 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 933, 6 September 2021 |
Welcome to this year's 35th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
The world of computers and technology is complex. There are so many file formats, web browsers, distributions, and protocols that sometimes it's challenging to keep them straight, let alone get them all working smoothly together. This week we explore some projects which strive to make things more simple. We begin with a look at elementary OS, a desktop Linux distribution which tries to streamline the user experience and cut out clutter. Read on to learn more about elementary OS from our guest author, Jeff Siegel. Then, in our Questions and Answers column we talk about decluttering filenames. Different operating systems handle filenames in different ways, using their own special characters and rules. We talk about how to clean up filenames to make them more cross-platform friendly and easier to handle in scripts. In our News section we report on the Linux Mint team polishing their website and desktop themes while the GhostBSD project swaps out OpenRC for FreeBSD's service manager. Plus we talk about how the Qubes project is trying to make it possible for users to know that the project has not been compromised by government agencies. This week we are also pleased to share a list of recent releases along with the torrents we are seeding. Finally, for our Opinion Poll we tip out hat to 30 years of Linux development and ask how long our readers have been running the Linux kernel - either on servers, desktops, or mobile devices. Let us know how you got started with Linux in the comments. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
- Review: elementary OS 6.0 "Odin"
- News: Linux Mint polishes its look, GhostBSD swaps out OpenRC for FreeBSD's service manager, Qubes publishes a canary
- Questions and answers: Cleaning special characters out of filenames
- Released last week: Linux Lite 5.6, EndeavourOS 2021.08.27, Linux From Scratch 11.0
- Torrent corner: Alpine, Arch Linux, Bluestar, EasyOS, EndeavourOS, KDE neon, Linux Lite, Manjaro, Nitrux, Obarun, openmamba
- Upcoming releases: Tails 4.22
- Opinion poll: How long have you been using Linux?
- Reader comments
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| Feature Story (by Jeff Siegel) |
elementary OS 6.0 "Odin"
Think of elementary OS as the distro that - in a perfect world - would carry Linux to desktop domination. It's slick, it looks good, it's surprisingly nimble, and its developers have only the best of intentions.
So why doesn't it come with a word processor?
One would think, in the second decade of the 21st century, that a word processor would be standard equipment, showing up next to the email, calendar, and other apps after installation. But not in the new elementary OS 6, code named Odin. Yes, with a little bit of command line keystroking, you can add LibreOffice or Calligra or even AbiWord.
But an office suite, just because almost everyone uses a word processor or a spreadsheet or a presentation app these days?
Nope.
And this, more than anything, points to the reason why elementary, despite its fame and accomplishments, makes so many of us install something else. Early on, I used elementary as my daily driver. It was that fresh and that amazing and even I began to wonder if it was the future.
elementary OS 6.0 -- The default desktop layout
(full image size: 1.9MB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
But as soon as it moved from Jupiter to Luna, I switched back to Xubuntu. I need a distro that helps me work - not one that sits on the screen so I can admire its beauty. And, sadly, Odin continues that tradition. Is it fast and mostly intuitive? Yep. Does it include terrific documentation and does it look gorgeous? You bet. Is it also annoying, frustrating, and even occasionally aggravating?
Of course it is.
The background
elementary starts with surprisingly simple recommended hardware: Just 4GB of memory, an i3 processor or equivalent, and only a 15GB hard drive. In fact, the installation directions, and even how to write the ISO download to a thumb drive, are well-written and easy to follow. In this, it may be the best how-to for accessing a BIOS boot drive I've seen.
Odin is based on the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS release and uses the 5.11 kernel. It includes a variety of changes, improvements, and updates from elementary 5.1 Hera, many of which make the distro even better looking and even smoother in use. Look for updates for many of its bespoke applications, like the web browser (GNOME's old Epiphany browser, relabeled Web) and the email app (Mail), as well as a new to-do app called Task. The other apps, like Music, Video, Calendar, and Camera, do pretty much what they're supposed to do.
elementary OS 6.0 -- The welcome window
(full image size: 1.6MB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
The installer has been streamlined and takes up only three screens once it appears - a most welcome change. My laptop booted in seconds, so quickly that I barely noticed. Battery life was good, too - some word processing, web browsing, emails, testing the video and music players, and the like, and I got about 3.5 hours on my well-used machine.
Multi-touch support has been improved, there's a firmware updater (also most welcome), and new wallpapers and app decorations have been added. Plus a dark mode, since everything has to have a dark mode these days.
elementary OS 6.0 -- Adjusting the theme of the virtual terminal
(full image size: 957kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
But perhaps the most important change? The App Center focuses on installing software using Flatpak and includes Sideload, a dedicated Flatpak installation app. This is a fundamental change in the way most Linux distros handle software availability and installation. Yes, you can use the command line to install LibreOffice or Firefox, or to pull down Synaptic to handle the chore; Odin still accesses the Ubuntu repos. And, depending on how the App Center updates (since it's buggy too, just like most software centres in the Ubuntu family), all of the available apps may not show up right away. In my case it took three boots for the App Center to populate.
elementary OS 6.0 -- Trying to fetch package updates
(full image size: 714kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
But the distro's developers would prefer you use their stuff - so much so that there's a warning if you try to install any other software: "Install untrusted/non-curated app? 'LibreOffice' is not curated by elementary and has not been reviewed for security, privacy, or system integration." Why this warning for major open-source software, which is certainly not anything like some phishing expedition on Android?
elementary OS 6.0 -- Installing untrusted applications
(full image size: 619kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
And, because it's elementary, the developers anticipate a variety of installation and use problems. There's a note in the FAQ outlining the App Center changes, as well a recommendation to only install software via Flathub, the Flatpak repository. There's also a mention of the distro's failure to install in VirtualBox (which I found to be spot on despite repeated attempts to make it work).
Installation, though, is not always easy and straightforward. If you don't use Etcher to put the ISO on a thumb drive, good luck. This is odd for an Ubuntu-based distro other than Pop!_OS; most typically install using any ISO writer. I have rarely had difficulties using Multi-System, for example.
And even if you use Etcher, there might be problems - hanging at "stdin: not a typewriter" on the initial installation screen, for example. And a Reddit post reported problems upgrading from Hera, which might even bork the box (which, to its credit, the FAQ says not to do in favor of a fresh install).
Getting some work done
This is where elementary reminds us that it can be so frustrating, even after "sudo apt-get ..." delivers a word processor.
The top panel, for all practical purposes, can't be changed. So no Nextcloud or Zoom icon. And if you don't use Bluetooth, which I don't, a grayed icon stares at you ... and stares at you ... and stares at you. There is, apparently, a third-party PPA workaround for this, but I didn't want to take the chance it would make matters worse.
A single click opens folders in the file manager (Files, also known as Pantheon), like KDE's Dolphin. But opening files in folders requires a double click. It's not so much that this is odd or that it can't be changed. The truly annoying part is that unless you know elementary, you double click on a folder and find yourself down two levels instead of one. It takes a half dozen or so double clicks before you can figure out what's going on.
Odin recognized my Canon MX-922 printer, which connects through Wi-Fi, but it wouldn't print. It still wouldn't print even after I used the tweaks that lets it print on Fedora and the Ubuntu distributions.
The Pantheon Tweak tool, a third-party app, enables changes in Files. This includes moving the close button to the upper right hand corner and adding a minimize button. But it doesn't fix the click/double-click thing.
