
      0·
      8 months ago
       The joy of “figuring it out”

      No absolutely not, I used to be an IT consultant, but like most people I like things to just work, and Linux has done that for many years now.

      My bad, I meant that for Linux.

      except for a classic game I still play occasionally with my wife.

      Cheers to that!

  • HarriPotero@lemmy.world
    0·
    8 months ago

    I wouldn’t say I hate Windows. I’ve had Windows 2.0 through NT 4.0 installed, but it was more of an application that I rarely started because it usually just interfered with my MS-DOS programs. DESQview was a much preferable option, as it had true multitasking (yes, so did NT 4.0 - but it broke a lot of things).

    I dual booted DOS and Linux for a couple of years, but DOS box was good enough in 1997 that I rarely had to boot DOS, so I’ve been Linux only for a couple of decades.

    Sounds like I should give Windows another try.

  • Pika@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    0·
    8 months ago

    Honestly, privacy and freedom of choice alone is why I switched back.

    I will give windows credit, it’s definitely better than any other platform out there when it comes to support and it is really nice just having things “just work”. I went relatively 8 years having almost zero issues with gaming with the exception of my graphics driver which was a fault of AMD not necessarily Microsoft. All I would have to do is install a program maybe restart the computer and then run the program the way I went. With my current system I can’t even guarantee if the software I want to use will work because the ecosystem is geared towards Microsoft so every product out there is Microsoft first Unix if we get around to it.

    My only reason for switching was the lack of choice I was getting. While I never had to restart for updates because it automatically updated nightly when I turned it off so it was very non-invasive, the fact that I I wasn’t trusted enough with my computer to be able to turn those updates completely off if I wanted to, on top of the fact that every major update seemed to hard push the office suite, and every update seemed to respect my privacy less and less was already putting me on the edge of switching every time that I had it happened to me.

    But the recent rumor wave that was going through that Windows 10 when it reached end of life wasn’t going to be the same way that every other OS that they’ve had has been where they will release security updates past closing and instead they’re going to open the business only support tier to your Standard customer and offer Windows 10 at a subscription price instead, on top of the fact that Windows 11 wasn’t going to support how I wanted to set my computer up without having to reinstall it anyway, I just took the plunge and went back to Linux. Overall it has been enjoyable, but I really do miss the ease of being able to just install something and have it work that comes with being in the dominant ecosystem. That being said, It is nice not having to worry about what a mega company thinks I should run the computers that I paid for, built, and set up myself.

    • Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca
      0·
      8 months ago

      better than any other platform out there when it comes to support

      Lol, as a user Windows support is garbage. Every step is “restart, reinstall drivers, scannow”.

      None of those things are going to make windows pass all LR audio to the FLR channels of a 5.1 system, yet I know it’s possible. It can happen if enough settings are fiddled with, but I don’t know which ones, and it gets reset every reboot.

      None of those things are going to stop some system utility maxing out disk writing and freezing the system for 10 minutes every boot.

      None of those things will stop hardware acceleration from crashing my browser.

      • Pika@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        0·
        8 months ago

        Yeah that’s my fault, I wasn’t clear with what type of support I was talking about, I should have put that line at the end of the paragraph that way it was clear I was talking about compatibility as the rest of that paragraph was and not software support.

        But for the sake of responding to that comment, if we are talking about actual user support and not power user support, I think you’ll find it hard to do the exact same things you have listed there under any of the other distributions, especially if it’s using pulse audio or pipe wire as that’s actually one of the issues that I encountered switching off of windows, as my headset has a double Channel mixer on it that separates chat and game and nothing so far has been able to properly identify it as that and I had to actually go in and tell it that it had two channels and even then the current GUI programs available are not able to handle it, so if I change anything it resets it again

        • Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca
          0·
          8 months ago

          Pulseaudio can remap channels directly, so you can take a 7.1 input and output two entire stereo outputs to a 7.1 speaker system, which would solve my issue and then some. Making a custom profile is a tad more involved than clicking buttons, but CLI isn’t needed at all.

