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[–] Lucretius 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

While I don’t have any data in this regard, I think that an important part of those making the transition to Linux are power users, as beginners would rather stick with Windows for the familiar experience.

I agree. I stuck with Windows as long as I could, but once the a-volitional updates became the norm, it was a bridge too far.

For years before that, it had been necessary to uninstall, sabotage, bypass, or disable the layers of crapware and protect-the-user-from-himself settings that windows shipped with. It didn't require much skill to do this, because under the crapware, the core of the Windows was still a power user's OS, and there were plenty of hacker tools and tweekers to help.

When Win8.x came out, MS got it in their heads that they wanted to redesign the way people interacted with their machines. And we, the power user community, responded as we always had: with a bevy of tools, and hacks, and bypasses to redesign it right back. But this time was different because this time it was backed by a change in the MS Windows business model, one they wouldn't back out of: Windows as a Service. That's really what Win10 is, not an attack on the Desktop so much as an attack on Local Computing. It is therefore necessarily an attack on user control which has, as its root, physical control and ownership of the hardware itself. A-volitional updating is one form this usurpation of user control takes… the user installs a feature bypass, like a start menu replacement, and the next update, which can not br avoided, uninstalls it.

To mainstream users, very little is changed. But to the power user, Windows had been broken out of the box for DECADES… taking away our ability to hack (fix) the system made EVERYTHING broken all at once.

5 years ago I moved to Linux Mint. Yesterday, I switched to Manjaro.