Odin uses the Plank dock, but makes it more difficult to change settings - and it's not like changing Plank's settings are intuitive to begin with. Here, it's Ctrl-right-click, as opposed to right-click.
By themselves, these minor niggles are just part of the Linux experience. How many of us still hold a grudge because Unity isn't GNOME, and vice versa? The catch, though, is that these minor inconveniences add up. If I don't use Bluetooth, why should I be forced to look at the icon, but not see icons that I want, like Nextcloud and Zoom?
Finally, the non-elementary apps business may well be more than a minor niggle, despite good intentions and long explanations on elementary's website. It will scare away a lot of people who might want to try Odin because it is so pretty, works as well as it does, and gets such good reviews. The normal, intuitive thing to do is to look in the App Center for software; what will they think about Linux when there's a warning about using LibreOffice and Firefox?
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Hardware used for this review
My physical test equipment for this review was an HP EliteBook Folio 9480m laptop with the following specifications:
- Processor: Intel Core i5-4310u, 2.6GHz
- Storage: 240GB SSD
- Memory: 8GB of RAM
- Networking: Intel Wireless 7260 802.11ac dual band Wi-Fi + Bluettoh
- Display: Intel Haswell-ULT Integrated Graphics
When he is not testing out new versions of Linux distributions, Jeff Siegel can be found writing about all things related to wine at Wine Curmudgeon.
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Visitor supplied rating
elementary OS has a visitor supplied average rating of: 5/10 from 149 review(s).
Have you used elementary OS? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Linux Mint polishes its look, GhostBSD swaps out OpenRC for FreeBSD's service manager, Qubes publishes a canary
The Linux Mint team is working on polishing the look of the distribution - both its desktop themes and its website. In the project's monthly newsletter the team outlines some of the customizations available: "The Mint-Y Cinnamon theme will provide a light panel (though we'll still ship with Mint-Y-Dark by default). The theme will support dark applications. That last point consists in letting certain applications look dark even in the light theme. In Linux Mint 20.3 we will take advantage of this to ship some of the apps in dark: Celluloid; Xviewer; Pix; Hypnotix; GNOME Terminal. Each of these applications will have a setting in its preference window to disable/enable dark mode. Note that support for dark apps will work with Cinnamon, Marco (MATE's window manager) and Metacity, but not with Xfwm (which is used by default in Xfce)."
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The GhostBSD project is planning to shift from using the OpenRC service manager to running FreeBSD's RC service manager. While OpenRC offers some nice features and possibly some performance benefits, the overhead of maintaining alternative service management from GhostBSD's parent has proven too much work. "For those who are disappointed with this change, put your feet in my shoes. Maintaining FreeBSD services plus FreeBSD ports services for OpenRC is too much for one person. In addition, I do not have the adequate manpower to keep up with all new services and services changes. I have people helping, but it is not enough to keep up. So instead of trying to keep up with something that already works well, GhostBSD will focus on improving the FreeBSD desktop experience." Details on the migration can be found in the project's news post.
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People who are concerned about their privacy often use security-focused operating systems such as Qubes OS or Tails. However, when using these systems people might worry about whether the operating system itself has been compromised or whether its developers have been contacted by government agents to spy on their users. One guard against this sort of thing is called a canary - a document which, if changed, signals something has happened without explicitly stating what has happened as may be required by non-disclosure agreements. The Qubes project has such a canary document which is periodically updated to let users know the project's status. "No warrants have ever been served to us with regard to the Qubes OS Project (e.g. to hand out the private signing keys or to introduce backdoors). We plan to publish the next of these canary statements in the first fourteen days of December 2021. Special note should be taken if no new canary is published by that time or if the list of statements changes without plausible explanation." The full document can be found on the project's news page.
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These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Cleaning special characters out of filenames
Surrounded-by-chaos asks: Every time I download a file or get e-mailed a document from a colleague the file has spaces or weird characters in it like ()$!. How can I automate cleaning up filenames so I don't need to rename them in Nautilus every time?
DistroWatch answers: There is a tool which is ideal for this sort of work called detox. The detox command line utility accepts the name of a file (or a directory) and will rename each file you provide to make it easier to work with. This will transform files such as "Untitled (2) - blah#!.pdf" to "Untitled-2-blah#_.pdf".
The detox utility can accept a number of options and special flags, but there are probably just three ways you will want to use this program. The first is to rename a single file. This works by simply passing the name of an existing file to detox and the file will be automatically renamed. Here is an example of fixing the name of one file:
$ ls
Untitled (2) - blah#!
$ detox Untitled\ \(2\)\ -\ blah#\!
$ ls
Untitled-2-blah#_
The detox command can also rename all files in a directory tree. We can accomplish this using the "-r" flag. However, before renaming files you might want to see what the results will be from renaming potentially hundreds or thousands of files. We can perform a test run without changing any filenames by using the "--dry-run" parameter. Here we see what actions detox will take on a directory:
$ detox -r --dry-run Docs
Docs/Untitled (2) - blah#! -> Docs/Untitled-2-blah#_
Docs/a b c () - $%! -> Docs/a_b_c-%_
In the above example we see the original name of both files, followed by the new name detox will assign to the files. To actually perform the rename operation we can drop the "--dry-run" flag:
$ detox -r Docs
$ ls -1 Docs
a_b_c-%_
Untitled-2-blah#
People will typically use detox on files downloaded from the Internet or on files transferred from another operating system which uses different special characters in filenames.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
EndeavourOS 2021.08.27
Bryan Poerwo has announced the availability of EndeavourOS 2021.08.27, the latest stable version of the project's rolling-release Arch Linux-based distribution with Xfce as the default desktop. This release brings major changes to the Calamares system installer: "The changes for Calamares are the most significant ones made on this release. In comparison to our previous releases, this release brings us to a higher level and we are confident to say that this ISO image is a milestone step towards our future. The changes made are complete overhaul under the hood of Calamares with a significant speed increase in installation as the most stellar improvement. This was achieved by throwing our previous system entirely out of the window and building the ISO image from scratch, which resulted in an installer that is fast, light, easy to maintain, easy to add new features in and a hugely improved user experience. Test results did clock an online install time from three to fifteen minutes, depending on the available internet speed." See the release announcement for further information and screenshots.
Linux Lite 5.6
Linux Lite is a beginner-friendly Linux distribution based on Ubuntu's long-term support (LTS) release and featuring the Xfce desktop. The project's latest release, Linux Lite 5.6, is based on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and offers a number of conveniences and upgrades. Python 3 is now used by default, it is possible to install the distribution via the welcome screen on the live media, and the Lite Tweaks tool will offer to clean up temporary files used by the Brave browser. "Linux Lite 5.6 Final is now available for download and installation. This release includes updates to the Help Manual - our extensive, easy to follow Linux Lite guide, you can now install Linux Lite directly from Lite Welcome, an updated Papirus icon theme, 2 new features added to Lite Tweaks, the introduction of the 'Pay what You Want' digital download model, 7 new wallpapers, Python default version now set to Python3, and a host of bug fixes and enhancements for our target audience. If you're coming from Windows, you'll find this to be a solid, stable release that will help make your transition to a linux based operating system, user friendly." Details on the release, along with screenshots, can be found in the release announcement.