          I found a solution in under a minute that should work on most modern Linux DEs. I suppose it’s not by an official Linux support channel, but AskUbuntu was literally the first search result.

          Ah, support as in “this program is supported”. I can definitely agree with that

          • Pika@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            0·
            8 months ago

            I have attempted every solution I have found so far on remapping the channels for my headset including adding specific device profiles for it, none of worked so far. My current solution is patchwork that was supposed to split them by adding a device profile that knows how the device is to separate them(because it uses a dual channel layout, one stereo one mono iirc with one being chat and the other game), but it lacks the ability to handle/process those channels as a whole so I only can use one of the two channels at a time but since I at least have one channel that’s functional I have mostly given up on it. It’s just annoying cause that was the main reason for getting this headset, the ability to have a chat mixer to change voice call volume and game volume separately, it’s one of the few things that worked flawlessly on windows that I have been unable to get to work on the new system. I’m glad that you could find a solution that worked for you though, I have had no luck lol

            that being said, if you know of a non-cli method of setting up pulseaudio custom profiles, I’m down to try that as well, maybe I just screwed my custom profiles up somewhere.

  • umami_wasabi@lemmy.ml
    0·
    8 months ago

    I don’t know if I “hate” Windows but more like “I’m done dealing it.” I might come and use it time to time, but only when absolutely necessary, and the mental capacity to remove things I don’t need and make sure its removed.

    • Subject6051@lemmy.mlOP
      0·
      8 months ago

      .” I might come and use it time to time, but only when absolutely necessary

      I get that!

  • Peffse@lemmy.world
    0·
    8 months ago

    The “we know better than you” attitude Microsoft has. They’ve very slowly removed more and more power user functionality. Almost every customization has to be hacked in with a group policy or registry edit now, or by outright replacing explorer.exe

      • aksdb@lemmy.world
        0·
        8 months ago

        I still rank OSX higher, simply because it’s at least consistent. Windows is a fucking mess.

          • aksdb@lemmy.world
            0·
            8 months ago

            Although to be fair, WSL fixes that issue to a big degree. Maybe even better than OSX, since you get a real Linux with real userspace. WSL(2) might be the only really cool feature Microsoft added to Windows, that actually brings value for the user.

  • pelotron@midwest.socialEnglish
    0·
    8 months ago

    I dual boot, but I’ve been dreading booting back into Windows recently because I upgraded my motherboard/CPU and know they are going to make me buy another license. And I understand Windows is more convenient for a lot of people but I am not one of them.

    I can’t think of anything that is more convenient for me on Windows other than that I have to use it to run Studio One to record music from time to time. But “software availability” has nothing to do with the operating system itself; market position does. And a company’s market position rarely drives my purchasing decisions.

    I dislike Windows for all the reasons people here typically state.

    • Tippon@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      0·
      8 months ago

      I’ve been dreading booting back into Windows recently because I upgraded my motherboard/CPU and know they are going to make me buy another license.

      Windows tends to be better at this these days. If this does happen though, go through the activation process and start the troubleshooter. There’s an option there to transfer the licence from another machine. You should be able to transfer it from the same machine if Windows thinks it’s a new one.

      This assumes that it’s the same version of Windows, but in your case it shouldn’t be changing 👍

    • lordnikon@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      8 months ago

      I will say the only thing more convenient for most people is that it’s preinstalled on the computer they bought at a big box store. If that changed it would make a world of difference.

  • GustavoM@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    8 months ago

    I’m typing this from my orange pi zero 3 w/ dietpi installed… aaaaaaand I don’t really “hate”, but more like “not care about it anymore”. Sure, its privacy concerns are truly a nightmare, but eh. It’s good to have options, that’s all. Even if one said “options” can be more harmful than good.

