I’ve asked this question on the imakefoss Twitter account, so I’m asking it over here as well.
The moment I felt comfortable with a distro was the turning point to go almost entirely FOSS, what was yours?
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To me that’s equally hard & easy question 
Philosophically i’m all for FOSS software, from each possible angle it could be viewed! 
However…
If something is far from perfect in FOSS implementation and it is at the same time very complex, personally i still use proprietary stuff as drivers or with Wine:
- Nvidia proprietary driver still best for gaming performance and features
- Photoshop CC (need that for work because of compatibility mainly)
- foobar2000 (you can get some similar functionality in FOSS players, but as complete package which would satisfy my personal audiophile needs - not even close.)
I’d be very happy one day to use full FOSS though, hopefully that day will come sooner than later
P.S. Lately i’ve dropped WPS office for Only office - and very happy about that change 
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Should be in bed right now 
so I’ll keep this brief:
I think for me the greatest appeal for open source software is the fact that software could be kept alive if people wanted. So many times I’ve been burnt by old games or software not running on the latest operating systems and if I was lucky to be able to use them, it’d require a bunch of hacks to make them work. OSS means that this doesn’t have to happen. I can’t recall the straw that broke the camel’s back, but after one time too many I’ve made it a point to use OSS wherever possible.
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Started out as a curiosity, but then Windows 10 happened.
A tad unsettling to think that at one point they even published on how many pictures were opened in the Photos app since release. The traffic, even on an idle system is huge. There’s also forced updates and all that.
It’s not like I’m forced to use Linux. I was pushed to try it out and I ended up liking it. Freedom to do what you want with your system, the possibility to know what’s going on with it exactly and have communities like this.
While there’s a few bits of my system that are proprietary, I choose FOSS whenever I can.
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For me it’s a natural extension of my politics. It’s individual and community-driven, largely non-hierarchical and non-corporate (or at worst sort of para-corporate), and emphasizes autonomy, privacy, and continuous learning. And at best it’s supported by forums like this that run on principles of voluntary cooperation and mutual aid. That’s not to say that I think everyone who participates in FOSS shares my political outlook (I can think of some prominent examples who obviously don’t), but that doesn’t make me appreciate it any less.
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Honestly?
I was bored and wanted to try something. Keep in mind that I shamelessly still dual boot with Windows after two and a half year as a Linux user.
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4 months of increasing stress and not able to get on with normal things (windows 8.1). Bigger and bigger list of telemetry updates to avoid/workarounds needed. Planned to see if could manage for a year before coming over, but got too much. Tried Linux Mint and display tablet automatically worked in it. That was the moment, where I realised I could make the jump straightaway, and for gaming would just use an old console or something (didn’t know about GOG or Wine at that point). So a combo of understanding Linux is about privacy of data, choice and the freedoms, plus able to do main activity (art).
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This is me but without the dual boot. I got bored during the pandemic and wanted to try something and I liked it. The tinkering and openness of the platform rekindled a bit of the love of technology that I felt was lacking, but that I used to have. Can’t say I’ll always stay on Linux or never go back to windows or whatever.
Honestly, the platform is becoming increasingly unimportant as the move towards platform-agnostic web based applications continues marching forwards.
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I started from FOSS software cause my school promoted it ( schools use Ubuntu ) . So no switch to FOSS , already on it 
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I’ve noticed that most photos I’ve seen from Indian computer halls and science computers have Debian or Ubuntu rather than Windows on them.
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Before linux always used window xp.
was sometimes busy to download some not legal stuf later on discoverd gimp and some other stuf on free software website. and always busy with experimenting ended up reinstalling. Afamily introduced to knoppix.And later got atention to it. Mostly daily stuf is Foss software and happy my wife uses that also after some stuggle
but it came to a point after reinstalling XP dont want to use a not legal os anymore and just use my pc as what i like.
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For me it is privacy. In FOSS, someone can always check if it is sending telemetry back home, but in proprietary software you have to trust companies and corporations, which I don’t.
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Around the year 2001/2002 I began looking for an alternative to Windows XP because the OS became more and more uncontrollable (Registry, DLL, system control…). I discovered Mandrake Linux and gave it a try. Of course it was a pain to get used to a new operating system but at the same time it was liberating.
And this feeling, or discovery, let me stay with GNU/Linux and led me to a point where I decided to go with dual booting Windows/Linux.
But it’s not only the lack of control that bothered me, also political and ethical reasons caused me to engage more into GNU/Linux.
My computer is only for private use and pleasure. Since one has to purchase the products of Microsoft there is a vendor/customer relationship and that’s it. But while I’m using FOSS products I have a guilty conscience because I don’t give anything back to the community like money or collaboration.
My working life is slowly coming to an end, possibly I could invest more time in learning to be able to support the FOSS.
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Just using FOSS, reporting bug reports and helping other people out is also giving back.
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Get a room, you two!! 
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Yes, of course you’re right 
It’s only me who thinks that it is not enough 
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My turning point was after buying a nice little 2-in-1 laptop. It struggled with windows 8.1 and suffered under windows 10. Ironically, the vendor “recommends windows.” Initially, linux struggled with the atom baytrail system (ca. 2015) but eventually it ran quite well thanks to the Ubuntu/Asus T100 G+ group, among others. And Linux doesn’t decide when to update itself or pre-assign the user name/account. And it isn’t that hard to ensure privacy. Once I set the privacy settings, updates don’t reset them.
Most of my daily computing needs can be met with a simple office suite and a browser. There are plenty of suitable apps and wine for everything else.
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To me it wasn’t about FOSS I was just sick and tired of windows either breaking or not working properly and making simple things just so god dam hard. I’d really had enough so I gave linux mint a try (4 years ago). I was shocked at just how polished linux was and how everything just worked, no over complicated bull from Microsoft. Best thing I ever did, hate having to use Windows, recently switched from debian bases to arch and loving it
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Freedom. Freedom to choose what I do with my system, freedom to own my data, freedom to make my computer do my bidding without restrictions imposed by a corporation. Oh, and freedom to break it and keep all the pieces
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I use FOSS because I own my computer and FOSS respects that. I find EULAs of most proprietary software to be completely unacceptable: they take away the users’ ownership over their hardware and software.
I care about privacy. I spent my childhood under a communist regime which had a huge state surveillance apparatus. I know that governments are capable of anything and I don’t want programs running on my computer to help them in that regard. Also, I hate huge tech corporations like Google and I don’t want to give them data that they can sell to advertisers.
The turning point for me was learning about universal back doors in windoze. I wanted to switch to Linux a long time before that, but I was lazy and stuck in a comfort zone, but that was the last straw for me.
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