Linux Lite 5.6 -- Running the Xfce desktop
(full image size: 138kB, resolution: 1360x768 pixels)
Linux From Scratch 11.0
Bruce Dubbs has announced the release of Linux From Scratch (LFS) 11.0, the latest version of the project's book that provides step-by-step instructions of building a Linux system from source code: "The Linux From Scratch community announces the release of LFS version 11.0. The reason for the major release number increment is that this version no longer uses the 'split-user' system. That is, like most current distributions, /bin is a symbolic link to /usr/bin. Likewise, /lib and /sbin are both symbolic links to their /usr counterparts. Additional major changes include toolchain updates to GCC 11.2.0, glibc 2.34, and Binutils 2.37. The Linux kernel has also been updated to version 5.13.12. In total, 40 packages were updated since the last release. Changes to the text have also been made throughout the book. In coordination with this release, a new version of LFS using the systemd package is also being released. This package implements the newer systemd style of system initialization and control and is consistent with LFS in most packages." Visit the project' news page to read the full release announcement. Beyond Linux From Scratch, a book which includes over 1,000 extra packages, is also available in version 11.0.
EasyOS 2.9
Barry Kauler has announced the release of EasyOS 2.9, an updated build of the project's minimalist Linux distribution with roots in Puppy Linux. This version has been completely recompiled in OpenEmbedded, a build framework for embedded Linux: "There has been a complete recompile in OpenEmbedded, with some package version upgrades. Also, SeaMonkey has been upgraded to 2.53.9 and the Linux kernel to 5.10.61. Release notes: OpenEmbedded project 20210828 uploaded; statically linked packages with musl in OpenEmbedded; OpenEmbedded Dunfell aarch64 rebuild; align Perl utility updated; 807 packages compiled in OpenEmbedded for EasyOS; OpenEmbedded Dunfell updated rebuild. Note, when I do a complete rebuild in OE, I bump the 'revision number', in this case from "r3" to "r4" - this is in the package names, note also, 'nocona' is the earliest x86_64 instruction set. Changes that usually go unannounced, I sometimes replace Busybox applets with the full versions, from 'coreutils' or 'util-linux', when I encounter an error due to the Busybox applet not supporting the required commandline options." See the release announcement and the release notes for more information.
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Torrent Corner |
Weekly Torrents
The table below provides a list of torrents DistroWatch is currently seeding. If you do not have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients.
Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found in our Torrent Archive. We also maintain a Torrents RSS feed for people who wish to have open source torrents delivered to them. To share your own open source torrents of Linux and BSD projects, please visit our Upload Torrents page.
Torrent Corner statistics:
- Total torrents seeded: 2,580
- Total data uploaded: 39.8TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
How long have you been using Linux?
The Linux kernel recently celebrated its 30th birthday. Over the years, Linux has grown from an open source hobby kernel to a strong ecosystem of software to a multi-billion dollar industry. Linux servers now power a large percentage of the Internet, Linux runs on most of the world's fastest super computers, Linux is at the heart of most smartphones, and the popular kernel runs on tens of millions of desktop systems. How long have you been running Linux systems? Let us know what your first taste of Linux was in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on your preferred virtual terminal software in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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I have been running Linux...
| Less than one year: | 34 (1%) |
| 1-2 years: | 81 (3%) |
| 3-5 years: | 157 (6%) |
| 6-10 years: | 433 (16%) |
| 11+ years: | 1915 (72%) |
| I do not use Linux: | 22 (1%) |
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| Website News |
DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 13 September 2021. Past articles and reviews can be found through our Article Search page. To contact the authors please send e-mail to:
- Jesse Smith (feedback, questions and suggestions: distribution reviews/submissions, questions and answers, tips and tricks)
- Ladislav Bodnar (feedback, questions, donations, comments)
- Bruce Patterson (podcast)
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Since 2009 (by Bob on 2021-09-06 00:25:49 GMT from United States)
In 2009, I bought a copy of Windows 7. HATED IT! Soon after, I somehow came across Linux...Ubuntu Karmic Koala. I've been running Linux ever since, currently running Manjaro Xfce. And, to this day, "I don't do windows."
2 • Ubuntu 21.10 (by Pumpino on 2021-09-06 00:36:33 GMT from Australia)
Ubuntu 21.10 is going to be a conservative release. Due to Sid being frozen for months, it will basically be Debian Stable with a few package updates compiled by Ubuntu. Running a rolling release based on Debian Testing, like Sparky, offers more recent packages.
3 • Linux (by Brad on 2021-09-06 00:41:05 GMT from United States)
I started using Linux in the late 1990's, when I discovered Caldera OpenLinux. In itself, this was a welcome surprise to me, having used BSD 4.2 while working in a University IT department in the late 70's - my intervening years were spent using VMS on "minicomputers".
Caldera was fun to use, even in those days, but work intervened, and I spent the early 2000s using various Windows at work and home, until I finally got a laptop for my own personal use. I moved to Ubuntu around 2005, after getting sidetracked with an iBook from Apple in 2004. From Ubuntu, I distrohopped for a while and then went to Mint around 2009, and stuck with that until I got bored with that distro, hopped some more, and finally landed on Manjaro around 2015, where I have remained since.
4 • Since 2001 (by cor on 2021-09-06 00:53:14 GMT from United States)
In 2001, I bought a Red Hat Linux book that included CDs, so I gave it a try. I then tried Suse Linux, PC Linux OS, Sabayon, Linux Mint, and currently Kubuntu. I have been using Kubuntu for 3 years.
5 • Manjaro first (by Low tech Jim on 2021-09-06 01:02:09 GMT from United States)
I started with Manjaro but it did not take long until I realized that I was not even updating it properly. Then I moved to Ubuntu Mate and stayed. I chose Mate over Ubuntu because I can easily save icons for a few programs I use frequently on the desktop.
6 • Ya gotta love Linux (by Friar Tux on 2021-09-06 01:16:11 GMT from Canada)
I started playing with Linux back in Aug. 2005 when I came across Mandrake Linux Discovery 9.2. It was nice at first, but not as stable as Windows. I also tried Fedora but it, too, didn't work quite as well as Windows. Also, I found the file system to be quite a mess. Over the years, I tried out various distros but always went back to Windows. Then, about five years ago that changed. Windows 10 hijacked both my computer and The Wife's. (We were both running Windows 7, and loving it.) One morning, we both turned on our laptops to be greeted with something like "Please wait Windows is upgrading to Windows 10." No asking for permission, first. Not even asking IF we wanted to upgrade to 10. That took about an hour. Afterwards, nothing worked. As I had just finished testing out Linux Mint/Cinnamon, and really liked what I saw, I installed it on my laptop and was able to go right to work. The Wife struggled along for the day hoping she could get a good days work done (typing and editing). The next day, after seeing me carry on like normal, she asked me to install Mint/Cinnamon on her machine. We haven't had any "lost time" issues in 5 years. Never going back to Window - in fact, anything Microsoft !
7 • First Linux Use (by A. Person on 2021-09-06 01:16:23 GMT from United States)
First exposure to Linux came in 1991 when I needed a Unix like OS for some college work. Distro was called Soft Landing Linux and was contained on 40 3.5" disks. Shortly thereafter for reasons forgotten needed a new Linux and was told about a distro called Slackware which was said to be an improvement on Soft Landing. It was. It came on 60 3.5" disks, not all of which needed to be installed. In the years that followed tried different Linux distros such as Caldera, and one that impressed called Libranet. Slackware was my favorite until about 2010 when I switched to Arch.
8 • How long? (by c00ter on 2021-09-06 01:18:29 GMT from United States)
Since my mentor made me install Slackware. I badly wanted to run Linux so he said, "here, and don't ask again." Those were the days you had to really want it.
