I think I didn't buy a Windows license ever. Got Win 7 free from my college and always could upgrade for free to the next version. I never used MS Office, mostly did use the Google suite. Games were the only thing that kept me, especially since I got more privacy continuous over the past few years.

I'm currently dual booting Win 11 and Linux mint as a test phase. Actually just running windows for the proprietary phone client I need for work. Otherwise I'm newly exclusively using LM right now. Though I might make the switch to EndeavourOS for it's rolling release approach and AUR.

Only thing I really hate is that there are some proprietary software like ICUE, L-Connect a proper scanning software for my printer including OCR (there is a version for Linux but it doesn't include OCR) or shitty driver support for my graphics card. But none of those are issues coming from Linux itself but rather from the lack of support from the developers. Also, I love DLSS and Ray tracing but seriously.. fuck Nvidia.

Windows licenses AFAIK are already rarely bought on their own. The vast majority of users get one by having it bundled to a new device they purchase.

I'm never daily driving Windows again, but im not sure if I will ever be free of dual booting for some games.

If you want to give back but don't have coding skills, you can always be nice and help onboard new users! There's always been this attitude of 'linux is better' immediately followed by 'rtfm n00b' when users try to get started. A more sympathetic crowd would go a long way.

I'm not such a monkey, and I could probably contribute if I put my mind to it, but I just don't have the time.... Instead I try to contribute documentation and money when I can. Everything helps!

Translate!

Spez shit the bed and now I run linux.

Fuck yeah Bitwig. I mainly chose it so I'd have the flexibility to move to Linux in the future. That and the unmatched sounds design and modulation abilities.

I'm a newbie bedroom music producer but I've actually had more luck with my audio setup on Linux than I did on Windows 10.

I'm using an older Scarlet 2i2 to record guitar and back on Windows I was always having driver issues or Windows randomly resetting the sample rate making my DAW freak out at me.

On Linux it just works right away without me needing to download or tweak anything. Only part of my setup that needed tweaking was using yabridge for a few Windows VSTs.

Easy. Every year is the Year of the Linux Desktop™.

A few days ago I tried to install Windows 11 on the PC of a friend. It didn't work because of missing SATA drivers. Anyway, I was shocked how many points there are where Microsoft or Apple (we used his mac to create the USB drive) tries to sell something (buy pro version of fan controll now) or wants your permissions to gather all your data.

I convinced him to let me install debian. When it came to creating the default user he was hesitant to use his full name, because telemetry :D

Try running those adobe apps on a windows virtual machine. Use KVM with virt-managet instead of virtualbox. If the performance is acceptable for you, now you can use Linux as the primary os and only use the VM for adobe apps. VM boots faster too because you can just hit suspend and resume it again later.

Adobe Lightroom is just about the only thing keeping my desktop PC on Windows

Have you tried any of these?
https://itsfoss.com/raw-image-tools-linux/

I work in a very large hospital. I left for 3 years and just came back. When I went to open a document at work, it opened in Libre Office. I was pretty surprised that they ditched Microsoft Office for Libre. Makes financial sense to me, especially because most of our use-cases are simply opening and reading a document or slideshow. But I was still surprised they made that switch, and I doubt half of the employees honestly even notice that much

Now, they still run Windows Desktops, and I doubt that would ever switch in my lifetime. So no linux for us. But still pleasantly surprised at the step forward

Windows 11 got quite a few people to look into trying Linux

I personally didn't think Win11 was that big of a downgrade over Win10, But I also didn't like 10 to begin with so I didn't need much convincing.

Probably a number of factors. Some I can think of that may have contributed:

• Steam Deck showing that gaming is possible on Linux.
• Windows 11’s hardware requirements pushing people to try Linux on older hardware.
• Microsoft’s recent enshittification of Windows by pushing Edge and AI so hard.
• KDE has been pushing to fix bugs and has gotten really good lately.
• Electron has made a lot of apps people really need super easy to build for Linux, so companies have started releasing apps for Linux.
• Flatpak has done the same, for distribution.

Pandemic lockdown maybe? Everyone got bored a few months into 2020. By 2021 they finally figured out their wifi drivers 🤷

(I'm joking, I haven't seriously struggled with wifi for a long time. I use Debian btw.)

Proton making Linux better for gaming, which was the biggest excuse for holdouts. Steam deck showing you could not only game on Linux, but do so while sitting in a tree, with long term support implied by show of confidence from a large corporation.

Windows steepened its enshittification spiral.

The pandemic put a lot of people in a more experimental space, and they tried a lot of shit. And a lot of people picked up new skills. Including Linux 101.

And people saw authority in general start failing in a big ways. A lot of people started questioning shit. Including corporate hegemonies.

For gaming. For gaming its 4%. Which is the thing everyone says its bad at.

Keep running it for a while and after some time 5 or 10 years you will struggle when people ask you about (basic) Windows stuff.