what was your inspiration?

[linux noooob]

What inspired you to switch to Ubuntu? Was it a video an article or a picture?
I was reading through articles and eventually I got to one that seemed not to interesting but when I watched the video linked at the end I was hooked to Ubuntu! (http://www.computersight.com/Operating-Systems/Linux/Read-This-Before-Dumping-Vista.137118)

[gijsisok]

Because I wanted to try something other than Windows.
I had heard from it on a computersite and then I went to www.ubuntu.com. First long tried it on an old computer and since the end of 2007 I use only Ubuntu. Then I was in love with Ubuntu and the open source philosophy!

[tuebinger]

Around 2001 or so the seed was first planted by a computer programmer friend of mine. (We were talking about computers crashing and he said he uses Linux, which never crashes).

He said he wouldn't recommend it for me, though -- said it's not very easy to use. I didn't give it another thought until...

Six years later. Now I'm a happy Ubuntu Linux user.

As for how I learned about Ubuntu specifically... Once I decided I wanted to try Linux, I just googled and read up on the different distros. Ubuntu kept coming up as the most user friendly.

[chucky chuckaluck]

i was bored with windows ME.

[grossaffe]

well i had a freind with a bunch of 6.10 cds lying around. I asked him what it was, and he explained that it was linux. he showed it to me on his computer and i thought it was interesting. I kept the CD around but didn't do much with it for some time. Then I saw a video showing of Beryl's graphical capabilities and thought that was neat. still didn't do anything. then I entered computer science class in college where the professer got the point across that he doesn't want us using windows. I still had my 6.10 cd lying around, so i would pop it in from time to time and run on the live CD. I was tired of running in low graphics mode (new video card means no drivers on a n old disk), so I downloaded a 7.10 disk, installed it on my computer, and haven't regretted it one second.

[Sand & Mercury]

Screenshots and word-of-mouth

[Acglaphotis]

I got a virus :/

[_DD_]

I've just quickly skimmed that article you (OP) linked to. I'm intreagued to know if he was drunk when he wrote this...

Macintosh and windows both have a UNIX base. Pretty much what it means is that they both interpret the OS into 1's and 0's and the computer can do with it as it wants. What makes the operating systems different is how the OS interprets software into software that the UNIX base can translate into 1's and 0's.

Windows is UNIX based!? Now there's something I've never heard before :D And technically Mac 0S X is a fork of BSD, but that's kinda a fork of Unix so w/e.


Anyway, my inspiration was a link to Knoppix I clicked on a few years back. I inquisitively downloaded the ISO to see what I would get and was pleasantly surprised. I went back to Windows for a while until I had a spare computer to play "lets install SuSE" with and got comfortable with it on there before I started dual-booting.

[Mazza558]

I can't remember exactly, but it was something along the lines of "how awesome would this be if I could use it properly - as the only OS on a computer?"

[Sealbhach]

Saw an article on BBC website about Mark Shuttleworth and thought: if he's gone into space and now he's working on a Linux OS I have to try it out!


.

[AndyCooll]

My conscience.

After years of using pirated software my conscience got the better of me. I bought a legal copy of XP and went in search of free software. I found Firefox, oOo and GIMP for instance.
Problem was I was running four pc's and simply couldn't afford licences. So when I came across open-source software and then Linux ...I was interested!

I looked at a few distros and tentatively started off with Fedora ...and liked it. I started dual-booting one of the pc's. However a couple of issues held me back. Then I came across Ubuntu, tried that, and everything did indeed "just work". It wasn't long before all my pc's had Ubuntu installed dual-booting, and then Ubuntu only. That was three years ago, and I've never regretted the change.

:cool:

[Midwest-Linux]

It was Vista that inspired me to go to Linux. In early 2007 I needed another computer but could find no XP computers in the brick and mortar stores. Thats what started me on my journey.

[gameryoshi600]

In 2007 I tried linux. heard of it before 2007 but couldn't go to it because i used my moms computer.

[gameryoshi600]

My conscience.

After years of using pirated software my conscience got the better of me. I bought a legal copy of XP and went in search of free software. I found Firefox, oOo and GIMP for instance.
Problem was I was running four pc's and simply couldn't afford licences. So when I came across open-source software and then Linux ...I was interested!

I looked at a few distros and tentatively started off with Fedora ...and liked it. I started dual-booting one of the pc's. However a couple of issues held me back. Then I came across Ubuntu, tried that, and everything did indeed "just work". It wasn't long before all my pc's had Ubuntu installed dual-booting, and then Ubuntu only. That was three years ago, and I've never regretted the change.

:cool:

this applies to me too! i started with ubuntu though not fedora.

[d80zoom]

Windows Vista!

When Microsoft released Vista, it was not ready, poor driver support, and you practically had to buy a new computer, all of that got me fed up and looking for an alternative. I found Ubuntu, and love it, and will never touch another computer that has Microsoft Windows installed on it.

[zachtib]

I was a Linux user before Ubuntu was around, and at one point I handed out burnt copies of The Open CD, which doesn't exist anymore, but it was a collection of open source apps for windows: firefox, thunderbird, etc.

They were partnering with Ubuntu (and now, it's basically included on the Ubuntu Live CDs) and I hadn't heard of it, so I gave it a try. This was version 4.10. At first I wasn't impressed with it. I was used to SuSE and RPMs, and I couldn't figure out how to install software with apt. I went back to SuSE, but almost a year later I tried Ubuntu again, this time 5.04, but I quickly updated it to the 5.10 beta. I think it was largely because I was sick of KDE (which I used on SuSE) and I wanted to try a Gnome based distro. I've been hooked on Ubuntu ever since, and it's my primary OS both at home and at work.