9 • since 1998 (by Mike Perrin on 2021-09-06 01:22:49 GMT from United States)
In mid 1998 my boss gave me a book on Python, an old rack mount Pentium computer, a Red Hat 5.1 CD, and suggested I see what I could do about making daily summary data from our industrial waste treatment facility available to our environmental engineers and others. I had specified and programmed the Rosemount RS3 control system at the facility so I was the natural choice. The RS3 had the ability to print reports to a serial interface so that was my data connection. I didn't have a book on Linux but I had a "Unix in a Nutshell" book that was close enough to get started. Python was perfect for parsing the serial data stream from the RS3 report. I stored the daily data and made it available on an intranet web page using Apache. Twenty or so years later I was having lunch with some of the engineers who were still working at the plant. They were replacing the RS3 system and wanted to know if the rack mount Pentium was doing anything critical. The Linux Red Hat 5.1 system was still running after all that time.
10 • Corel (by Gary on 2021-09-06 01:27:07 GMT from United States)
The first Linux distro I used fulltime was Corel around 2000. It was pretty good for a novice but didn't last long. I then used Mandrake for a number of years, but have mostly used Ubuntu/Kubuntu for quite a few years now.
11 • How long have I been using Linux ? (by Jules on 2021-09-06 01:27:16 GMT from Australia)
Being using Linux since 2007 when Mandrake was alive and well.
Between 2007 and 2015, I used various flavours of Linux distros.
In the past 6 years,
Moved to Debian based Linux (Debian 11 itself) on 8GB PC,
Ubuntu based (MX Linux 19.4, and Linux Mint 20.2 on 2 old 8GB PCs),
Manjaro 21 on another 4GB PC,
Twister Linux on 4GB PC and,
Oracle Linux 8.3 on my Flagship 24GB PC.
Only run Linux on older PCs hardware as Linux is not a hungry as Windows.
I always run latest version of Linux Distro.
All of them have separate uses and functions.
Long Live Linux...
12 • How long have you been using Linux? (by Terry on 2021-09-06 01:34:18 GMT from United States)
I have bee using Linux since the first 3 flavors of linux came out which were:
Debian, Redhat, Slackware, those days those were the flavors of choice. Back then there was no GUI interface so everything was done on command line. It was just like Micorsoft DOS days when you have to know the command line to get around as there was no GUI interface like Windows OS then.
Linux in its infancy had very little compatibility with personal computer hardware. Hardly any programmers who were developing the code needed to make linux work with PC hardware. As you can over time technology and popularity increased and here were are today with the very best of all worlds with Linux on top of the world and boy do we have a lot of choice on what Linux OS we want to use for Home, Business and just good old enjoyment of having FUN! Happy Birthday Linux for 30 years!!!!!
13 • How long have you been using Linux? (by BoyBlue on 2021-09-06 01:55:37 GMT from United States)
Thanks to Barry Kauler, since Puppy first appeared.
14 • Using Linux since mid 2020 (by Donald Sebastian Leung on 2021-09-06 02:39:17 GMT from Hong Kong)
I took an introductory course on operating systems at my university back in early 2020, where we first got introduced to Linux and were told that "CentOS is Linux", though I did not grasp the significance of Linux and GNU/Linux back then apart from the fact that it was an operating system with a command line shell similar to that on macOS.
But then I got the opportunity to undertake a 6-month internship in mid 2020, in a small but well established firm that used NixOS exclusively on their workstations. At first I fumbled around with the interface (vanilla GNOME) and package manager (Nix) trying to make sense of the system, but after a few days of researching, I learned that NixOS was a "Linux distribution". But wait - isn't CentOS Linux? How could NixOS also be Linux? This made me curious and eager to learn what exactly Linux was, and within a few months, I replaced macOS Catalina on my 2013 MacBook Air with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and installed Fedora 32 on my (then) newly purchased Lenovo laptop.
I've since graduated from university and am working in a firm with a more conventional office setup, but I continue to use Linux on my home laptops and have no intention to switch to another operating system.
15 • G-NU-SLASH-LINUX (by Andy Prough on 2021-09-06 02:54:33 GMT from United States)
I like the way DistroTube pronounces it so dramatically.
I started in about 1999 and used SuSE/openSUSE almost exclusively for 20 years. I used to love getting the new boxed set from the local computer store each year in the early 2000's. Some friends bought the boxed set for me as Christmas gifts on a few occasions, knowing that I would turn around and install it for free on their various computers and do all their troubleshooting and maintenance.
Today I installed Void Linux on bare metal for the first time, and I am really impressed. I might spend the next 20 years learning all about Void.
16 • Started with Edgy Elf way back when... (by tom joad on 2021-09-06 02:57:17 GMT from Hong Kong)
Started with Edgy Elf way back when using a free disk from a kid my son was going to high school with. It was during the waning days of XP. I dual booted for a time. After I got comfortable with Linux I jumped. And that was that. What blew me away in the beginning was the fact the Terminal is the heart and soul of Linux. I just love that.
Doing Linux Mint Cinnamon these days and happy as a clam.
@9 I love that story. Linux just gets the job done...a Steady Eddy.
17 • Linux early adopter (by Andy Figueroa on 2021-09-06 03:46:20 GMT from United States)
Late in 1993, I downloaded Slackware 1.0 to 24 720K 3.5" floppy disks and installed it onto my 486. Within weeks I was using Linux to do development on scripts that I would then upload for use on our Unix network computer system (LogNet2) that I had been using since late 1984. That system was running on a PDP2 at Wright-Patterson AFB. I think I have that time frame right. I believe I was running a 1200 baud modem.
Sometimes scripts wouldn't run without error on the Unix system since the Linux userland tools (grep, sed, awk) were more up-to-date than the AT&T Unix and I would have to make certain adjustments to account for the differences. I know -- sounds like bragging.
18 • I've been running Linux since 1996 (by jyrki on 2021-09-06 03:57:39 GMT from Czechia)
I started with RedHat, moved to Mandrake. Around 2005 I moved to FreeBSD and it had been my prime system for 3 years. Then I found Arch and have moved back to Linux. When Arch decided to implement systemd, I started to seek for a replacement and I did lot of distro hopping.
And the only reason why I still use Linux is Artix, from their day 1.
But I migrate some PCs to BSDs just in case something goes wrong with Artix.
19 • First Distro & years used (by M.Z. on 2021-09-06 04:02:02 GMT from United States)
I first ran Linux around 2009ish with Linux Mint 7 - it looked easy & familiar from what I saw on DW & elsewhere, without trying too hard to be a total copy of MS. It delivered a fairly solid experience, but I didn't really take the plunge into being Linux by default until around 2011 using PCLinuxOS. I've hardly touched Windows in years for anything but work & I still stream all my shows fine, export resumes to PDFs, & play games a little too much (Endless Sky is great, but I need to cut back). I chose 6-10 years, but it could easily be 11+ if you include my light use phase.
20 • How long have you been using Linux? (by Andreba57 on 2021-09-06 04:05:41 GMT from Italy)
I actually bought copy of Coherent 3.9 from the US back in the late 80's (it was fun to mess with but not really useful), however the first proper Linux I installed (from one of those freeeware CD compilations that were popular in the early '90) was whatever Slackware came with kernel 1.09.
21 • Using Linux (by Romane on 2021-09-06 04:12:34 GMT from Australia)
I interpreted the questionnaire to mean full-time usage. If one takes in my use previously, count on a little more then double the 10 years in my vote.
