What made you finally run for the Linux hills?

[MikeWalsh]

@Leigh / @Rocketing-warp9 :-

Were you guys aware that, despite being released almost 12 years ago, Trusty is STILL under support - called "Legacy" support - for those who've chosen this option?

• The 'standard' 5-year LTS support cycle ended in April 2019.
• This then led into "Extended Security Maintenance" for another 5 years.....ending in April 2024.
• Further to this, Canonical announced last November that they were extending LTS support windows for yet another 5 years beyond even ESM....into what's being called the "legacy support period", all the way out to April 2029.

This was backdated as far as the "Trusty Tahr" - it being the oldest LTS release to receive such extended support - and it explains why the Trusty repos STILL haven't been archived, and continue to be accessible even now....

....and will still be accessible for a little over another 3 years.

Version timeline

Release history

(Read paragraph 2....)

That's unprecedented.


Mike.

 

[dos2unix]

For me, started off in the apple II, and Commie64 world, this was before there even was a Micro$oft.
Started using Unix in military, long before I ever used Windows, was a Mac guy for a bit, but never
used Windows as a main driver ever.

 

[wizardfromoz]

What made you finally run for the Linux hills?​

I pressed the wrong button by mistake.

 

[rado84]

I think I've mentioned it before but whatever, I'll say it again. Chkdsk. It didn't like something on the stupid NTFS and rebooted the computer forcefully, then at startup the "cancel" option didn't work. Chkdsk's idea of "fixing" a filesystem is to erase everything on the storage. I lost almost a terabyte of data. I recovered 99% of it over the years ever since, but some of it is unrecoverable. That was the final drop for me and installed Mint as a secondary OS. Using Mint I replaced chkdsk with an empty text file then made it read-only, so that it can never be used. In under a month I saw how much faster Linux was compared to Spyware, so Mint became the main OS and Crapware 7 became a secondary OS, fully enslaved by me. 2-3 years after that I completely removed Crapware from my computer.
So to answer you question what made me run for the linux hills? Microshit made me.

 

[MzQ1NjExN2]

its the Raspberry Pi that is where I learned about Linux in 2020.

I was fairly knowledgeable about tech stuff up until the Pentium 2 or 3 days then I stopped keeping up with computers. I was so bad that I didn't even know how a router worked or what it really was. Getting my hands on a few Raspberry Pi's completely remedied that. Initially I bought one because I thought it was a cheap and space saving purchase but I ended up going down a massive rabbit hole. Never thought I would be using Linux like this and by the way I can build my own routers now.

 

[Mauvve Knight]

What made you finally run for the linux hills

Apples policy regarding EOL for their laptops. When you buy the newest MacBook you get the first 3 years full support (updates, security updates, repairs). Then, between 3 and 5 years only updates. Then, between 5 and 7 years you only get security updates. Then, when your MacBook is between 7 and 10 years old you only get security updates when the vulnerabilities are to big. Older than 10 years Apple declares your MacBook obsolete and you get no support in whatever way. In Apples vision you have hardware which is way too old. But: past let's say between 2010 and now hardware has become more reliable and it is gotten common your laptop keeps functioning well.

What else can you do in such cases? Exactly: install Linux. I have installed Linx Mint on my MacBook Air from 2012 and MacBook Pro 2020 and I'm wondering why haven't made that decission earlier?

 

[gvisoc]

As I said in another thread earlier this year, curiosity:

Post in thread 'Why did you start using Linux?'

Jan 8, 2026

Curiosity!

I was in my last year of high school, and my brother was in second year of the degree we both studied. The labs of 2 out of 3 majors were run on Linux for all their respective subjects: Telematics on Red Hat Linux (5.2 at the time) and Communications and Signals Processing on Debian (Bo), so my brother came one day with a bunch of floppies, a CD of the Red Hat, and a very thick manual, and we got to install it on a 400 MB partition. It took us about 5 hours to leave the computer with a dual boot with Windows 95 and everything restored (applications and data), as that was the...

• gvisoc

• 

It's worth mentioning that, even acknowledging how bad Windows was back then, I hadn't started using Linux because of it. Back then it was just bad, as in poor quality, not such an assholey-evil product it is today.

