I use Linux because:
I switched to Linux due to two reasons:
I use Ubuntu Mate because I feel myself at home with it. It does not ruin my habitual desktop experience.
I became very tired of the whole "I know what is best for you!" attitude hanging over my windows computer. When I expressed my dismay to one of my sons, he told me all about Mint Cinnamon. So, naturally, I tried Ubuntu. Mate that is. UM is now my office machine op sys. and I am quite satisfied with it. Turns out that one DOES HAVE to learn more about computers to enjoy Any Linux distro, despite the claims that anyone can just jump out a window right onto Linux and have no problems. There is a perception gap between "what everybody who uses a computer knows" and "what a Linux Developer thinks every body who uses a computer knows".
That's OK. Linux people bring great honor the the "Geek Kingdom".
I still continue to check out other distros , having fun in the process and learning good stuff even while I get stuff done.
Thanks UM Team !
This is so true! I think it holds true in many trades, but it seems especially apparent in computer desktops.
There's also the scratch-your-own-itch aspect that drives many Linux developers, as opposed to doing it to meet some business/marketing goals (although we need those too), which drives that disconnect between developer and user.
The upgrade to 18.04 ruined my return to Linux. Too many things were broken. I filed 5 or 6 bug reports. I waited patiently for .1 and .2 but nothing got fixed. Instead, more things started to break. Finally, Wine broke---MT4 couldn't connect to the internet any more. That was the deal breaker. I was gritting it out, with CLI and workarounds, but I need MT4 to run reliably.
It was time for a hardware upgrade anyway, so the main Thinkpad is now running Win 7 again---fast and stable, with light CPU load. The 18.04 is retired to the back room, where it is mainly a media player. Even with that, VLC shows a white screen with some files---the same files show fine in Win 7. A blockchain app designed to stay connected continuously now requires periodic reboot, after running fine for months. The main reason I put up with it is because it is running a Plex media server reliably, and I've been too lazy to migrate it to Windows. At some point the old file server (also running 18.04) will die, and this will be retired to file server duty, with gladness.
I grade Gimp and Transmission A. Thunderbird an A-. Compiz a B+. Firefox a C. (I've switched to Brave as default browser.) Everything else is C- or worse. Overall experience a C. On the other hand, 16.04.x I would rate A-. If I had kept a drive image of my 16.04 install I would be using it happily right now. I just don't want to put in the time and labor of tinkering with a new install until I've got everything just right again.
Sorry, this is off-topic, or contra-topic. I made a couple of enthusiastic posts earlier, so I thought it might be relevant to report how it all panned out. I'm done. The Linux desktop has hit a glass ceiling. It's going nowhere, because the development model makes impossible a concerted focus on user experience. It makes me feel like I am its servant, not the other way around. I'm not going to try it ever again, unless a company is supporting it for profit. I will continue to use Linux as the LAN file server, and store all my data on Ext4 file system----this work it does superbly. Zero complaints.
I extend warm appreciation to the developers anyway, and to all the wonderful people who tried to help me solve things here at the forum. I wish everyone a great weekend!
I got tired of KDE and wanted something different Lol. #TrueStory
I sort of miss the idea of having alpha transparency in themes, but I understand why the project was abandoned. ARGB GNOME was a buggy mess and KDE pretty much had that look down for people who wanted it anyway, so long they were willing to deal with the KDE desktop.
MATE isn't a bad choice when coming from any other desktop environment. The whole point of the MATE project was to preserve the look and feel of legacy GNOME 2.18 and I think MATE's done a pretty good job of that thus far, if only in appearance.
If you have multiple displays, and choose to re-arrange the desktop geometry, good luck! I moved this system to another room, where the external display is on the other side of the laptop. Some of my desktop icons have disappeared. Some important desktop sticky notes have disappeared. I'm sure they are being drawn somewhere, in outer space beyond my displays. 
Now, every time I launch an app, the window opens half invisible---the top half of the window is drawn in outer space. So, I have to go to the panel button, right click and choose 'Move' and bring the window into one of the displays. If a dialog box pops up, but does not create a panel button, then of course, I cannot move it, and therefore, cannot read what it says, and cannot respond.
Good job, Tux! Endless fun and games.
Since I have made a number of negative feedbacks, I thought I should also report positive developments. One of the problems with 18.04 has been that a blockchained app has been disconnecting for unknown reason/s. For a few weeks now I have been noticing it maintaining a continuous connection, as it used to on 16.04. It has crashed once, but it is not crashing every few hours. Let's see if I just jinxed myself by talking about it.