First experience was in college back in the days when 286 was the "best" processor - 386 had not yet come in. Some time "playing" with Minix after that, then an install of Red Hat (dual boot) a bit before it went commercial. However, was still, at home, a dyed-in-the-wool Windows user, simply because Linux had not yet "grown up" sufficiently to be my daily driver.
About 10 years ago, made the switch full-time to Linux, as it finally served my computing needs. No regrets. Took to buying second-hand laptops at need so as to avoid the Microsoft Tax. Building my own computers so not saddled with Microsoft at time of purchase.
Two PC's and three laptops (all currently in use), all with Linux. My wife's PC is a Linux box, my PC is a Linux box, and the three PC's are all Linux boxes. Doubt that will ever consider Windows again.
22 • how long have you been using Linux ? (by A vd Tweel on 2021-09-06 04:26:35 GMT from Netherlands)
In 2006 (or maybe it was 2007) my Windows NT system crashed badly. (and no it was not internet related; there was no internet connection) An attempt to reinstall it ended even worse; the partition information on the 20GB hard drive was lost. Searching through the drive with a disk editor, I discovered that the long file names were not being used as file identifiers, just were a text field in the directory entry; the files were identified by their DOS equivalent; the subdirectories were not separate entities but also just a text field in the directory entry. It did explain why the disk fragmented so soon and so badly: there was no freespace behind the directory, so every new file (larger than 512 bytes) created a extension to the directory. I switched to debian linux then, in 2008 went to Ubuntu, returned to debian in 2014. Using MX since 2020.
23 • Linux long time (by Sam Crawford on 2021-09-06 04:48:53 GMT from United States)
I started with Xandros in about 2001. I recall it seemed as easy to use as Windows at the time. Was that Windows 98, 2000 or XP?
I still use Debian Bullseye today as well as a Windows laptop.
24 • How Long have you been using Linux (by Richard on 2021-09-06 05:11:15 GMT from United States)
Back when Microsoft came out with WindowsMe I would have to come home daily and reboot my computers on almost a daily basis. Then one day I was at a computer show and saw this impressive display of Mandrake Linux. Now I have used a version of Linux prior to this but only to the terminal console display. but Mandrake impressed me and so I paid the vendor $1.00 for each CD. I think it was three and went home and installed it on one of my PC's and Have never touched Windows since. So I have been using Linux on occasions since the late 90's but fully since 2001.
25 • How Long have you been using Linux (by Cliff Richey on 2021-09-06 05:46:29 GMT from Philippines)
Since the early 1980s. I was using Unix at work, so it was more familiar to me than MS Windows. I tried Windows with each new computer I bought, but usually erased it and installed Linux. Have been using Linux Mint since it came out and enjoy it.
26 • The journey of distrohopping began with an almost freebie. (by Tran Older on 2021-09-06 05:49:06 GMT from Vietnam)
Got the Caldera CD bundled with the Linux book I bought in 1996. I installed the Caldera Network Desktop Preview II on a 486 system with 16MB of RAM and a 240MB IDE hard drive. The Preview II release was based on Red Hat Commercial Linux Release 2.x, which included Linux kernel version 1.2.13, XFree86 version 3.1.2, and gcc version 2.7.0. The Desktop was neither Gnome or KDE but a demo desktop called Looking Glass running on top of Motif. A demo of the CRISP editor was also included, which is somehow primitive in comparison with today's Pluma or Kate. The browsers was Arena and a demo of Navigator. Looking Glass would be disabled after a trial period, Motif would remain. The trick in 1996 was using CRISP to modify the scripts.
27 • 24 years Linux for me (by Udo on 2021-09-06 05:56:35 GMT from Germany)
Hello. My first try was to use Slackware in 1995, but it was not successful - I simply was not able to make use of it. But when S.u.S.E offered a friendly management tool (YaST) with its version 5.1 I took the chance. Since then I have used Linux continuously. With the event of KDE 1.0 also on the desktop. Since then I use debian on servers and Ubuntu on desktop. Typical mainstream... ;-)
28 • Linux since 2006 (by JDNSW on 2021-09-06 06:29:06 GMT from Australia)
I am not certain, but I think I started using Linux in 2006, using Mandrake, after it became apparent I needed to upgrade from Windows 98, and my hardware would not run the available Windows (7, I think).
Stayed with Mandrake for a while and changed to Suse, followed by a fairly brief stint with Kubuntu before going to Mint, initially still with KDE, but for a few years now Xfce. I have tried various other distributions on and off, but have not settled on any others.
29 • First Linux (by Hank on 2021-09-06 07:10:17 GMT from Germany)
First started linux when a friend gave me SUSE which came on some 3,5 inch diskettes.
Now exclusively on antiX and really enjoying the experience.
Now posting from a Beta which is more stable than many other systems have ever been.
Runit version Boots from a live customized and remastered USB stick in about 3 seconds on my system.
Shutdown is just as fast.
I would no longer use anything with poettering madness systemD. It drove me nuts with slow shutdowns and crazy dependency chains..
30 • Linux since 2005 (by borgio3 on 2021-09-06 07:10:40 GMT from Italy)
I started my Linux experience in november 2005 until 1 april 2021, when i installed NomadBSD. So today i'm a BSD user.
31 • Elementary (by Microlinux on 2021-09-06 07:11:27 GMT from France)
I gave Elementary a try many years ago. At first glance it was nice to look at, but after a few days and weeks, I got more and more annoyed. Elementary is to distributions what GNOME is to the desktop. The developers are essentially deaf and blind and know what's good for you. And if you tell them otherwise, then you don't know what's good for yourself. Nowadays when I'm getting work done on my OpenSUSE workstation with KDE, I look at the Elementary guys and feel like they are having fun reinventing the wheel. What a waste of resources.
BTW, Linux user since 2001 (Slackware 7.1 back then)
32 • UNIX & Linux (by Alexandru on 2021-09-06 07:13:45 GMT from Austria)
Using UNIX in university from 1996 (no GUI), than it was Solaris 7 on Sun Sparc workstation with nice CDE environment.
In 2001 I bought my first computer. From 2002 I installed Mandrake 8.0. Distro hoper time: Mandrake, Red Hat, SuSE, Debian, Knoppix, Xandros and others. My choice was SuSE 7.0 (older than Mandrake 8.0, but it had what I needed), then in 2004 I redescovered Debian and use it as my primary OS till now.
Then I was OS-hoper. Tried: Windows, Linux, Solaris, {Free,Open,Net}BSD, Mac OS X, GNU / Hurd, BeOS, Plan 9, Kolibri OS and some other exotic OSes. Now I use more or less Linux, MacOS, Windows, FreeNSD, OpenIndiana (continuation of Solaris) and Haiku (continuation of BeOS). Debian Linux is my main system.
33 • 23-years marriage (by Tuxino on 2021-09-06 07:16:30 GMT from Italy)
I've been using Linux since 1998, when graduating in IT; department used Sun workstations and Linux sounded like being the closest one.
Started with Slackware, not the easiest for a noob, but I had no simpler choice until RedHat was out; after that, I decided to switch to Debian, in the beginning through some derivatives (Knoppix and so on), and definitely used Debian a couple of years later, which is still on my PC and notebooks.
I've got to use Windows at work, but I'm glad I've never used that any more at home since 2003: apart from some hassle with hardware compatibilty, it's all been fine and safe to use.