 

[Iamgeese]

I too used Unix early on and when I could not get a program I wanted/needed in the windows world and it was available free of charge on Linux I made the move. Though I still used Windows up to Win 7 I haven't used Window on any of my machines since 2000 or so. Linux has provided all I need. except one app that I used wine to run. But no longer need that app so am totally Windows free and Linux is my only OS. Though I do distro hop quite a bit just to see what the differences are. I did use some of the BSDs for a bit. But Linux is and has been my only steady OS for awhile.

I actually miss Windows 7. Everything worked, no bullshit. I still have the physical disk with the license key. Wish I could just load and run it, can only run it in a virtual machein now.Dont Know how I would run any software in it because some of the stuff, you have to have an internet connection.

 

[Iamgeese]

Apples policy regarding EOL for their laptops. When you buy the newest MacBook you get the first 3 years full support (updates, security updates, repairs). Then, between 3 and 5 years only updates. Then, between 5 and 7 years you only get security updates. Then, when your MacBook is between 7 and 10 years old you only get security updates when the vulnerabilities are to big. Older than 10 years Apple declares your MacBook obsolete and you get no support in whatever way. In Apples vision you have hardware which is way too old. But: past let's say between 2010 and now hardware has become more reliable and it is gotten common your laptop keeps functioning well.

What else can you do in such cases? Exactly: install Linux. I have installed Linx Mint on my MacBook Air from 2012 and MacBook Pro 2020 and I'm wondering why haven't made that decission earlier?

I tried to install Zorin on a Macbook pro from Mid 2009. The device still works, so well built. No software updates. Used it for a good ten years before I was basically forced to stop using it. Zorin ran far too slow on it tough.

 

[Iamgeese]

I was fairly knowledgeable about tech stuff up until the Pentium 2 or 3 days then I stopped keeping up with computers. I was so bad that I didn't even know how a router worked or what it really was. Getting my hands on a few Raspberry Pi's completely remedied that. Initially I bought one because I thought it was a cheap and space saving purchase but I ended up going down a massive rabbit hole. Never thought I would be using Linux like this and by the way I can build my own routers now.

I tried to build a simple robot with a Pi Zero, but got stuck on the automation part. Discovering what a Raspberry pi was just blew me away. But I think its one of the most important things I have stumbled upon by messing around and just reading magazeins.

I couldnt belive there was an operating system outside of Windows or Mac, I felt like I had stumbled upon some sort of hidden knowlage since I had never heard of it anywhere.

 

[Iamgeese]

OneDrive. When MS started billing me $1.99 USD per month to keep my files on their machines and there was no easy way out. Basically holding my files hostage. Then I started hearing about "Recall", screenshots sent to "the cloud", AI assistant "Seeing what you see" able to answer questions about your bank accounts etc. No sir. I will bite the bullet and spend the weeks/months it takes to get Linux to work on my old personal computer. -BA

I am convinced that has to be illegal. By forcing people to upload their files to the cloud without giving them an option is bascially theft. Then to top it all off if they have a a huge cyber turdstom and lose your files you could actually sue them. I can smell a lawsuit comming. Probably backrupt them if it happens enough.

My dad had this crap and he is very tech savvy, it pissed him off so much and took him ages to get around the problem.

Red Star OS is a North Korean operating system and had features very similar to Recall and Recall should really be called Peepers Creepers, and slogan "Sam Altman is watching everything to doooooooooo".

 

[Rocketing-warp9]

Macbook pro from Mid 2009.

I actually used to have one along-side my 2011 that I'm on now. With that, if you're interested Lubuntu does run well on my 11' and that's not too much different. MX25+fluxbox is usable too. Not blazing fast, but it works.

 

[Rocketing-warp9]

I couldnt belive there was an operating system outside of Windows or Mac, I felt like I had stumbled upon some sort of hidden knowlage since I had never heard of it anywhere.

This reminds me of when I first heard of Linux back around 2019... At first when My uncle was running it on his IMa c And he told me about it. I thought the logo at first was the Firefox logo.... (Oh Boy..) But since then, Slowly figuring more and more of it out.