First time I switched it was because I had a piece of trash for a computer and making it work with Windows was easier said than done. It was truly amazing how smooth that machine would run Ubuntu while crying to run Windows XP (t’was a long time ago) I knew about Linux before then because my father was an oldschool geek and had messed around with old Linux distros that came on magazine cover discs, so I was somewhat familiar with the idea of Linux. Still had a lot to learn.
Eventually I got myself a “real” computer, and because I’d be using it for gaming and this was before Proton was a thing, I had it run Windows. But good god it was hard to go back. And the first thing that made Windows a pain in the arse to me was something surprisingly simple: This was the Windows 7 days, and Microsoft had yet to figure out what a Dark Theme was. It wasn’t until Windows 10 that one was added, and even then, it took quite a few updates for it to appear across things like the file explorer and such.
Enshittification kept happening and such, but I couldn’t exactly drop windows at the time, I’d spent a fortune on a gaming PC and it was my only games machine. I longed to go back to Linux (even set up dual-boots for some time but didn’t stick with them) but couldn’t justify it vs the loss of most of my library.
Then Proton happened and things were good again. It took me a bit longer to actually take the leap, but when I did, I was so happy.
… Ironically, nowadays I only boot into Windows for work reasons. Specifically Adobe reasons. What a time to be alive that all my games and chat applications and (…) are all on Linux and Windows is basically a quarantined zone for After Effects. Life is good.