So, it could be one of the updates fixed whatever was broken. There is my positive feedback.
I use Ubuntu MATE because it is fluid and well designed, it also has a large community. I also use Linux because it is free and made non-profit.
I speak Spanish, but I translated what I said because I wanted to give my opinion.
My experience leading up to Linux was Mac OS on the SE's in school. A commodore VIC-20 that was gifted to me as we were poor. and Unix when I was in the Military. Linux was on my radar about 1993, I don't remember exactly when Mandrake showed up in WalMart but I remember seeing the box and buying another computer just for it. I bought a Compaq laptop and getting X to work was a nightmare. I was on the road at the time and didn't have internet so I bought a copy of Linux for Dummies. It was an excellent resource and I started cutting my teeth. I miss those days and it's easy to forget when now you can download a copy of a Distribution and be up and running in less than an hour.
Ubuntu-Mate? I avoided ubuntu since day one. Can't say why I just didn't want it. But a couple years ago I decided to install Ubuntu Mate and it just felt so much like coming home again. It's how I wanted to feel installing PClinuxOS. Not to take anything from them, UM just makes me feel good, that sort of "love" you feel when everything is right for you in a system. That's why. And, in a way, it's good to come around after disliking a project for 15 years for no reason to being 100% in favor of.
Ubuntu/linux because it's free and with far less issues than windows in my opinion and ubuntu mate because it's similar to windows in comparison with Ubuntu.
Free
Ubuntu mate:
Easy to use and with no distracting stuff.
Do the job
Not heavy on computer
Linux:
Not entirely, but less intrusive
And also with this sense of learning something vs being told what is good for us so they can get it their way.
Mate is the most stable distribution. It seldom crash.
I was much too hasty in my positive feedback. The blockchain app resumed its disconnecting behavior within a few weeks. Now it is worse than it has ever been! My standing on the network is wrecked completely.
I am going to migrate it to Win 7 when I have a minute. Samba server, and Plex server---that's what Linux is good for, in my case.
I was retrenched in 2014. I needed to get a new PC, something that would get me by without a problem. In South Africa is is near on impossible to buy a PC without windows pre-installed on it. I had heard about Linux and it interested me. I found a single supplier who was able to sell me a new PC, with Zorin Linux on it. I didn't really take to that distro so I hunted the net for what would be the most popular brand. As with anything via google, you'll get 100 reasons to use this distro and 100 reasons not to. After a number of distros that I either abandoned at the beginning because I didn't understand the install or once installed I couldn't figure out how to run, I settled on Ubuntu. I wasn't terribly fond of the standard flavour and I wasn't able to install via the seeding method, I saw that most distros were derived from Debian.
I stuck to Debian for a number of years, but when I wanted to investigate GTK+, I kinda came unstuck. After battling with it for a good while, I rediscovered Ubuntu via my Raspberry platform. I found it so much easier to use and yay, it had the mate distro, which I've become so used to. I downloaded the 20-04 beta version and boy was I impressed. For a start I could connect my Bluetooth headphones. I'd given up on Debian. I wanted to see if I could set numlock on as my passwords always contain a numeric section and I'm more used to the number keypad. There were usable answers that didn't sneer at me for asking questions that may appear beneath them.
I find I'm able to do small things on Ubuntu, that Debian restricted me from doing. There's still a big mindset change that I have get myself thru, but at least if I ask seemingly simple questions, there will be someone that is prepared to walk me thru the solution and to be honest if I don't get it, will spoon-feed me the answer. I was never happy to even approach Debian forums in any way.
Yeah, but you have to remember — You have people who had answered the same questions for twenty five years. I think that's a big thing. People should search for their problem first. But the issue is, there are people who don't know how to get on, and for those instances having a fresher face who hasn't seen the same question ten-thousand times is great to have.
Ubuntu is a lot younger, with a younger audience who hasn't fielded the same questions as often, which is probably why our community supplies better and more straight-forward answers, even if the question was answered elsewhere. That, and this forum has a minimum standard of ethics when relaying information which will be handled with swift discipline if not met.
I generally research before I ask questions. I've taught myself everything IT that I know, and I get a greater sense of satisfaction gaining that knowledge on my own, unless I get really stumped.
On the contrary. Over "twenty five years", things change, and the question asked 10 years ago, or last month often times hasn't been answered, and still, some self-centred guru will brow-beat newbs for having asked it again, or they quote back a obsolete answer without checking it first.
