As a FreeBSD desktop user from the mid 90s, I held out for a LONG time before installing my first linux OS in my home. I still don’t really feel comfortable on any of my linux boxes, but I guess it’s been well more than ten years now.

Last year sometime. Frustrated by Microsoft’s latest tomfoolery, I decided, “eh, might as well give Linux another shot, it’s been a decade or so since the last time.”

So I booted up my fifteen-year-old desktop computer as a testbed before I put it on my daily driver laptop. First I booted it into Windows (7, because that’s how old it is and it couldn’t hack Windows 10) to see if there was any data I needed to pull off of it, and predictably it was an awful experience. Slow? Try glacial. Constantly paging out of memory. I had to put it in safe mode without networking just to get it to boot all the way up. I grabbed everything I thought I needed and breathed a sigh of relief that I was done with that.

Then I put Linux Mint on it. And…wow.

Like, I knew Linux did a good job on older systems, but this was unbelievable to me. It was snappy and responsive in a way that it has literally never been. The thing ran like butter. I was flying around that OS, installing games, setting up backups, even trying my hand at a bit of light self-hosting.

But the real kicker came when I installed VirtualBox. See, I have one program that I still need Windows for; an Adobe program that some people I work with still use. So I installed VirtualBox and put Windows 10 on there, fully expecting to clown on Windows for a few minutes but just hoping I’d see enough to know whether it would be usable on my laptop.

But no. Windows 10—which, when I tried a decade ago, couldn’t run on that machine at all—ran almost flawlessly in VirtualBox on Linux. I mean, it wasn’t the quickest thing ever, but for a modern build of a more-or-less modern OS on a computer older than my marriage, it was honestly amazing.

So, when did I go full Linux nerd? When I discovered that it can run Windows better than Windows can.

There are a few other things, too. The software manager, the customizability, the lack of ads, the unobtrusive updates… And at some point along the way, I realized that it actually felt like my computer, which is a feeling I haven’t felt in ages.

It’s a great feeling.

Earlier this year when I made the switch as I was getting blue screens at least once a day while gaming. Initially to endeavoros with cinnamon, then switched to Hyprland.

There have been some fixes that make me wonder at what point am I tinkering vs implementing a fix that should be included in the base version of the Linux flavor… Many rabbit holes over the last 6 months, many more to come.

It was far too recent for somebody with my background. I learned how the UNIX command line was different from DOS in the late 90s, but it was only last year that I switched from a VM to a native Linux install at work. Then I swapped over the home PCs during winter.

After defaulting to Windows for so long because of games and employers favoring it, it was almost frustrating how fast, smooth, and “clean” feeling it was to install Linux natively on a system compared with the recent versions of Windows. And that’s without any special lightweight distro. I am a proud Linux Mint Cinnamon user, lol.

0.92

Some time after I went OpenBSD and then FreeBSD nerd.

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TL;DR: Smart sibling ahead of the curve told me in 2011 that tech jobs will be the future and naturally I didn’t listen, fast forward to 2016 and my contract job laid me off so I started learning Python (as advised by smart sibling)

I start making all sorts of stupid stuff mostly CLI programs, beginner alg problems. beginner alg console games and so on.

Suddenly I realize I probably know enough to make something real, start slowing learning new things and always think “hmm a real software dev probably does x” and then try x.

Went from CLI stuff to web APIs, then full stack websites, then platform specific gui programs, then learning C++.

And at some point it clicked that this stuff is a lot easier than I thought (I had literally no concept of what programming was before)

I apply for an associates in tech program, just before starting I decide to use Linux to get more familiar with dev technology.

I picked Arch Linux btw, had some issues btw, overcame issues btw and then I landed a job during school as a dev and I kept using Linux as dev.

So it was mostly about getting to understand dev landscape more

I use CachyOS on my desktop (I game), and Arch Linux on laptop (by far the best laptop user experience with tiling wm)

Long about 2015.

When I saw Windows 11.

When I got frustrated with Windows around 2019 and I had spare time I decided that enough is enough and spent a couple of days to take the time to learn Arch Linux and all of its quirks.

Around 2020 I started tinkering with NixOS as well which culminated as my NixOS configuration.

Although at this point I’m going back to Arch Linux as I actually know how to fix and make modifications faster and better than I could on NixOS.

Uni, around 2019! Had a professor on the web team who encouraged all students to do the entire uni education on Linux.

All tools and course material was tailored to work on Linux. Hand-ins, exams and anything related either functioned or had custom solutions built by the teachers, student and professors on the web programme.

Everything was open source and if we found any bugs we could just open issues on GitHub. Weekly hand-ins were done on the student server on your own instance of the web server.

In almost every aspect i think that programme was so well tailored for learning real web dev work.

I got my start with linux as a student looking to do astronomy. I didn’t have any issues with windows that got me to switch; just liked it more for its own sake. I think I went full nerd when I realized how to compile my own stuff and set environment variables. I also really liked having a package manager.

Every few years since the mid 2000s I’ve dual booted Linux (often Ubuntu) briefly before removing it again and just using windows and then I stopped for many years. I’ve gradually become less happy with windows, increasing ads and tracking but then the announcement of recall made it clear I had to switch. I was going to wait but then windows 24H2 update broke my Bluetooth audio so that was the last straw.

I installed endeavourOS on a separate drive and really liked it. GNOME at first. Then I installed nixOS and for me was almost perfect but I couldn’t get a few things to work like PIAs GUI app and doing some software development was more awkward than I liked.

Now I’m back on endeavourOS but with KDE plasma and it’s great.

Uh, just yesterday. Installed NixOS (with KDE) because I learned Debian at work, but am really missing the ability to track what I’ve installed via configuration. I like the idea of dotfiles in a repo, but want a bit more control like that for my OS.

Context: I’m a data engineer that writes Python. Python has pyproject.toml files (toml ~= ini files) where you can specify which libraries you want to use, defining which version you minimally, maximally, or just specifically want. And I wished that setup existed for Debian as well, but it doesn’t. So after searching I found that NixOS is pretty much the closest thing. Windows 10 is EOL soon enough, so might as well switch beforehand and not wait until the last second.