While at university I did a lot of work on the SPARCs and this lead to Unix development as an early career for me. I moved into the windows world after that and I missed Unix so I picked up Linux around 98. I installed it on my work laptop of all things and made everything I needed work. Never looked back since although I run Windows VM for office and testing stuff.
I got into it when I started university and we started using Linux for a few programming classes. My dad helped me set up a dual boot as he had been a Linux user for a decade at this point, and I had used it for some time as well but had to switch to Windows for MS Office bullshit for school and games.
At this point it was kind of cool to use a different OS but I honestly wasn’t much impressed, mainly because of the UI which I later learned was Gnome 3 - Ubuntu had just ditched Unity, but of course I didn’t know anything about this yet.
Then I took my first internship where the first thing we did was install Linux on our computers, and the installer they gave us was Ubuntu 16.04 with the Unity desktop - which I LOVED, holy shit it was amazing, so much better than Gnome 3, and miles better than Windows. The first weeks of the internship were basically purely education, among other things an in-depth intro to Linux, command-line tools and such, and I think this was key - not being alone in the process was very important, and I’m not sure if or when I would have made the full switch without this. I started distro hopping in my free time and loved every moment of it.
This was also coincidentally when gaming on Linux really started taking off with Proton etc, so after experimenting with it, I finally ditched Windows completely and made the full switch in I think 2019, about a decade after my first encounter with Linux, and 2 years after I started using it regularly.
I wouldn’t consider myself an evangelist by any means, I won’t bring the topic up unless asked, but I will recommend taking a look and experimenting in a VM to anyone with an ounce of technical know-how. Furthermore, I think every programmer should be using Linux (yes, literally) unless it’s impossible or too painful in their case - which I think is not many cases.
Okay, I ended up typing a novel but fuck it I’m leaving it here because I loved writing this way too much.
Tiling Window Managers. Now that I’ve been using them for some years I don’t understand how stacking is the standard, it’s such a waste of time to manage stuff.
Well, my experience was always on and off: In the past, I always had my phases of trying it out, be it dual-booting, or outright replacing my OS, but always went back to Windows after a couple of months at most due to some software being Windows-only and both VMs and WINE not being sufficient.
But this year, with Windows continuing to get worse (built-in ads, the fact that it eats 60+ GB on a base install, etc.) and me needing Linux for uni anyway: I made the jump and thanks to the work being done with stuff like Proton for games and FOSS software now being good enough for general productivity, I’m happier than ever.
Obsessed? I like customizability and being able to tinker around, but in the end, it’s a tool like any other.
Curiosity. I was in primary school in mid 2000’s looking forward to learn more about computers. I only had access to the internet in school but whenever I could freely use it, I mostly spent time reading about history of software and hardware. By the time I received my first PC, which was slightly outdated (late 90’s), but overall fun. The only thing I knew was different versions of Windows and question on alternatives appeared naturally - I was wondering if that’s the only OS that can be used with the hardware. Around 2005 I was conscious of Linux existence, not really sure what it is and how is it possible that it’s free. I didn’t try anything until year later when I ordered free Ubuntu 6.06 CD, but it didn’t play nicely on 128MB of RAM. I managed to make it work anyway by creating a swap partition, however without internet connection there wasn’t that much of use. It wasn’t until 2007 when I finally got in house ADSL and upgraded the PC. Soon after I tried newer version of Ubuntu, struggled to make internet work on it (over tiny little ADSL USB modem that wasn’t well supported yet) but eventually succeeded. Fast forward 16 years later I still daily drive Linux and now work as a Linux admin.
Back in the 90s when I was in uni, it was the only way to have a unix-like development environment for C/C++. I also spent an inordinate amount of time testing linux on exotic hardware, like 386 laptops or older Macs. There weren’t many distros back then, but I tried them all: Debian, Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE, m86kLinux and even (shudder) Slackware.
It was (and still is) an extremely fun way to tinker around. But I have to say, I’m not complaining that pretty much everything works out of the box nowadays!
Most people want to stick to Windows or MacOS, and that’s fine for them if they want to put up with it. Pushing Linux or OSS in general is counter productive IMO and just puts people on the defensive. I’d rather plant a seed here and there. If someone complains about Windows on a kid’s laptop, then hey, I got an old laptop for my daughter and put Fedora on it. It was easy to install and maintain, unobstrusive and she can get everything done for school she needs. Or talking about gaming - you know the Steam Deck? You can game without Windows - Linux is a painless, drop-in replacement!
It pains me that a lot of Linux users were pushy elitist neckbeards that spent so much energy defending their distro of choice and Linux in general. The community tends to make Linux appear like some difficult, arcane way of using a computer. “First you must pass the initiation rite and choose the correct distro!” Seriously, fuck that mindset. Just download whatever, install it and enjoy hassle-free computing!
If you wanted to host your own site and services, a Linux vps was (and still is) the only choice. Back then it was Debian, nowadays I use Arch on everything. Same with Raspberry Pis when the first one became available in 2012. With university I started using Arch on my laptop and later when Proton and Wayland became good, I moved to it on the Desktop as well.
Ey @linuxguys I might install a desktop distro on a notebook with Nvidia card I no longer really use to get used to it. I sometimes have to work with Debian servers but I have no more than basic knowledge about Linux. Any distro recommendations, regarding desktop use and gaming (if the notebook is supported at all…)?
If it has those hybrid graphics setups, pop os is made to support those by default. And their flavor of gnome is pretty good, they even have a fully custom DE coming eventually.
I’ve been using Linux for a long time on various other systems but what caused me to finally ditch Windows completely on my daily driver was:
A nonconsensual Windows Update which caused my bitlocker encryption to become corrupted and I lost everything on that disk.
This unscheduled reformat combined with all the other shady practices on Windows lately cemented my choice.
It’s been several months now and I couldn’t be happier!
The quality of gaming on Linux has advanced an incredible amount in the last year or so since I’ve tried it. Most of my games will either run natively or require a few extra clicks to use proton in steam. A few outliers that aren’t on steam required Lutris.
On average I find the performance in games is better on Linux, even for non-native games using proton/wine.
Definitely would recommend giving it a shot if you are on the fence. Particularly if you’ve tried gaming in the past and were disappointed.
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