If we're counting dual-booting, then around the time of Windows ME.
If we're talking about when I wipe all drives and left Windows in the dust, then around Windows 8.
Windows 7 was the last Microsoft Windows OS that I truly used as a daily. I dual-booted between Windows 8 and Linux and finally got fed up and wiped the system clean.
@nixCraft On that note, imagine my surprise when Gnome started looking like Windows 8.
It was no loss on my end. I have been a KDE and previously XFCE user. Today, I still like KDE, but also have played with LXQT. -- strange as it sounds, I find if you install both, they tend to compliment one another.
@nixCraft it’s been about two years now. Started using #linux as a daily driver after being frustrated with setting up development environments in Windows
@nixCraft
Used Linux since Win95 came out. I'd bought a new Dell with Win95 that crashed like crazy. So I went to the bookstore that my friend managed (Toronto Computer Books) to get a book or get advice. Right there on the counter was Red Hat on CD with promises of stability, etc. My friend wasn't around so I bought it. I'm a professional accountant that had zero knowledge of Linux, so after I installed it I stared blankly at the command line. Next day went back to to get a Linux book.
@nixCraft For how ever long Windows 10 has been out, it crapped out my laptop at the time, and I needed it to work for educational purposes, now I manage my own linux servers, and is slowly converting windows servers at work to linux when possible.
@nixCraft
About 20 years. Looking at these comments, it sounds like a fair few of us got into it at around the same time. I do reckon about 2006 was when hardware support started getting to a pretty good place, plus Ubuntu came on the scene.
@nixCraft Since 2008, so 15 years at this point. I was a die-hard Apple fanboy before that. Back then I was using MacPorts, the predecessor to HomeBrew, and I kept on running into problems trying to build free software with the Mac OS X C/C++ toolchain. I noticed that you had to have a GCC toolchain to build pretty much any interesting free software.
So I though to myself, "you know, I keep trying to use Linux software on Mac OS X, why not just switch to Linux and not worry about porting everything?" Also, iTunes tech support had screwed me over recently and I was ready to quit on Apple forever.
At the time, Netbooks, especially the EeePC, were a popular category in the personal computer market. I liked the idea of a tiny laptop that was easy to carry around. I bought myself a Dell Inspiron Mini 10. I bought mine with Ubuntu pre-installed on it.
Linux was better than Mac OS by a long shot. I was so happy with it I never looked back.
@nixCraft I actually don't, but more because I always come back to the fact that gaming just still isn't really where it should ideally be in Linux (which isn't Linux's fault to be clear.) I've been using Linux off and on quite a lot though which I guess started maybe around 2000 or so. These days I consider it a necessity to have a distro handy at all times if nothing else to fix things (especially a live distro is handy.)
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