I’ve been a lifelong Windows user since Windows 3.1, and truly feel that Windows 7 was when Windows was at its peak. Windows 11 was the straw that finally broke the camel’s back, with all of the constant pushing of Copilot and Office 365 and ads in the start menu and so forth. Fuck that, I bailed out about 2 years ago.

I’ve dabbled on and off with Linux since Ubuntu used to be distributed on free CD-ROMs, but never stuck with it for long, but things have come a massively long way since those days, and now Linux is very usable as a daily driver for many people. I feel like it brings my computer back under my control instead of someone else’s, and isn’t always trying to sell me out in the background. I eased into it with Linux Mint, and Fedora 44 with KDE is now my distro of choice.

I still have a Windows 11 installation on a spare 256GB SSD, but I only ever boot it up about once a month just to let it update itself in case I need to use it for something I can’t figure out a way to make work on Linux.

FYI: Windows only

Big business tends to be on the other end of the political spectrum

Silicon Valley is rotten to its core.

Lol. Lmao, even.

Dell already offers some models with Ubuntu on them.

I kinda want one of those, they’re cute. No bluetooth support though, and only supports up to 256GB on the MicroSD slot. Fine if you just have MP3s but you’ll eat that up pretty quick with FLAC.

*EA made good games. Not so much nowadays. Also, really it was Bioware that made these games, EA is the publisher that later bought them out after Mass Effect 1 had completed development.

Neither would I. They can deduct it from the running tab of money vending machines have stolen from me over the years, the pricks.

100%

Ghost of Tsushima for me

FOR REAL. When my Fedora setup gets some system level updates that it would like a reboot for (kernel etc), it takes maybe 20 seconds to install them. Windows monthly update on the same hardware would take fucking ages to install before it reboots, then ages again to complete installing post-reboot.

Fuck that ‘new outlook’ garbage.

Yep, IT worker here and all of our client machines run Windows 11 with all the usual Office 365 stuff. Most of our servers run Windows too. A small amount of servers are Linux-based, usually VMware hosts and some virtual appliances. Broadcom is fucking us over a barrel on VMware licensing/support but the inertia is so strong that the powers that be won’t even entertain migrating to something like Proxmox. Something something Gartner top quadrant…

Work provides us relatively decent Dell Latitude hardware but we are stuck using the corporate Windows 11 image.

If they’d let us bring our own tech I’d be on a Thinkpad running Fedora and just use remote desktop to access all of the Microsoft shit.

I dabbled with Linux on and off several times over the last 20 years but never stuck with it for long, usually because of some giant pain in the ass getting some piece of hardware to work properly, plus I like to play games too and that used to be a huge stumbling block.

Microsoft’s escalatingly shitty behavior around Windows 11, combined with how much desktop Linux has matured with things like Proton/Heroic Launcher/Bottles solving most of the compatibility problems finally pushed me over the threshold for a full switch to Linux.

I’ve been running Linux-only (first Mint, then Fedora) on my laptop for about 2 years now without problems, and finally took the plunge on my desktop PC about a month ago. Massive props to Proton for making this feasible now. I have Windows 11 installed on a spare 256GB SSD that I had just in case there was some kind of show-stopper that I needed to go back to, but haven’t booted back into it since making the switch except for one time to check that it works.

Once the gaming problem was solved (I’m not worried about kernel level anti-cheat because I’m not into that type of game), the last thing tying me to Windows was Adobe Lightroom. I do miss Lightroom and I’m not as skilled using the FOSS alternatives to that product, but I just decided ‘fuck it’, Adobe are assholes with them making Lightroom subscription-only anyways.

It is so nice not being nagged to use one drive or sign in with a Microsoft account and have bullshit slop content shoveled at me by my operating system any more. Seriously, fuck outta here with that no-local-accounts horseshit.

Anyway, not going back any time soon.

AMD GPU over here.

KDE got upgraded to a mainline version in 43, not just a separate spin.

I play a bunch of Steam games on it. I also have some Epic and GoG stuff through Heroic Launcher. I haven’t tried any pirated stuff.

I have that 8bitdo C64-styled keyboard. It has kailh box white v2 switches and aspherical keycaps, and I love that combination. Just feels right to my fingers and sounds great too.

I’ve become quite the fan of Fedora with KDE. Running Fedora 43 on both my couch Thinkpad and my gaming desktop. Only issue I’m having with it is sleep functionality on the desktop, which just sucks (it likes to not wake up from sleep) so I have that set to not go to sleep, just turn the screen off when idle.