6d ago

How is your Linux Adventure going?

Probably like many of you i switched to Linux. I first used it in 2012 when i heard about it in School. Back then i used Ubuntu, but could not figure it out how to play my Games on CD, DVDs and Steam so i switched back to Windows.

Over the Years i often tried it out again but had various problems with it.

Now, thanks to the Trump Donald, i have a real reason to no longer use Microshaft Proudcts. Our Boycott!

So far i tried Linux Mint, KDE Neon, Kubuntu, ZorinOS, PopOS, Debian, Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Gnu Guix, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Arch, Antergos. That is over 10 years.

What i found out:

i dont like gnome, i find the ui weird. xfce is too cobbled together imo and ugly, lxqt too.
i like kde and budgie
im currently on kubuntu and gnu guix :)

Im too much distrohopping bevause of small annoyances. its not a good time spent! lol

31 comments

Swapped to Linux 3 or so months ago, and have loved it. Doing Arch Linux, wanted to see every component go into the OS and just get a slightly better understanding of my computer - even though I think most educated people could use it with little complaint.
Games mostly just work, most software I use is there, I've found some fun new programs like an ASCII art and dithering image converter which has just been fun.
Last night I broke my system by trying to use my yubikey as the sudo requirement following some instructions that weren't explicit about the caution I should have had. Loaded a backup via the Konsole and was back to before my fuck up in 5 minutes - mess up to fix (through freakout). That's given me a lot of confidence in the stability of the system.
I also got to play the Arc Raiders Alpha test. I've written about this story before but it didn't work the first day but it was clear to me it was a server issue or proton issue. Second day a patch came out and I was able to play it no problem. That gave me a lot of confidence that good games, even good online PVP games, will come to Linux without much issue.
Between those two events I'm pretty confident I'll be on Linux for the rest of my life and if Arch continues to get support that's where I'll be for the foreseeable future (which it seems like it's only speeding up and not at all in question of their funding).

I switched around 7-8 years ago and pledged to stick it out despite any annoyances.
About a year later I needed to use windows for a job and found it incredibly annoying to use. So much of it is just what you are used to.
These days I love gnome and tend to use OpenSUSE or Fedora

Started testing Linux OS around 2003. Never really commited, until late 2020, where I removed Windows and switch to Arch Linux full-time.
Now, after 4 years of Arch, I switched to Fedora Workstation. I kinda miss the Arch repos and the AUR, but Fedora is doing a lot of work that I would have had to do myself on Arch.
Well, you gotta sacrifice something to gain something. Equivalent exchange and stuff.

Honestly, I have only ever used Ubuntu and that's it. I am seriously baffled by people that keep distro hopping because of non critical reasons. I mean that is quite the hassle, isn't it?
Ubuntu is decent, looks decent, gives me what I expected.
I only ever would switch to arch, just to annoy people that I meet by telling them that I use arch btw.
- i got annoyed by snaps

I started in the previous millennium. My longest running distro was Ubuntu. Now I switched to Mint Debian Edition.
- why did you switch?
  
  Snap was an issue, but mostly I like being closer to the really free and stable OS Debian.

I'm on Linux Mint since a couple of years. It took me some time to set it up and I don't understand how you guys distrohop so casually. I'm not a huge customizer, but it takes me days to install apps, connect network drives, change settings and synchronize accounts!?
But I love Linux and I will not go back. I make music with Bitwig, edit video with DaVinci Resolve, pictures in Gimp, LibreOffice, Evolution, Syncthing, it's all great! I ran into some minor hickups and challenges but managed to fix them reading on the internet. Yet I still feel like there is so much I don't understand. Managed to play some games, my Nvidia was never a problem. But I'm not a huge gamer so this wasn't a stress test. Flatpak is cool but updates are huge, a couple of GB every couple of days. I'd like to try an unmutable distro but I'm too scared to set it up and learn about it, never change a running system. So I'll stick with Mint for now. :)

Switched 14 years ago and never looked back. When friends ask me for help with their windows machines I'm astounded how bad it's gotten. Advertisements, forced tracking, forced account registration, dark patterns. Back in my day™️ people mostly switched for the performance and stability. Windows is no longer an operating system but an excuse to sell value-added services.

On my 26th year of using it, and I think I'm beginning to get the hang of it

Broke my teeth with endeavour because of the bluetooth. Using bazzite for the moment and it’s fine since.

I tried Kubuntu once. It was so much less annoying than Windows, that I basically forgot to go back to Windows and used it as my main OS ever since.

All good, I just expanded the Linux partition that I set up a couple of years ago as a "test". It's sadly been a couple of months now that my GPU just dies randomly on some fullscreen games, an instability that I can't replicate on the windows side of hell...
Edit: Pop_OS

I think I've been using Linux for something like 20 years now. And Free Software (in general) has given me a lot of useful tools and nice things. Though it felt a lot more like an adventure to me when I was young. It still sometimes does, but I don't think I spend that much time distro hopping and messing with application software and games these days. And a lot of things got easier. I feel it has always been the best option for me. I know my way around, my computer works most of the times and I'm able to do stuff with it. Occasionally I'll have a look at other people's computers and fix their printers or little woes and I'm always glad I don't use those kinds of operating systems on my machines... 😅
- in october when windows 10 is eol i can switch a laptop to mint or ubuntu... or maybe 10 ltsc if the person doesnt want.

