What made you change to linux?

[Pete051]

I'm just curious how other people got into linux. For me it was a CD on the cover of a magazine, PC World I think of SuSe linux, I forget the version but it was about 7 years ago and it was a case of first install linux, then X windows, then the desk top, etc.
In other words a real pain in the delicate regions, but interesting, I'm the kind who likes to tinker and with Windows (95) thats impossible, it goes wrong, reinstall, there is no other option, but Linux you can play with, you can fix.
Ok, the learning curve was like the north face ot the Eiger and the help was not written for beginners and it took be months before I figured out how to connect to the net.
But I stayed with it, going on to Redhat, Mandrake and anything else that came on the Magazine cover. I think the distro I kept longest was SuSe 8.2 about 2 years btu that was also the only distro I bought ;)
For the last 2 years I've had only Linux on my machine, Ubuntu for the last 18 month and now if I have to use a Windows box it feels slow, buggy, the help system is just patronising, In general, inadequate.
So I can't see me going in for Vista or any other of Mr Gates offerings in the forseeable future :(
How about you?

[DigitalDuality]

I've played with linux off and on for a long time before making the switch. The problem with "playing" was i always had my windows or mac alternative to run to if something became a pain in the butt. I soon figured out, I'll never learn linux this way. Frankly i love learning about as many OSes as possible.

I got a B.S. in Networking... and between schooling for that and just experience over the last 10 years i'm probably at the same level as a MSCA or MCSE (probably somewhere in between what is expected anyways). I spent about a year on mac's and learned my way around in how to handle them in a business environment...so linux is the next step. But it's more than just learning too.

I've always been a fan of open source software, but so addicted to user friendliness of Windows and even Mac. I always used as much open source stuff as i could on those platforms, but bottom line .. i was still supporting and using something i disagreed with in terms of political beliefs. So now's the time. I have time on my hands, and found a distro with a wonderful community for support, i know quite a few people personally who can help me out and show me the ropes at times with this distro in particular. So i'm willing to dig in and put in the effort.

It would also be nice to be able to list at least a basic proficency with a distro on my resume. I'm currently working (managing and tech work) a small tech company that caters to small business, i think open source software and solutions would be a great thing for me to offer other small businesses as an economicly viable alternative. Charge them for machines pre-setup, but not for the apps or OS of course, and charge them for maintenence and support and various other services (building them a website, setup an e-mail server if they so wanted that, etc...) The little man in today's world can't really compete with huge software costs.. i might not be making the money i could doing this, but i can feel proud of what i do.

[majikstreet]

I don't remember.

[Mr_Grieves]

Open source, more freedom and the political side of it.

[PuNGS]

I like the open-source concept and the idea of fixing it myself.

[AMD64_N_Linux]

I concur, the same thing that inspired William Wallce, Steven Biko, Thomas Jefferson, and so many other revolutionist and rebels.

FREEDOM ...


.... as in getting out from under the tyrrany and oppression of a tyrant

[xequence]

Windows ME being so horrible.

[r4ik]

I build and repair W machines both hard and software section.
Not hard to understand why i made the switch is it.

[DigitalDuality]

Windows ME being so horrible.
lol you know... if i had actually had a machine with that OS on it.. i might have made the switch alot sooner.

[Alpha_toxic]

Actally Win XP itself...
And in particular a message box saying "preparing to copy" that stood there for at least 5 min (!!) when I tried to copy a 10k file to the floppy...
I was somehow used to 98's crashing and stuff, but this one was a bit too much for me. The last drop if you want. Even now I can't stand beeng near XP. I'm allways afraid sth will break down any moment.

[ahave2005]

I've been on and off linux for years, since 1997. Back then it was allmost impossible to have any sort of sensible support for a newbie. It's been like that for years, I think the reason for this is, that it's easy to talk about stuff you allready know.

It's also been a problem for it staff to talk to clients about computers in an understandable language. We probably all know the situation, when we have to explain what spyware is, without getting technical.

I've been around since the happy MSDOS days. Back then it was a huge leap, that you could have a standard that applied to all IBM compatible PC's. And I would say thats the reason MS ever got so dominant. We (computer nerds) embraced this form of standard, because it did our job so much easier.

But with linux it was a bit harder. It has a very steep learning curve, untill recently. When I started to try out linux, there was nowhere to find help in an understandable language. Linux users where big time nerds who didn't understand much about communicating their skills to others not so savy users. Being one of them myself.

This has changed along with with society and the way we communicate issues to eachother.

So I tried Ubunbtu back in september 2005, and this time I got stuck. I've allways liked the idea behind linux, but never lasted more than a few weeks. It changed with ubuntu, which was much hyped during 2005. I've tried a lot of distros in time. But when you got ubuntu installed, all you had to do was find the excellent manual on ubuntu 5.04, and just install whatever the creator pointed, and then you had a working computer. That has allways been the problem for me, that whenever you installed linux, you endend up with an installation where you couldn't do your daily routines, because you had to instal stuff, not really documented anywhere.

Theres problably a good few of you now thinking, why can't you do that when I can??? It's not that hard to figure out where to find the information... But hey, it has been.... Thats why Ubuntu is such a popular distro. Install-goto webpage-find information on how to get a computer that actually function-examples on commandline code-GO. This is what seperates ubuntu from other distroes as I see it. It a subjective opinion I know, but there must be a reason why ubuntu has become such a popular distro, since its basically a debian distro.

Its a new path on the linux highway, and whether its going to succeed it to early to tell, but its on right path, especially with this absolutely excellent community.

