You summed it up! 
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For me, the turning point was when I was successful on Debian, which meant that the X server started. At the time, because of this, a lot had to be configured, today it is natural that a DE works without almost any intervention.
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I wish I could say that I was driven to FOSS by my high ethical principles, but I really came to FOSS because I’m cheap.
Several years ago, when the motherboard on my main home computer died, I challenged myself to build a new reasonably powerful computer from scratch, for the least possible money. So I bought the case, motherboard, CPU, fan, power supply, and hard drive, and put them all together. Needing an operating system, I considered Windows 10 (which I was already using on my notebook computer, and generally liked), but it cost money, so I decided to try Linux Mint instead.
To my surprise, Linux Mint was easier to install than Windows, and it worked at least as well. Moreover, it didn’t take long to find the free software I needed to get nearly all of my work done, and it all worked really well, too.
It was only then that I became familiar with the FOSS philosophy, and I am now wholeheartedly committed to it.
I became bored with Linux Mint after a few months because I wasn’t learning from it anything new about how the operating system works. So, after some distro-hopping, I ended up on Manjaro, which afforded me the opportunity to dig deeper into the nuts and bolts. I’m now on EndeavourOS, and love it even more!
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I have always been the computer guy although that was not my job. Windows 2.o and 3.0 were a mess. Used Unix mainframes for most of my early work. In 1998, I dumped windoze and never looked back. I installed Mandrake, the installation went perfect and Mandrake set the servers up for me.
micro$oft recently send me two email recently. I will share those tomorrow.
gary
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Microsoft made me do it. I came through the broken Windows! 
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I started using Linux and FOSS became something I kinda had to start using. Before then, it wasn’t something I cared about on Windows/macOS.
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Windows Vista was the bail in the coffin. Went all in on Linux, never looked back.
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See, I lived thru w 3.1, 98 (98SE was great btw, 98 was not) and ME.
Compared to any of those Vista was amazing. Never understood the complaints.
Now W98, WNT3.5, ME and 8? Yeah I’d get it if you bailed then.
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Afaik Vista was slow for most people due to how many new things and fancy animations it had. Plus a lot of people were nettled on how many UAC prompts it gave them. Pretty sure W7 was a re-release of Vista, just streamlined.
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I must admit one thing about W8 (and 10):
It was the first OS from Windows that had BOTH realistic minimal hardware demands AND actually a smaller footprint than the OS before it.
Meaning: Compared to W7, W8 both demanded slightly BETTER hardware to let itself be installed BUT actually used less resources after install.
In comparison W Vista was the last OS that had unrealistically low minimum specs, meaning it could be installed, and was pre-installed, on computers that really couldn’t handle it. Windows 7 was still heavier than W Vista but at least had realistic specs so people couldn’t update to it if the computer couldn’t handle it, which helped making it being remembered as such a good (for Windows) OS.
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Used all of them. Vista was hell from UAC to 6 BSODS/day on a brand new max spec laptop. I had issues with all of them, but Vista was it’s very own special turd.
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I thought there were only broken packages. 
Broken Windows can’t be repaired, just reinstalled.
Vista wasn’t that bad if you put it on a machine that could handle it. M$ waaaay underspec’d the minimum requirements on Vista. It really needed like 4-6g of Ram to work well.
Win7 did a much better job of handling the Ram, and they yanked a bunch of frilly useless crap out, and imagine that it could run on the same hardware. 
FOSS for me has kinda always been about sticking it to the man. I’ve used Linux on and off for a long time. With the additional w10 telemetry and other crap, I switched to Linux on my latest laptop, and am really enjoying it.
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Niiiiice!
Welcome to EndeavourOS btw! 
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Welcome to the community 
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I wish I had that. 
What was your turning point/motivation to use FOSS?
For me it was a discovery that my computer actually behaves as mine. I can kill a program if I don’t like it. I can customise it to my liking. And I don’t need software from some shady sites (AUR is not shady, right? 
). Linux gave me a lot of insight on how the computer works.
And second point was troubleshooting. When I searched for some solution I only found a lot of topics “I have that problem too” which is nice that I am not alone but it doesn’t help me a bit. 
With linux my problem is only to chose one of several possible ways how to solve my problems. The amount of problems I have with my instalation are pretty minimal anyway.
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Welcome 
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Thank you everyone, for your warm welcomes
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Welcome aboard!
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What was your turning point/motivation to use FOSS
I guess it was multiple factors:
- Being young (around 8)
- Having a cheap first computer
- Having parents that let you do what you want with your toys
- Having no money (goes with the age I guess)
This at least is what made me start using FOSS and more specifically Linux.
However I only started to feel comfortable with it once I started being able to help others (around 2012).
What was a big boost to the confidence in FOSS is when I started making money while using FOSS tools (around 2017).
I am now even considering leaving a well payed job simply because they want to move away from FOSS even more and this goes against my convictions.
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