It's going. Currently, I'm on Bazzite and it's doing well enough for my purposes, but Nvidia support on Linux is so shitty that I'm still not sure if it's worth it. I still keep a dual-boot of Windows for gaming, since a lot of stuff just flat-out doesn't work and the logs point me to unresolved issues with my drivers. A lot of simple games work out of the box, but it seems like anything online and anything requiring real horsepower requires me to be on Windows to work.
Aside from that, I do basically everything else in Linux, but I don't really consider that to be high praise. It'd be almost impressive if it struggled with basic internet browsing and video-streaming, though even that hasn't been perfect. I remember having some issues with certain webplayers trying to use Opera on Ubuntu, but I haven't noticed any issue with Firefox on Bazzite.
I'm still not 100% on Atomic distros. It kinda feels like I have someone standing over my shoulder saying "No, don't change that." I think with how much of a novice I am, I actually need that. I've definitely bricked OS' in the past by not fully understanding the commands I'm executing. However, it does feel limiting in a bad way.

Adventure ended a while back. Been on bazzite (Fedora atomic spin) for a few years and can't see myself moving far from it.
Been dual booting Linux for a long time (was cutting my teeth in the 2010's on Gentoo) and only kept windoze for games, which ive thankfully just totally ditched.

Not much adventure anymore. Debian testing with Gnome for 10 years. Some minor issues over the years but overall stable, reliable and can recommend it over debian stable.
Never got the hype around arch, clearly Ubuntu is the most popular und its build on top of Debian. Hence, debian must be the best distro ;)
Had i3 and then sway for a while but now Gnome has been going strong for 5 years or so for me. It works.

Well, i started around '98 or '99 with PTS Linux (this one: https://archive.org/details/pts-1.2), and - with some duel-boot interludes - i never did go back to the Redmond-Plague. Today i run a variety of OS, mostly Debian based but also FreeDOS and some other exotics on various systems.
At work i currently run a Windows 11 PC (you sometimes HAVE to use what your users are opressed with) and on another System Fedora Silverblue.
- Seeing this CD reminded me of Knoppix. I tested that in school when I was 16 or 17.
  Your picture really makes me feel old. Kernel 2.0? KDE 1.0? GIMP 1? Feels so far away, it must have been a different life.
  
  I get this feeling every time a cover of an computer magazine i bought in yesteryear appears somewhere on lemmy and i realize this issue was sold in the year 198x...

The adventure has been going on for quite a while: I started with a cheap thinclient and Proxmox in order to replace the underpowered Raspi4. Then bought a new, cheap thinclient to replace the thinclient I was running windows on. The idea was to kill the windows PC, get a more powerful main desktop with Linux and use the old windows one as another Proxmox client. I haven't had the time to do that, but I now have a Windows machine with Office, cracked Photoshop, Fusion360 etc. installed and a main linux device. Haven't booted up the windows computer in 3 months.
And gaming works totally great on the SteamDeck. Recently installed the Wii/WiiU/Switch emulators, which is really awesome

I played with Ubuntu before it hit version 10, but recently since gaming has gotten so good lately I've switched to Bazzite and had a fantastic experience. Better than Windows in some cases.
The only problem is that Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous crashes a bit too much for me right now. But other than that, great stuff.

I started using Linux on and off a little before starting college, almost 20 years ago. For studying and working (I'm an IT engineer) was a very robust solution and I saw things getting better within time for the non initiated.
On a personal level, however, I was still on the Windows side mostly for gaming. Luckily enough, when my gaming laptop was forced to update to Windows 11 and problems started, I knew a distro hopping journey was about to begin.
I tried focusing mostly on gaming, but I also needed some general purpose tools. I started with Mint but oddly enough, it didn't suit me well. I was thinking about Kubuntu, but before that, I tried Nobara and, out of nostalgia, openSuse Tumbleweed (openSuse was my first distro ever)
Thing is that I haven't had a reason yet to switch again. All my games from Steam run like a breeze, so for now I just focus on enjoying and evangelizing people to make the switch.

I just love mint. Had win10 before but couldn't be bothered to upgrade to 11, which I have to use at my job.

Started with slack, hopped around for a few years as new distros began to pop up. Stopped using Gnome after... We'll call it a philosophical disagreement with a Gnome developer. The main issue persists, so I still won't use it.
Eventually landed back on Debian, and I stay there with a mix of Debian based (proxmox), Debian stable, and one box running Sid for testing/reporting issues. I have two "main" desktops, deb stable and arch.
Most have no GUI, except for my main desktopss, a laptop, and the one running Sid, all are KDE.
I'm pretty well settled on the Debian side, arch is a more recent bit of fun. I may move the arch box to something else at some point, but the Debian boxes are basically here to stay.

I first used Linux something like 15 years ago. Back then, it was quite the hassle, especially getting games to work. With Windows 11 (even the Pro version) being the shitshow that it is, and with the steam deck showing me gaming on linux has become mostly easy and viable, I have been using linux exclusively for 9 months now.
I very rarely boot up windows to play VR games wirelessly on my quest 2.

I had first attempts with openSuse about a decade ago on my laptop. I didnt use it regluarly though so often when booting up i had to reinstall the latest version as my current one wasnt supported anymore.
Fast forward to my new PC as my old ones GPU failed after 12 years and MS already thought under Windows 10 that RAM should only be gobbled up by windows.
I bought a new laptop to replace the PC and bought it w.o. a Windows licencse. I installed an Arch based Distro and well it works. Took some tinkering to get the GPU running well, but nothing in comparision to what i did on Windows to get keep my old GPU alive for a few more weeks.

My journey starts in the early 2000s with Mepis to Ubuntu to Linux Mint to CachyOS now. Allways with dual boat. The release of Windows 11 was the reason to go full Linux for a year now. And thx to Valve for their work on Proton.

31 comments