All the best to linux, Ubuntu and other distroes
/ahave

[Azion]

For me it was dig deeper.
You can get your hands alot dirtier with linux

[rfruth]

I got tired of dodging all the Windows malware + breezy is open source !

[Stereotypical Rage]

I got tired of trying to fix SP2, one month after it came out. It BSoD on me and I never went back. I used Knoppix for awhile till I found Warty. I haven't gone back since. I've been MS free since August 2004.

[matthew]

I wanted to use my computer to do things rather than spend all of my time trying to protect it by constantly scanning for viruses, spy/adware, trojans, etc., and needing to defragment my hard drive weekly as well as fear the always imminent BSOD while I was in the middle of something important.

I stayed because I love the FLOSS philosophy and was incredibly pleased with the Ubuntu version of that and the community here. Plus, I love to tinker.

[cowlip]

Azureus can crash Windows 98 and is basically unusably slow to download

And on XP, Azureus is still slow to download and upload and it got worse after SP2. Ubuntu is much faster with downloading

[dcast]

My dad told me about it (although he has never used it and didn't like it when he tried) I tried warty and it was good though frustrating in a few areas and im now on breezy and I love it.

[professor_chaos]

Choice and security. Mostly choice.

"Maybe we should drop the defensive shields?"
"A superlative suggestion sir, with only two drawbacks: one, we don't have any defensive shields and two, we don't have any defensive shields. I know that, technically, that's only one drawback, but it was such a big one I thought I'd mention it twice"

- Cat & Kryten

[chiefofthejojos]

I switched for several reasons. First and foremost, because open source is sharing and reusing instead of reinventing the wheel and I want to be a part of that. Second, because I also like to tinker. Finally, because I couldn't afford Windows anymore!

[super]

just curiosity.

[nchancock]

I'm too poor to afford software (med student w/ family) and my wife told me I couldn't pirate stuff anymore. :( Thus my expedition into the OpenSource Realm.

Now that I've had a taste, though, I'm never going back. And when I have the cash, I plan to donate heavily.

[grid-itc]

Easy - sick of Micro$oft BS.

[fuscia]

LOL at all the losers bashing windows ME. if dillo worked on ME, i never would have switched to linux.

[AMD64_N_Linux]

LOL at all the losers bashing windows ME. if dillo worked on ME, i never would have switched to linux.

If you LOVE MS so much, why are you here ?

[augied]

I had a stomach bug or something and was really bored. Never looked back.

[DigitalDuality]

Azureus can crash Windows 98 and is basically unusably slow to download

And on XP, Azureus is still slow to download and upload and it got worse after SP2. Ubuntu is much faster with downloading
Azureus for windows is a piece of crap. It's not to great on OS X either. On both OSes it's a bloated piece of software that doesn't work worth a damn. This isn't particular to the OS though, but the software itself.

[JimmyJazz]

one day I decided to find out what all this Linux stuff was all about so I installed it on my computer and after a few week I stopped using all other OS's (I had/have both XP and OS X). It was an easy decision for me, love at first boot if you will.

[fuscia]

If you LOVE MS so much, why are you here ?

LOL!

[galgoz]

I changed to Linux for several reasons as well.

1. Money
2. I choose not to pirate so Open Source is the answer
3. Love the community way it is handled and supported
4. Tinkering is fun
5. MS lack of support for older OS and the system requirements I have seen for the upcoming Vista ](*,) ](*,)
6. After the first boot, it just felt right, the other peoples comment about love at first boot makes since.

[Naglfari]

I'd had a Warty CD in my desk that I'd had for months. A co-worker had given it to me, and I'd put it in a drawer and told myself that I might play with it someday.

Then one day, my windows PC has a near catastrophic failure. It would not connect to the internet, it couldn't find it's own CD drive or USB ports; and it had been almost a month since I'd backed up my photographs, so I had over 100 of them on the HDD that I couldn't get to. So, I used the Live CD to start the system, get to my photos, connect to the internet and load them into Yahoo photos. I found the forums somehow while messing with the live CD, and read them over for a couple of hours. By that evening, I'd run the install CD, ditched windows, and haven't looked back. :)

[hen3rz]

Im a big fan of open source software and windows became too boring.

[ahood]

Good question, for me (back in 1998 ) it was.....

(1) Got tired of paying for antivirus software and downloading antivirus definitions.

(2) I realized that money in software was on the decline, mostly by the number of software companies that went out of business, sold to other companies, or became small, in the last 1990's .

(3) I didn't (and still don't) 'borrow' software, so using something for free sure sounded like a good deal.

Why do I use Ubuntu linux?

(1) Simplified interface - I actually like the Gnome interface!

(2) Stable (doesn't crash - leave computers on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week)

(3) I spend very little time maintaining the PC - most of my time is actually working and playing (can't beat that!)

(4) Closer to the Debian core than some other Debian based distros.

(5) Large repository software

(6) Love the fact that I can move from one release to another without installing from CD (just do an upgrade). Cool feature!

(6) It just works!

(7) Ah, its free!

(8) Doesn't require as much security software - thank goodness!!!!

(9) Linux is an exciting environment to work in - development is rapid (don't have to wait years for the next release)

(10) With linux, I can do what I want without being hassled, nagged to death, draining my wallet, compromising my system, compromising other peoples systems, or fearing the monopoly.

What can I say, Ubuntu linux is great!

Dr. Hood

[Iandefor]

A bum Windows install, and my friend's Windows 98 install disc got stepped on. No way in heck was I going to pay for another copy of Windows. I'd also been suffering from guilt because I was supporting Microsoft by using Windows (I have serious issues with MS), so I figured I'd cure that by going total OSS.