34 • Elementary (by lupus on 2021-09-06 07:27:29 GMT from Germany)
Nice review style. I prefer this approach over the usual Jesse reviewm, they sometime reek like stale fart.
Elementary is a nice (niche) Distro for the admirers of style over matter. Epiphany really?
I prefer Linux over other BS (Bullshi*t) because of the freedom of choice, the freedom from coporate oversight, the freedom from beeing tracked everywhere.... in short freedom.
Those guys from Elementary remind us that some freedoms (i.e. titlebars) are worth fighting for and so I decided some years ago never to really try Elementary again bc it's freedom constricting. I really hate it from the bottom of my heart though it really always looks so nice. I didn't even know it doesn't play well with Virtual Box and even Etcher having problems generating a booting stick is unheard of.
So I think 2 Stars out of 5 is well deserved
35 • How long using LInux? (by penguinx86 on 2021-09-06 07:37:59 GMT from United States)
I've been using LInux for 13 years. Started with Ubuntu, then distro hopped many other flavors. Now I use Linux Mint, because it's the only distro that's compatible with the wifi adapter in my laptop out of the box. I like Linux Mint so much, I just made my 21st donation to their cause. If you have a favorite distro, why not donate $5 or $10 to their cause too?
Besides 13 years with Linux, I was a BSD UNIX sysadmin for 10 years in the pre-Y2k days. Started on a couple of VAX 11/780 mainframes running generic BSD, then moved to Ultrix and SunOS. So if UNIX counts, make that 23 years.
36 • How Long Using Linux (by Gio on 2021-09-06 07:56:15 GMT from Italy)
Slackware since the beginning in 1994, then SuSE and many others.
Nowadays always Slackware (waiting for 15.o), OpenSuSE, Mx, Antix,Q4os ...
37 • How long I live in Linux world (by Gnu/ Paolo Metal on 2021-09-06 07:56:22 GMT from Italy)
Hello, I am starting using Linux in 2003 with Mandrake 9.1.
After some trouble upgradind to 9.2 I have start to distro- hopping using Suse, Debian and derivative, some of the BSDs, Puppy, *buntu, Arch/Manjaro and finally staying with Sparkylinux. I think my distro-hopping days are ended now <3
I also discover a new world: the importance of FOSS, FSF and Stallman's ideas
38 • StarOffice (by Jim Aston on 2021-09-06 07:57:35 GMT from Canada)
1997 and I was working with some grade 12 students to fix up donated corporate computers. You could beat someone to death with the Star Office manual and disk set! I'd bought the package because various people could log in and update a document. It was like magic for the time.
I still have my telephone book sized "NT4Unleashed", It's like owning a dragon or some other mythical stuff. Before anyone asks, yes I have the printed copy of man, too.
I realty started using Linux distros in 2004 and I love them still. Well I'm here! A history class is called for with a full rundown of Xandros etc.
Linux has worked incredibly well for so long! Now of course it is kicking my ass because my SAS card is not recognized and so I have to use a live USB to get things going.
So yes - happily.
39 • First taste of Linux (by Peter on 2021-09-06 07:57:57 GMT from United Kingdom)
It was Mandrake in 2000, being sold off cheap at a local computer shop on seven 3.5 inch diskettes. I was quickly hooked on the frustrations of Linux! Happy days!
40 • How long I live in Linux world (by Gnu/ Paolo Metal on 2021-09-06 08:06:30 GMT from Italy)
Hello, I am starting using Linux in 2003 with Mandrake 9.1.
After some trouble upgrading to 9.2 I have start to distro- hopping using Suse, Debian and derivative, some of the BSDs, Puppy, *buntu, Arch/Manjaro and finally staying with Sparkylinux. I think my distro-hopping days are ended now <3
I also discover a new world: the importance of FOSS, FSF and Stallman's ideas
41 • Linux from beginning (by Fabio on 2021-09-06 08:11:42 GMT from Italy)
I started to use linux around 2001 with RedHat (7?). In my workplace I was asked
to try to adapt some complex applications written in C running on expensive Unix workstations to cheaper PCs with Linux. It was a long work (that started installing a Linux OS for the first time) but successfully at end. Few months after i installed for the first time Linux (Mandrake if I remember well) also in my home PC (with no internet connections at that time) in dual boot with Windows (probably with the famous winME).
Of course I yet use Linux today.
42 • How long I have been using Linux (by Joseph Mottola on 2021-09-06 09:00:38 GMT from United States)
MX Linux As Seen on 4chan /g/-Technology
Original posting on 4chan.
"MX Linux objectively best distro Anonymous 09/01/21(Wed)13:40
Is MX Linux the final redpill?
-SystemD free
-Just werks
-Debian stable with XFCE, has KDE version aswell
-Useful tools
-Has recent kernel "AHS" releases
-Installs even easier than Ubuntu
-Has a GUI tool for installing most popular apps, in a list, best i have seen so far in any distro."
Reposter has been using Linux since 1997 and MX Linux for over four years. There is a reason MX Linux has been number one on DistroWatch's hits per day (H.P.D.) ranking almost form it's inception. Just Works.
43 • How long using Linux.. (by Michael King on 2021-09-06 09:07:33 GMT from United Kingdom)
Since January 2003 for me. Our one family computer got a virus Christmas 2002 and we had a few weeks without it. I can still remember getting it back and google searching for alternative operating systems to Windows, found this site and began my journey,
(Linux user no. 366630)
It brought the love back of computing I had as a kid with my old rickety ZX81. Got really into old broken old hardware, ex-business Thinkpads I fixed up that enabled my 4 kids to have a functioning laptop for school work, One of which went on to be an animator on a motion picture using Centos/redhat, another is a data architect and another a graphic designer, all OS-agnostic. I used Mandrake as my first but went through many live cd's/ them, Suse, Puppylinux, Damn small Linux, Fedora, Mepis, Elivecd, Ubuntu, Linuxmint. At work I am 50/50 using macOS and Ubuntu gnome these days, I distro hop less than I did, Just dabble from time to time.
44 • legacy to Linux (by drtom on 2021-09-06 09:38:44 GMT from United States)
legacy came out in October, 1981. I had used legacy since November, 1981. legacy had great promise. But, ... after all the viruses, black software, fees, etc., when legacy went nuts with 8, I moved to GNU/Linux in August 2016. Quite accidentally, I moved to Linux Mint 17.3. Mint had the legacy-like Cinnamon desktop, which made my transition to GNU/Linux painless. I should have done this 20 years earlier. (Slow learner, I guess.).
When I am bored, I Google, "legacy installation problems". It is really sad to see all the problems legacy users are having. In five years of GNU/Linux usage, I have had no problems with viruses, 'black software', fees, etc.
I have never regretted my decision to use GNU/LInux.
It is a genuine intellectual pleasure to use GNU/LInux, the command-line, Bash, gcc, gdb, glibc, to be able to read the source code and have complete control of my computer.
As an older American, I cherish and protect my freedom.
I thank Richard Stallman for the GNU Project, GNU-GPL freedoms and GNU 'userland'.
I thank Linus Torvalds for Linux.
I thank the software open source community for their support and effort.
On my computer, I have a multi-boot system: Debian, Linux-Mint Debian, Ubuntu, and Linux Mint all boot into the same /home directory partition.
I am using Linux From Scratch to build my own OS.
This stuff is pure fun!
Thanks to All.
