This is quite strange. I started running Linux about 12 years ago and I didn't start with Ubuntu like many people did. I started right away with Debian. Then I switched to Arch. I had a point where I had both installed. Many years after, I installed openSUSE, stayed for a couple months, not my favourite experience. After it I tried Void and Solus as they were new projects and with good ambitions and goals. Ikey left and the project just isn't the same, and Void is pretty small still to this day. And now, I'm using Mint and feeling like never distro hopping again. Hell I'm not even ricing or using tilling window managers, I just change the wallpaper, see the less cancerous icon theme and theme and use them and that's it. Feels like I went reverse to what's the norm(starting with a friendly newbie distro and moving to a more complex one). I started with more complex ones(I never installed gentoo though) and now I'm using probably the easiest distro to use out of all the Linux ones.
Anyone here that had the same journey?
This is quite strange. I started running Linux about 12 years ago and I didn't start with Ubuntu like many people did...
Not me. Install gentoo
Yeah i started with Debian 6 but i eventually grew up and started using Windows again because Linux is not meant to be a desktop system and never will be one.
>edgy teens use linux
>basedforce use mac
>professionals use windows
Yep. I started with Windows 3.1, then 95, then 98, then 2000, then XP, then Vista, then 7, then Ubuntu instead of Windows 8, then Windows 10, the final Windows forever.
Every professional I know uses a Mac.
Kind of yeah, started off with Arch Linux. This was my first interaction with Linux. However I made sure to do a lot of research before hand so that I knew what I was getting myself into. After that I felt I've spent way to much time setting up an OS so therefore I've just stuck with it ever since. This was a couple of months ago and now I've done two Arch installs one on desktop and one on school laptop (BTW on that note we're not allowed to tinker with our systems so they had out in place locked EFI which isn't really hard to overcome. ) And a third install of Manjaro on my previous personal laptop.
I started with FreeBSD in the 90s and over time moved to Linux and distro-hopped around. For a while I was a major contributor to a musl libc-based distribution which I use for embedded and server applications.
But for my personal desktops I run Ubuntu because it is the least drama for games and commercial applications and life is too short to fix broken garbage for the sake of impressing idiots on a Chinese basket weaving emporium.
I was using Gentoo back in the early 2000s as a kid because of my dad. He had been experimenting with Linux distros back in the late 90s before settling on Gentoo, and we were using it daily. I didn't know much about computers back then but I was into video games for sure. Wine was around back then too but it wasn't anywhere near as good as it is today, and I was fed up with being able to play games at the time so my dad set up Windows XP on my machine. I had been using XP until 7 came out and then right around the time the Windows 10 fiascos were being unveiled as it was nearing official release I wanted no part of that, and installed Gentoo as my main OS. Been using it since, but I have been using PCI-passthrough via KVM+libvirt+qemu for anything that still doesn't run well in Wine, which equates to basically every game that uses a sophisticated anti-cheat.
I started with Debian because I thought Ubuntu was a stupid name and I also found its boot splash ugly. Later I decided to try Ubuntu and Kubuntu. I returned to Windows multiple times during all that, which I got quite good at customizing as well. I had tons of utilities for creating batch scripts and automating most stuff as well as making it look nice. Then I stuck to Windows for the most part. One day I decided to install Gentoo as recommended by a friend, he wasn't memeing as he ran it as well. I used it for a long time, got into ricing a fair bit but ended up at KDE. My ultimate setup at that time was custom Secure Boot + EFIStub kernel on a flash drive and no boot partition on my main hard drive, just one big LUKS container that held the system and was unlocked by an 8MB large keyfile residing on the flash drive. I started getting into the specifics of freedesktop and XDG stuff as well during all that. Internals of PulseAudio among many other things. Eventually I installed systemd on Gentoo to get into that. During my Gentoo adventure I always tried to get into binhosting as I own a pretty powerful server. However Portage doesn't really make sense when used that way. So I decided to go one step further and roll my own distro. I decided to use rpm as the package format and looked into making Fedora spinoffs. However that proved to be much too time consuming for my situation at the time. Soon after I jumped ship to bone stock Fedora 29 with GNOME, which I now consider to be my go-to until I get around to properly figuring out how to run my own custom optimized distro based on Fedora.
