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?

  • SavvyWolfEnglish
    44•3 days ago

    I like being in control of my computer.

    Windows and Android have this attitude where they decide how you want to use your device and block customisation. And the fact that they feel entitled to be able to change how your device looks and feels without warning or permission is something that’s deeply uncomfortable to me. There’s also this feeling of not knowing what my device is actually doing, and how much of my data it is actually collecting.

    With Windows, there’s also a lot of small papercuts that make it annoying to use (and that my Windows friends don’t seem to understand):

    • Lack of middle click paste.
    • Lack of the ability to drag windows using “alt”.
    • You can’t turn off the window previews in the task bar.
    • You can’t disconnect from a wired network connection from the connections list.
    • Sometimes the computer just restarts on its own for fun.
    • Finding settings is a pain because they keep adding new settings menus.
    • Whatever garbage the start menu is doing nowadays.
    • Installing software and drivers is a pain.
    • The attitude that you have to download (or buy!) third party software for core features that should be included in the OS.
    • It doesn’t support my keyboard layout, and the editor for making new layouts is terrible.
    • The bitlocker password entry doesn’t respect your keyboard layout. Or clear the entry when you get it wrong.
    • Windows licenses are a pain to manage.
    • Managing the bootloader just sucks.
    • The registry just kinda sucks compared to dconf and/or text config files.
    • Font rendering is ugly, imo.
    • I don’t care about edge, fuck off with that shit.
    • I can’t change the volume by using the scroll wheel.
    • Launching a pinned app on the task bar causes all the other pinned apps to shift around so I misclick.
    • Device letters are not stable if you add or remove devices.
    • It just resets settings sometimes, because why not?
    • It can’t be installed to a partition that isn’t the first partition on the disk. This is not mentioned anywhere, nor is the error useful.
    • It’s just bad for developing on, due to lack of tooling.

    … Whew I ranted for a while there, didn’t I? Yeah, I dual boot Windows for the games that either don’t run under protonwine or the devs want to add a rootkit to.

    • Tlaloc_Temporal
      1•2 hours ago
      • Lack of middle click paste.
      • Lack of the ability to drag windows using “alt”.
      • I can’t change the volume by using the scroll wheel.

      These feel like DE specific complaints rather than Windows complaints. I wish I could use windowkey to switch applications for example.

      Changing sliders with mouse wheel does sound cool, I want that.