45 • how long using lnux (by peer on 2021-09-06 09:39:43 GMT from Netherlands)
I do not know exactly but I think it was around 1996-1997 that I started with Redhat (with a book), then Suse. After that several distro's: ubuntu, mint, mint kde, pclinux,manjaro, kubuntu and others. The last three-four years is only use Debian
46 • How long using Linux... (by Ivan on 2021-09-06 09:41:38 GMT from Italy)
Since about 2001.
I was hired in April 2000 as a computer scientist and was asked to follow unix systems. With pleasure I discovered that there was a free version of unix on which it was possible to play and learn and so I started with dual booting on my office PC.
47 • Elementary (by Bob on 2021-09-06 09:52:24 GMT from United States)
Along with nice aesthetics, unfortunately, each new release of Elementary seems to bring bugs and annoyances that are not common to more mainstream distros with larger support communities.
For me, the main use of Elementary is to spur other (IMO, better) distros like FerenOS and Manjaro Deepin to borrow a few Elementary "look and feel" design elements and ideas while providing more substantive and practical power, stability and usefulness.
Maybe partly due to my aging Lenovo i7-based notebook's Intel+Nvidia graphics, my installation of EOS 6 was an unusable FAILURE: browser never displayed, USB wired mouse did not work, Flatpak apps never showed up in software center. This basic functionality FAIL just does not happen in mainstream distros.
48 • How long using Linux (by James on 2021-09-06 09:52:38 GMT from United States)
I fooled around with Linux in about 2005 with Xandros, but LILO kept failing to boot and I got tired of reinstalling the OS. Win 8 in 2012 drove me permanently to Linux. Zorin, the Original Solus, Point Linux, Debian and eventually Ubuntu Mate which is now my default OS.
49 • poll (by buntos on 2021-09-06 10:55:50 GMT from Portugal)
My (for this subject) poll would be:
1 - before Ubuntu
2 - after Ubuntu
3 - since Vista
50 • I began using Linux with... (by John on 2021-09-06 11:11:04 GMT from Australia)
I began with Mandrake back in the early 2000s. A bloke I knew gave me some Mandrake disks from a magazine. I used that for a while them migrated to Mepis on a new laptop because it could make the wifi work. I then drifted to Fedora for which I still have fond memories. Sometime later, a work colleague gave me some Ubuntu disks-can't remember which version. I stayed with Ubuntu for a while but went over to Mint after Ubuntu went stupid. After Mint I stayed with Linux Lite and some other xfce desktops.I then moved to the Ubuntu based Deepin. I stayed with Deepin when it moved back to a Debian base, but one of the updates didn't run happily on my work desktop, so I install Ubuntu and survived Gnome 3 thanks to the Ubuntu Tweaks and Gnome extensions. Now I run Ubuntu Deepin Desktop Edition (UDDE) on one partition and as a backup I have Ubuntu with a Deepin Desktop thanks to a ppa linked to UDDE.
51 • Running on Linux. (by Ilmar on 2021-09-06 11:35:25 GMT from Latvia)
I have been running Linux...11+ years, since 2008 and reading Distrowatch on Mondays also from 2008. Have a nice day, Penguin pals! :)
52 • elementary (by papapito on 2021-09-06 11:52:58 GMT from Australia)
consistent failures on multiple setups. I tried it each time I got newer hardware. Same as I do with manjaro/ubuntu/fedora/lite/arch to see if one has a better experience. elementary never does. I have not even bothered with it over the last 6 months of hardware updates. Most likely wont again.
It didn't occur to me I guess I technically using gentoo on xbox and pairing a gentoo install on my laptop at the time to work out what changed I could make myself. Always a hobby/sparetime thing until about 2 years ago when I moved everything across to linux and no turning back.
53 • Elementary and the review (by crayola-eater on 2021-09-06 12:04:04 GMT from United States)
I've from time to time given Elementary a spin, to see how it has grown. I've usually been impressed by the work and vision, but in the end it has never been my cup of tea as a daily driver.
But Jeff's rant about it not having a word processor - does Windows or IOS come with a word processor? I don't expect any OS to provide me with specific software, I just want it to provide me with an Operating System. The more stable and customizable it is, the better. That is what I want from an OS.
I will add the software that I want to use. I have my likes and preferences, and over the years I have bristled with having to uninstall all the stuff that distros come loaded with that are of no use to me. If Jeff thinks installing the word processor of his choice is a hassle, how does he ever trim the fat from an install?
Yet I readily admit, that giving those distros a live spin, I have discovered a few programs that really interested me. And I install them on my system.
As his overall review shows, Jeff is no slouch when it comes to working with Linux, so I was surprised with his big bug-a-boo about no word processor.
Makes me want to give Elementary another spin, I like that fact of no Office install. What else have they done to surprise me?
54 • Running Linux since 1998 (by Wim Herremans on 2021-09-06 12:17:02 GMT from Belgium)
I didn't have fast internet at that time. So I started with a CD version of SUSE.
When I finally had fast internet (±2004), I tried Debian and stayed there for a while.
Then I moved to UBUNTU.
Later, I moved to Fedora.
Around 2014, I moved to Arch Linux with XFCE desktop and still use it as my main Linux system.
In parallel, I also use Linux Mint XFCE and Manjaro XFCE, as secondary Linux systems.
55 • Poll (by fox on 2021-09-06 12:21:57 GMT from Canada)
I first experimented with Linux in the early 90's when I bought a boxed version of SuSE Linux 6.4 to try on my Mac hardware. Interesting but not practical for me at the time. Much later I experimented with Ubuntu 7.04 on a virtual machine and liked it. A few years later, I got sick of Apple's restricted choices of desktop computers and the dearth of desktop customization options, and I made the switch; I think it was to Ubuntu 10.04. I stuck mostly with Apple computers, but I have stayed with Linux since then. Mostly with Ubuntu, but I had a two year stint with Mint when my 2015 iMac took 4 minutes to boot from Ubuntu. (They were using different kernels at the time.) I eventually upgraded my iMac and the newer one worked fine with Ubuntu, so I went back to it. Along the way I have tried openSuSE, Arch, Manjaro, Crunchbang, Bunsen Labs and many others, but I haven't found any that has moved me off of Ubuntu.
56 • How long has my linux adventures been? (by zhymm on 2021-09-06 13:15:35 GMT from United States)
I began "dabbling" with linux around 1999-2000 (Corel linux IIRC) but could never get whatever distribution I played with to work to satisfaction. I was too ignorant to solve the hardware issues that often cropped up.
Then, in 2003, I tried PCLOS 0.93. I think it was called "Big Daddy". And it worked! I dual booted PCLOS (through a few updates) with Windows XP for a few years. Booting into XP decreased over time and eventually I dumped it altogether. I remember the date ... August 16, 2006.
After that I distro hopped like crazy, I had to try them all. If a "new" distro appeared on Distrowatch I was on it like a hungry dog on table scraps. Crunchbang was a favorite. And too often tried to have them share the same Home directory on a well partitioned HD. Which frequently ended in disaster.
Settled on Arch for a few years (2008-2011), then migrated to Manjaro when it was released. A few years ago I came back to the Debian side via MXLinux, my current OS.
