this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2023
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Hey everyone,

I am exploring switching over to Linux but I would like to know why people switch. I have Windows 11 rn.

I dont do much code but will be doing some for school. I work remote and go to school remote. My career is not TOO technical.

What benefits caused you to switch over and what surprised you when you made the switch?

Thank you all in advanced.

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[–] JustARegularNerd 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My dad always tells me about how it drove him insane for days that Windows XP couldn't detect the HDD, but it showed up totally fine in BIOS. He ended up taking it to a computer shop, and the bastards didn't even tell him about the F6 floppy (instead they charged him double what was quoted because their techs had to 'learn how to do it').

It was only because they somehow even screwed that up, what should have been a simple setup of Windows XP, and he had to reinstall, that he finally learned from the internet that he needed the F6 floppy.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ha! I ran a little computer shop for 6 years starting in 2008 and never knew about the f6 floppy until today

Well TIL

[–] JustARegularNerd 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, it was nicknamed the F6 floppy because Windows XP setup would say "Press F6 to load a SCSI driver" and you would hit that, select the driver from your floppy, and continue setup.

I've even seen vendor's websites call it F6 Driver because the unofficial name was so ubiquitous

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

To be fair I remember that prompt, and if I was playing around with some fancy new HDD configuration and the customer bought in a job as "install windows because I can't even" the ball would have dropped on the first go and I would have worked it out pretty fast I reckon. No way I would have jacked up the price on your dad.

[–] JustARegularNerd 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I work at a (much more legitimate) computer shop and we wouldn't have up charged on that either. What we quote is what we quote, even if it blows out to 10 hours instead of 1, that's on us not on the customer.

That computer shop my Dad went to, he learned afterwards from study mates that the shop had done that to multiple people for various different jobs, and they're constantly changing names but I'm pretty sure it's the same business running even today.