If those who answered the same questions for 25 years (overkill?) ago hate answering the same thing over and over, they should just ignore the question because the time it takes to shame the newb could have been spent saying ''That was answered here" (and provide a good link).
I read a lot of others questions and responses and must disagree with your assumption. I think a lot of people will do their own research before finding a forum, registering, confirming, posting, waiting, and wondering. It's faster to search the Internet or Google the catalog before falling into the Forum rabbit hole. I do. After a million years (in your time-line of things 
), I think I'm very good at searching. I search here - a lot, and when I do post a question, it is because I couldn't find the answer there or here. Maybe I didn't ask it right, and if not, perhaps it is because I don't understand the issue, or most often, it's because I do not understand the response from a guru whose reply assumes I understand
Too, sometimes times I find a responder didn't read all of the question and other volunteers see it's been replied to by another onsite guru and pass it by and we don't get a related answer.
True, but again, a question answered 2 years ago may not apply to today's app, distro, release, update, upgrade (whatever they are called this week). I tried GitHub and ran when a person hit the kill switch on my post because it had been answered. Didn't say when, or where but I did track down a response and it was close, but close only counts in horseshoes and grenades.
Before I'm reeled in by anyone with "so what you're saying is that all volunteers are...". No, I'm not putting down volunteers as most of my posts here testify to so let's not go there.
Less we forget that most people are different than all others (thank a deity or Darwin for that), and everyone has irked moments now and then and the hard part is being on the receiving end of someone's ire - and it begins.
Volunteers should remember that maybe the OP DID search and couldn't find the answer because perhaps they don't understand the issue, saw a answer and didn't know it was the answer, or as myself, dove right into Ubuntu with no recent experience or understanding of it, or the language used by some responders that reply vomiting geekinese.
As one who is a million years old (according to your watch), and having been 'puting since 1981, I still get lost with all the new words for old terms.
In conclusion, before I use up my allotted bytes, I really want to see Ubuntu become the world's leading O/S; that it is the default on every new computer and Windows has a few small 'Contact your administrator' end zones. But that won't happen as long as any Linux distri(bution) flavour, colour, (version?), is still too convoluted for most people. When Linux is as simple as sitting down to Windows, then I see the day when there is the Lite version, and expensive one.
The above is just my humble opinion based on my own experiences and observations and refers to forums in general and is my feeble attempt at speaking for myself alone, not all newbs. And as for volunteers, I very much appreciate the help they have provided here, and the one thing I do agree with you about is ...
[quote="tiox, post:140, topic:12572"]
... which is probably why our community supplies better and more straight-forward answers,...
[/quote] 
~i~
p.s. Sorry, but I cannot 'like' your reply because it is too assumptive in that it seems to put too many into the same vat but I guess it only takes one non-searcher to erode the image of many.
Hey now! I do search for my problems! Also — I was being slightly hyperbolic. (By slightly, I mean stretchin' it like bread dough.) But my assumptions are not entirely invalid. I've seen it. Sometimes, I've been it.
I remember when I was asking for help with things in BetterDiscord. That place was toxic, even though the software itself is relatively great. I think some of that toxicity had disappeared with BetterDiscord becoming more popular and people knowing being angst toward others doesn't work, but I got my fair share of ire there from something claiming to be its support centre.
Part of the reason I try to be helpful where I can is because people seeking support should feel welcomed, and from previous posts here the people for Debian seem to not know how to do that effectively, otherwise @markjschafer wouldn't have expressed what I had responded to.
You do know Canonical works with Microsoft right? Just because Ubuntu may become the world's leading OS doesn't mean anything if Microsoft's got their hands in it. Then again, them being part of the Linux Foundation kind of sullies up everything for Arch, Slackware and even TinyCore because there's a strong corporate presence with a possible agenda of EEE'ing the kernel into oblivion.
Rats! I do now! There goes my bubble. It seems I can't run far enough to get away from their controlling ways.
wasn't aimed at you.
I agree with you. I just didn't make myself clear enough that there is another side to the story and too often, when I myself ask a question and am told it has been answered, the answer is sometimes "404", and the steps given in a solution are obsolete because the solution is outdated. Too often, the replier doesn't check their source, just the link and first few bits of text. Hasn't happened here though - that I can remember.
Too, for some, it might be a time-saver if they could just ask the question and move on to something else whilst they wait. Spending hours trudging through obsolete pages, close but not a answer, and so on, can as you must know, be very frustrating. That's not say it is acceptable, but that it is a possible affliction 
I was just say'in was all
~i~