What makes things like Arch or Gentoo “harder” than mint or ubuntu? I’ve been using Kali recently to learn how to pentest and it’s oretty simplistic in terms of navigation and general usage. Even installing things seems pretty trivial (screenfetch for example)
Look at the Gentoo handbook and their getting started with Portage guide and post your thoughts here.
For Arch it's the installation and setup process as you start off with a CLI for installation, then after installation you're left with an empty install and have to setup everything an OS is depending on based on your use cases. On Gentoo it's the factors mentioned for Arch and an even more customizable experience with a lot more to setup manually, in addition to that you have to compile every package yourself.
this is a pretty normal experience
you'll start off heading into something more adventurous
and eventually, you just want to get shit done
nowadays, all I install is Xubuntu or use the Debian netinst image -- they're simple, familiar, and most shit just works on 'em
>commercial applications
this
everyone just distributes .debs or expects shit to be laid out like on Ubuntu or Debian
or if you need support, the first thing they'll ask is "are you using [some particular Ubuntu release]"
I've been on Arch for years because I have an old PC with low RAM, and I have heavy autism.
Depends on how dedicated you are to setting up your environment. Found a great balance with elementary OS (based on Ubuntu) between good modularity and solid minimum setup
I started with mint but had it for about 15 minute, it was so buggy that I switched to arch and kde. Had that setup for about a week and KDE was clipping and doing woerd visual shit. Moved to archlabs and used that for 1 year, something fucked one day it would have been an easy 5 min fix but i just said forget it and installed ubuntu.
I still like arch, and archlabs (not their latest version) the most. I hate gnome but I dont wanna go thru the pain of setting up a linux system (except ubuntu) to make it look good on a 4k screen.
Mandrake sometime in like 97.
Fedora
RHEL
I also have a few debian stable servers.
Fuck ubongo and tint
>he didnt turn off Kscreen-tearing
My Gahnoo Loonix experience has been
Fedora
arch
fedora
debian
I have been running Debian since a bit before stretch came out, stretch on my laptop, sid on my desktop
Debian is just the most based distro since it's stable, widely supported, has the best balance between personalisation and user friendliness
Arch is for brainlets who think they are savvy because arch is constantly broken and they spend their life fixing it
Fedora is just bloated unstable shit
The only free os I would consider trying apart from debian is reactOS once it gets relatively stable and functionnal
I started with Knoppix which is Debian based and switched to Ubuntu. I've played with arch and a couple of other distros, but I don't see the point unless there's a hardware compatibility issue with Ubuntu.
Arch is better, rolling release > staggered ubuntu shit
>12 years in Linux
>still doesn't know what a security patch is or does so he uses mint
wow, you are a special kind of retard
Honestly it's more common than you'd imagine to the point there's a meme somewhere here about it. You start with a simple distro run around trying different "complex" distros before realizing they aren't complex just time consuming and annoying and then you come back to the start, and get actual work done. It's very rare you find someone getting work done with arch. like go to a ctf or a tech con most people using Linux are using flagships like Ubuntu or Mint.
I started with something called bbqLinux. It's an arch based distro for Android development. Switched to Arch, then to Void about two years. Been on Void since. Systemd is too complex for me when compared to runit.
It's also not controlled by the Canonical Jews
Run windows for your games and Qubes + vpn ith whonix for your secure and and anonymous surfing
I was using Gentoo and Arch for a few years.
Now I'm much lazier and use KDE Neon instead. Everything just werks.
That's funny because I built a computer recently with the intention of setting up a PCI passthrough VM for Windows to play my games in, but by the time I got it set up I didn't really need it to play games.
Pretty much everything I play either runs perfectly fine natively on Linux (Dota, CSGO) or runs perfectly fine (or well enough anyways) on DXVK or Proton like The Witcher 3 or NieR.
