These days, Windows constantly gets in your way with ads, forced updates, crappy apps that install themselves, useless features like Cortana, forcing you to make a Microsoft account, etc. Linux or the BSDs, however, usually give you a bullshit-free and distraction-free experience. Plus, no spyware, completely free, endlessly customizable, and low resource usage (if you use a lightweight setup, but even “bloated” distros like Ubuntu and Mint are often light compared to Windows).

And what surprised me? I guess the only thing that surprised me is how easy the experience is, especially for things like gaming, which Linux has historically had a bad reputation for. Also, how nice it can be to use the terminal, not that you have to, especially as a novice user.

I was writing just writing some code one day. I then realised something, I needed to press " key twice. I thought my keyboard had died, but the behaviour was consistent so that’s unlikely. Then I realised what happened. Windows had installed and set English international as the default layout, and I was unable to switch it out in settings. Even if I manually switch to English us, it would eventually go back. And editing the registry to remove it just made all windows system apps shit themselves.

Now at the same time, I had a laptop. It had an update pending for a few weeks, but the update kept failing and hence I had not allowed it to update this time. But as I open up my laptop to code on there with the right keyboard layout, I see the update screen. THE LAPTOP WAS NEVER TURNED OFF, and it was plugged in. I waited and waited till it finally failed yet again.

Also shortly after one more of these attempts was made my windows which wiped my encryption keys and made my system unbootable or recoverable.

I had used Linux on a Chromebook before with custom firmware, all my dev work happend in wsl, and I had did a lot of projects on the raspberry pi, so for me the logical step was to completely wipe my SSD and install Linux mint. That happened about 4 years ago and I have not ever thought of leaving Linux. I did switch to arch though, so I use arch btw.

For me it was the philosophy behind Free (as in freedom) software. Call me a Richard Stallman fan, but I would love to live in a world were everyone is free to:

• Run the program as you wish, for any purpose.
• Study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
• Redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.
• Distribute copies of your modified versions to others.

Learn more at fsf.org

You may want to dual boot, especially if your classes are online. I’ve seen issue after issue using a Windows VM for online exams. But, for me it’d be worth asking a buddy or using the computer lab to get around an invasive OS as your daily driver.

I don’t have ads within my OS or start menus, I can do whatever I want with it, I can customize it with different desktop environments, if I mess anything up and need to clean install I don’t need to worry about license keys.

Also chicks dig penguins.

Windows 95 was dreadful.

Yes I am old and my knees do hurt, thank you.

The telemetry and ads baked into windows. I’m so sick of ads creeping into every corner of my life

“Hey do you wanna sign up for the OneDrive subscription? No? Don’t worry I’ll come back in three days with a popup screen just in case.”