When did you start using Linux and why?

[AA BB]

In Nov 2019 my Win 10 hard drive failed.
After installing a new drive, I ran my Win10 recovery USB and tried to restore a 3-month old system image..it totally failed. This was the first and only time I had to use the Win 10 recovery drive and was extremely disappointed it didn't work given the many hours I spent doing Win10 system image backups since Win10 first appeared in 2015...so I decided it was time to dump Windows.

After many web searches, I decided to give MX a try even though I had no prior Linux OS experience ... best move I ever made.
About 95% of everything I did on Windows, I can now do on MX.. The other 5% I can't do in MX (even with Wine) so I'm not completely Win10 free.

I trying to learn as much as I can about MX and Linux as I can, and find the MX forum a great asset, but I badly need a good Linux reference book focused on major Linux system apps, as opposed to shell/script programming

[Bonzoo2525]

A "friend" tricked me into installing Xubuntu 13.10 and then I accidentally deleted Windows with those wonderfully confusing partitioning tools so now I'm stuck. I miss Windows :-(

15 minutes on a tube vid and that never would have happend

[KX5JT]

Fits and starts when Ubuntu first came out just trying to relive my MS-DOS days but quickly found the CLI to be a bit more complicated, which is why it was fits and starts.

Anyway, I've noticed more and more clunkiness with Windows 10, ended up getting a Raspberry Pi 4 to do some ham radio digital modes and viola! LINUX again! So, once bitten again with the power of that small device being driven by linux, I tried a few distros on my my laptop and ended up shrinking my main Desktop's Win 10 partition down to half the Terrabyte drive and dual booting MX Linux about a week ago. I rarely boot back into Win 10 now!

[Head_on_a_Stick]

A "friend" tricked me into installing Xubuntu 13.10 and then I accidentally deleted Windows with those wonderfully confusing partitioning tools so now I'm stuck. I miss Windows :-(

15 minutes on a tube vid and that never would have happend

There are YouTube videos warning about the dangers of installing Linux? Damn, I wish I had seen those before burning that Xubuntu installation disk...

[BV206]

I started using Linux full time in 2016 when I had a Windows 7 to 10 upgrade fiasco because the hardware wouldn't work properly with 10.

Before that I dual booted Linux and Win 7 for several years and I had played with Linux occasionally since about the late 1990s when somebody gave me a Knoppix live CD (or something similar) that only booted to a command prompt.

Recently I bought a new PC that came with Windows 10 and the first thing I did was erase the SSD and install Linux on it.

[seaken64]

A "friend" tricked me into installing Xubuntu 13.10 and then I accidentally deleted Windows with those wonderfully confusing partitioning tools so now I'm stuck. I miss Windows :-(

I laughed out loud! Of course I don't think you're being serious!

Seaken64

[imschmeg]

I had been using Linux in VMs while having Windows on bare metal for many years back in the 2000's. At some point, a particular Windows Update came in that totally bricked my laptop. I don't remember the year, better that I don't. Fortunately, I had sufficient experience with Linux in VMs to make the transition on bare metal smoothly. I was able to get that same laptop back into shape running a variety of Debian-based distros - and it is still running perfectly well now on MX (now with an SSD replacing its aged HD). To me, the most important difference is that Microsoft treats its customer base as if they were sheep, while every Linux I've used (well, maybe not Ubuntu when it insisted on its Unity crapware) treats its users like actual people. I had at one point also used Macs, very early in their history. Remember that small screen and the bomb error message? But I didn't (still don't) like the idea of paying a not-that-small fortune for very pretty but not more practical hardware, most of which went into assisting Steve Jobs to spread his jerkdom around instead of going to the devs that deserved it.

[freemedia2018]

Fits and starts when Ubuntu first came out just trying to relive my MS-DOS days but quickly found the CLI to be a bit more complicated

it took at 5-10 years of using it before i liked it more than dos.

i got that it had more features, but dos was easier to use. of course the hardware support in gnu/linux rivaled dos even when puppy still used to 2.x kernel. i was looking for usb drives that the kernel could support-- knowing that xubuntus support was better.

[Bonzoo2525]

A "friend" tricked me into installing Xubuntu 13.10 and then I accidentally deleted Windows with those wonderfully confusing partitioning tools so now I'm stuck. I miss Windows :-(

15 minutes on a tube vid and that never would have happend

There are YouTube videos warning about the dangers of installing Linux? Damn, I wish I had seen those before burning that Xubuntu installation disk...

No danger of....simplistic instructions How To. A fourth grader can install most distros these years and put the check on " install along side"

[manyroads]

Trust me no one cares when & why I chose Linux... probably not even me. :lipsrsealed:

But it was some 20+ years ago.