It's nice to have it though
Underrated post. This is true. Complicated OS like arch are dedicated for people whom only thing to do is to customize their window manager
I'm a professional programmer and can confirm this (we do android app programming. fuck apple)
started with arch then hopped to slackware and stayed there
Please don't make terry pictures look this bad. Always upload them in the best quality you can find and do not modify them in any ways. God does not like lots of modifications to pictures of his fren
Next try elementaryOS.
install slackware.
this. i get tired of archfags trying to act l33t. either go gentoo or go home. arch is a reddit tier distro for faggets. debian is pretty good. its a shame about their CoC and systemd along with the tranny dev
slackware is the shit
There's no installer. You have to run a whole bunch of shell commands.
>gentoo
>using google’s house brand Linux makes you elite
No.
> google’s house brand Linux
That's Debian, previously Ubuntu.
>arch
>being a fat faggot who posts on r/unixporn
I never really got this since half the point of a shell command is you can just put it in a script and do it automatically. Doing installation manually is going backwards.
I don't understand distro-hoppers . Once you found a good distro which fits your needs (if it's for a desktop daily use, let's say LinuxMint) , what's the point to jump to another distro?
Am i the only nigga running windows and qubes whonix?
I started with Debian 1.3 in 1997 and jumped ship to Ubuntu 6.06, never looked back. Debian was an absolute shitshow before Ubuntu's contributions.
Everything was. Regardless of how people may feel about Canonical now, we pretty much have them to thank for turning Linux into a usable desktop OS.
It wasn't even that, Debian was so paralyzed by internal politics the releases were random and delayed.
It's a product of the mentality that you could be doing something better, also no OS does absolutely everything so it feeds into that, it's an addiction
I use this on my work laptop.
It's stable and don't care about customizing it since it doesn't look like shit like gnome on Ubuntu
>started with redhat 7.2
>stayed faithful until gentoo 1.4 stage 1 in 2004
>back to fedora in 2006
>three years of apple
>back to fedora
>my old man and my daughter got ubuntu on their machines because it's mor comfortable for me to manage
>still fedora
> Debian was an absolute shitshow
How many debian packages have you made meanwhile?
It's been only a year for me since I've started using Linux seriously. It was Manjaro i3. Last month, I switched to Arch and xfce and I'm loving it so far, I think I'm gonna use this for years.
Zero, and I don't seed torrents either. Deal with it.
I recommend Mint to people who are interested in Linux but don't care about computers.
I don't have as powerful a GPU host-side than I do guest-side, and there are still a handful of games that don't really play nicely in Wine. Elite Dangerous is the only one I can think of that is just too much of a pain to get working.
this is you
>l33t
Lol what a boomer faggot
It boggles the mind that there exists in this world, Linux distributions that aren't Debian but use apt.
locked bioses are retarted and not secure
When I tried SUSE in 2014 I didn't like it. But I think the distro has improved and Plasma 5 is a different tier from KDE 4.
Mint is run pretty unprofessionally and I wouldn't trust em'. You know you can get the same ease of use elsewhere.
you mean ucuntu? with that faggot penguin?
>I installed openSUSE, stayed for a couple months, not my favourite experience
please elaborate
t. satisfied opensuse user
More than 20 years ago I installed Linux on my old computer when I got a new one with Voodoo card to play Quake, for some reason I installed Slackware even though I knew my friends were running Debian. I used it for internet or bbs actually because back in the day people were scared of the horrible viruses that the internet had and I didin't want to connect my Windows gaming computer to the internet because of that.
I actually thought that the gui was a Debian feature that you can't have on a Slackware for some reason so for years I ran mainly terminal on my box, and eventually when I upgraded to Debian to use a browser, I stuck with terminal for everything else. It formed in to a habit that I have this day, though I still use Windows machine as a gaming rig and 100% of it is gui, Linux still is mainly terminal applications for me. I even use apps like Krita and Blender on my Windows machine for that reason.
could've been my hardware but it felt slow(logging is slow, DE behavior was slower than in most distros I touched), laggy and was incredibly bloated out of the box(not a problem once you remove it). I just didn't find it good enough or better than Debian to switch. They're different distros but I feel much more comfortable running Debian