[bufsabre666]

exploration and just a love for opensource

[RiceMonster]

My friend in class used Gentoo with Fluxbox, and the fact that you could change pretty much whatever you want grabbed my attention. After a lot of thinking "I'll install it eventually", one day I just decided I may as well. Haven't looked back since.

[Pinoy915]

I ended up getting an extra computer. It was running Windows XP slowly so I started looking at distrowatch. For some reason, I started off using Xandros. I thought it was ok at the time and I was learning my way around Linux. I decided I wanted to try something else and I saw that Ubuntu was #1. I also found a howto guide for Hoary Hedgehog. Since then, I have been using Ubuntu mainly and testing out other distributions.

[Yuki_Nagato]

The FIRST Robotics Team I mentor on has a few Linux people there. They are quite sneaky at pushing Linux. They never force anyone to use it, but after hearing about it for a while, you just get overcome with curiosity to try it. And then you stay here.

[cardinals_fan]

What inspired you to switch to Ubuntu? Was it a video an article or a picture?
I was reading through articles and eventually I got to one that seemed not to interesting but when I watched the video linked at the end I was hooked to Ubuntu! (http://www.computersight.com/Operating-Systems/Linux/Read-This-Before-Dumping-Vista.137118)
I'm glad I didn't see that video. It would have put me off Linux. Ugly and pointless!

I wanted more control over updates than I got with Windows, so I switched to Ubuntu. I've happily hopped between distros and have settled on Slackware and NetBSD.

[Trenchbroom]

Virus. One of those nasty ones where you have to run a diagnostic program, attach it to a bulletin board and hope that some nice person can diagnose your issues out of the dozens posted that day. Frustrating that doing your best to keep your nose clean (virus checker, running malware scanners weekly, keeping away from the "dark side" of the internet) was no longer good enough.

Boredom. I've always liked tinkering with computers since I was a kid. Had an entire day with nothing to do, I had heard that Linux had improved rapidly with hardware drivers over the previous few years and of course, the dream of being virus-free was extremely compelling so I gave it a shot. First Knoppix, then Ubuntu Hoary.

[Lord Xeb]

What inspired me is that I like to tinker and I happened to stumble upon Ubuntu and ordered it. I tried a dual boot but ended up messing my MBR up. At the time, I didn't know that you could fix it so I said "screw it, I am going with Linux" thus, now I use Ubuntu. I love it but I do miss XP hear and there.

[IvanIvan]

My laptop is my "work rig".
I do stuff for college, programming and other "serious" tasks.
Windows became unstable and slow, so I decided to switch to Linux and since I've already had Ubuntu in VMware for 2+ years I decided to completely switch to Linux.
...and then it was good. :)

[lswest]

A Finnish friend of mine (a few years back, 4 or 5) told me about it, before which I'd only really heard of it in passing, and had been using a VM with debian in it (rarely, but it was there). He told me about it and then I decided to install it, which I did and I've used it for the past 4 or 5 years, just recently moving over to ArchLinux.

Basically I switched over (to Linux from windows, my reasons for switching to Arch was just because I was curious ;))because I was looking for a challenge and something new to play with, I've always been interested in computers (both breaking AND repairing :P) and thought I'd try it because it seemed cool. Also, my PC (at the time) wasn't a powerhouse at all, it would lag incredibly in XP when doing a bit of multi-tasking, so Ubuntu was a relief. Anyways, my inspiration was my willingness to learn and the fact that I was looking for a challenge, and that I wasn't completely unknown to Linux at the time. Oh, and it took me a few years to join these forums, mainly because a) I didn't need to ask for help, used Google a lot though :P b) I didn't really know about them and c) I didn't think I could do much for the people posting questions yet, so I decided to wait until I knew a bit more, and well, here I am. Happy UF member since April 28th, 2007

[Lord Xeb]

This was another reason I switched. Linux is so fast compared to when I had windows on this machine. I was amazed at the speed of which things loaded, shut down, etc... the boot time was actual 175% (or something around there) faster than that of windows. I <3 you Linux <_<

[zxscooby]

I was bored with windows.
I got tired of spyware and viruses.
After switching to firefox I became more interested in open source.
Saw screenshots of compiz.
Built a new desktop and didnt want to pay for the OS.

[angry_johnnie]

Sheer curiosity.

I didn't have any viruses or spyware, and my computer, however old and rather weak, wasn't exactly crawling under Windows.

I was just curious about Linux, and that was the reason to dual-boot first, and to completely switch, a while later.

I still dual-boot my desktop pc... but there's plenty of space there, so I'll just leave it like that. :-)

[djdarrin91]

I got bored with ******* and was also tired of shelling out money for it,so i googled "free OS" from that point i was hooked,about a month later i started using ubuntu 6.06. I have used ubuntu ever since:)

[UniverseA7X]

Well. I came upon Ubuntu in quite a different way. I was using the Qemu emulator on my mac. And there was a menu that said Download OS from oszoo.org. Among them were openSUSE, and Ubuntu. I think it was Hoary Hedgehog. I never thought of the idea of a free OS, I questioned the security and reliability of something you didn't pay for.

But was I wrong. I headed over to the ubuntu website and downloaded the .iso. When I read about having ubuntu on the macbook as well, I instantly installed it with boot camp. Ever since then, it's been installed on many computers, reviving many from the dead.