  • plumbercraic@lemmy.sdf.org
    0·
    8 months ago

    I… Don’t? But I’ve used it since 3.11. It’s incredibly usable software, when it works. Switched recently because even I have my limits - that win11 recall even made it as an idea at the table is enough to make me jump ship. The ads in win10 pushed me to the limit, but recall is insane unless they’re literally gonna give away free hardware and software. I paid for that damn computer and bought a license - wtf. It’s not Microsofts hardware to datamine or put ads on. Paid for things with ads in them that also keylog and screen scrape and datamine can fuck all the way off.

    Saw the netbsd video posted on lemmy recently and dude said he was offended at the lack autonomy he had over his own hardware in ms and I kind of get it now.

    • TCB13@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      8 months ago

      The ads in win10 pushed me to the limit

      Never seen them. But Microsoft does document how to disable everything you would like to.

      I don’t just don’t get why do the same people who bitch a lot about Windows (not you) are unable to install Windows 10 Enterprise and read the manual BUT they are able to jump between 30 different Linux distros and spend 100x more time customizing their DE and dealing with Wine / virtualization crap. Ironic.

  • orca@orcas.enjoying.yachts
    0·
    8 months ago

    Windows has basically become malware. It does a fuck ton of tracking, and all of its features are about appeasing shareholders over users.

    If we want to get technical: I loathe it because even in the year 2024, it’s the only operating system I’ve witnessed that will absolutely grind to a halt when a third party application stops responding or crashes. There is no valid fucking reason why the parent system should be halted by an application that crashes.

    Also, ads in the start panel. Absolutely not, Microsoft. No way in hell am I allowing that to live on a computer I own. Yes, I’m aware third party apps will address that but it shouldn’t be a thing to begin with.

    Oh yeah, and it decided to automatically update itself to the latest version on my ASUS ROG laptop while the thing was closed and not in use. So upon booting it up and seeing ads in the UI, I wiped the system clean and installed Nobara. Bye bye. 👋

  • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
    0·
    8 months ago

    I find Windows significantly less convenient than Linux. It took a few years for my mindset to flip but there’s just no going back. Whenever something requires me to use Windows, I reach for a Windows virtual machine. Whenever I’ve been forced to use a Windows or a Mac machine for work, I’ve reached for a Linux virtual machine.

  • je_skirata@lemmy.todayEnglish
    0·
    8 months ago
    1. The joy of “figuring it out” and customizing everything you want to the minutest details

    Customization is my reason. I’ve got a two-monitor setup in KDE with different panels on each one. Each one is highly customized specifically to me, and the customizations can’t be done in Windows.

  • IsoSpandy@lemm.ee
    0·
    8 months ago

    I honest to god find Linux easier to use. Though it’s maybe because the most used programs on my laptop are neovim, gcc and rust compiler and Firefox . And I shit you not, Microsoft purposefully slowed down the Firefox browser I installed from their store.

    Plus I like using a tiling window manager when coding, now in Linux I have 500 options. On windows I get a middle finger and a dedicated nsa/fbi agent. Whats not to hate?

  • TootSweet@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    8 months ago

    I honestly fully believe that proprietary software is bullshit and all software ought to be Free Software. I’m not saying I don’t use proprietary software, but I don’t trust it. If I run proprietary software, I go out of my way to try to run it in prison. I don’t let my Nintendo Switch connect to the internet except when I have a very specific reason and then I disconnect it immediately after I’m done. When I bought a robot vacuum cleaner, I bought specifically the model that I knew I could hack to not phone home. I bought a phone on which I could run LineageOS without the Google apps. (And, yes, I’m running a proprietary EFI BIOS on my main desktop machine and such. But I do take a lot of steps to limit how much influence proprietary software has on me and my devices.)

  • BaalInvoker@lemmy.eco.br
    0·
    8 months ago

    I don’t hate. It’s just a piece of software. I just use Linux because I like the privacy and I’m a tech savvy person

    I don’t wanna learn Windows whatsoever, cause I can do everything I need on Linux and it serves me well