57 • How Long (by kc1di on 2021-09-06 13:32:18 GMT from United States)
I started with Linux in 1994 first distro was Slackware when it came of 25 or more floppy discs. took weeks to get everything running. It come a long way in the last 27 years. Think you should have had a 20+ year option :)
58 • elementary os (by Ed on 2021-09-06 13:39:35 GMT from United States)
I get not bundling Libre office with the install but warnings and buggy software/installs should not be happening at this point. Plus having to work that hard to get all the software to show up in the repository's is not good. I wanted to try it but not being able to install it in VirtualBox is a no go for me. If you want to act like MS with that 3rd party install philosophy then expect some major push back. I'd still like to try it if they straightened out the VirtualBox install issues.
59 • elementary OS review (by Ankleface Wroughlandmire on 2021-09-06 13:49:04 GMT from Ecuador)
> there might be problems - hanging at "stdin: not a typewriter"
Well, it's not wrong, you weren't installing it on a typewriter were you? ;-)
But to your point, I tested the previous version of elementary OS on a new Linux user with an open mind, but the experiment was basically a failure. Broadcom WiFI support didn't work out of the box. The user looked for common proprietary apps in the app store, all of which are available for Linux but weren't in the app store, so they assumed that those apps didn't exist for Linux. I explained that it's basically an Ubuntu system, so they downloaded some DEB files. And the next hurdle was installing them, as I wasn't going to teach a brand new user to revert to the command line for something as basic as installing a DEB file. We also needed to make some tweaks to some settings in /etc, but couldn't find any way to open a file manager or a text editor with root or sudo permissions. Again, I know full well how to do that from the command line, but a new user shouldn't be put through that. I later contacted the developers with my recommendations based on this experience, and they were impeccably polite, but made it clear that my suggestions didn't align with the elementary OS vision. Turns out elementary does *not* recommend sideloading DEB files due to security concerns. I personally think it's strange that they discourage that but do recommend sideloading Flatpaks in the new version. And in general I don't like Flatpaks due to their bloat and their failure to integrate with anything but the standard distro GTK/Qt theme. But that's fine, elementary OS is definitely a visually appealing and carefully designed OS, it just doesn't meet my needs as a very long-time Linux user, or apparently those of a brand new user either.
60 • Introduced to Linux from school days (by Education with Linux on 2021-09-06 14:24:38 GMT from India)
I'm from part of world, where GNU/Linux is the recommended operating system in the recommended curriculum.
The Govt agency develops their own distribution on top of Ubuntu, and fill with all educational stuff. Students are introduced to basic computer usage, office suites, and a little bit of python programming over the secondary school education.
61 • Elementary (by Pete on 2021-09-06 14:39:38 GMT from United States)
I personally don't want a pre-installed word processor or other bloat. Adding Flathub is trivial, which provides me everything I need. It's a very simple, clean OS.
62 • tons of comments (by fonz on 2021-09-06 14:52:03 GMT from Indonesia)
for me, my curiosity started when wandows h8 (8Y) and wanted to take a peak over the fence. back then ubuntu was very noob friendly, installing a whole bunch of stuff to make things work OOTB. thankfully most mainstream distros followed along.
it was built into my brain to hate apple (cant argue their HWs good though). thankfully ever since i had a kid i slowed down on gaming (especially MMOs). might not be too long before ditching wandows in total since wine is catching up pretty well. kids are also very fun to play with, watching them grow ups my fav hobby.
seems like some gument has plenty of time on their hands...
63 • My first Linux (by Joerg Kraushaar on 2021-09-06 15:08:57 GMT from Germany)
My first Linux was SuSE back in 1995. But I was a DOS guy and everything I have had done was for DOS and for programming I used the Borland Z Basic compiler. Al this was not running on SuSE and I gave up.
After the end of life of Windows 98 and the transition to Windows 2000
blue screens start to become a almost daily feature.
So since 2006 I use Debian based OS.
It always depends on the hardware what I install.
My favourite distros were Crunchbang and the never forgotten Linux Mint fluxbox edition.
Today I use a Ubuntu LXDE on my Desktop and a Bunsen Labs on my Laptop.
64 • Elementary & Poll (by dragonmouth on 2021-09-06 15:42:44 GMT from United States)
After reading the review, I came to the conclusion the elementary is not ready for prime time because of developers arrogant "MY way or the highway" attitude. After 30 years of Linux development, any distro other than a DIY one should work first time, every time with minimum of problems.
The first distro I ever tried to install was Red Hat 5.1 back in late 1990s (IIRC). The install process was a bit byzantine and involved. I was more successful with a contemporary Slackware. But I was too used to Windows. An online friend convinced me to try SimplyMepis 4.x. Been using Linux exclusively ever since.
65 • personal linux history (by postertom on 2021-09-06 16:03:20 GMT from United States)
Mandrake, Knoppix, Libravox (commercial), Kanotix (from flash drive), MEPIS, PCLOS, (left KDE behind when MEPIS & PCLOS went to KDE 4), Ubuntu, (left Gnome behind because of Gnome 3), Mint (MATE). Some were used concurrently.
Most exiting... Knoppix - WOW!
MVP... Klaus Knopper
Biggest bummers... KDE/Gnome/Red Hat - when developers use "choice" as an excuse to reduce functionality.
Biggest disappointment...
1. when Woodford stepped back
2. when the Linux community failed to see the potential of Ubuntu (for general acceptance of Linux)
Best Program - LibreOffice
Best Game - Cataclysmdda
66 • Using Linux (by Trevor on 2021-09-06 16:04:51 GMT from Canada)
I've been using Linux since October 2009, after testing the beta release of Windows 7. If that doesn't speak volumes I have no idea what does! :)
Now using Debian 11 - and it's as solid as a rock! Haven't seen a BSOD since leaving Windows - EVER! I don't have to hold my face in a certain expression anymore just so Windows won't BSOD. Wonder how many people will switch to Linux after the latest update to Windows? Should be interesting to witness...
67 • Poll and 'bloat' (by anticapitalista on 2021-09-06 16:05:34 GMT from Greece)
My first distro was in 2003 - slax, then moved to MEPIS_2003.10, now I exclusively use antiX.
Calling a distro 'bloat' is popular these days it seems. Since one person's definition of 'bloat' is another's 'feature', the term has become meaningless, but personally I find it incredibly annoying when people write that in comments/reviews.
68 • First one (by Roger on 2021-09-06 17:31:40 GMT from Belgium)
My first foray was BeOS in 1998 or 99, could even use the dial up modem without a problem.
Next came Redhat for some years followed by Suse, than Ubuntu and PCLinuxOS and finally Linux Mint from version 5 and hooked from Isadora that's nine. Now I test different distro but my choice is always Linux Mint. Mate is the desktop I prefer don't like Cinnamon and some of their choices they include are the first I trow out like timeshift and thunderbird.
69 • first linux (by Mirni Snovi on 2021-09-06 17:38:11 GMT from Croatia)
Hi,
first time found redhat in 1999.
Liked it but it was not mature for everyday work.
In 2006 discovered PCLinuxOS since than tried other distros but they all suck compared to PCLinuxOS.
70 • How long Linux... (by someuser on 2021-09-06 18:07:19 GMT from United States)
In 1994-95-96 I had friends already using Linux and we were talking about it on IRC so I wanted to give it a try. Can't remember precisely the order and the years but I initially tried Slackware, RedHat, Debian, Caldera, Novell, Corel... Over the years I would try every release and fork in some VM or live from a CD, I even got a box with 100 CDs of Ubuntu to share around when it was first released. To this day I still check/try/test releases periodically, I mainly use Windows LTSC and Debian on the workstation and I have a Mac laptop. Never did dual boot, I use two drives. Slackware and FreeBSD are still in my heart and the one thing I still can't do: use fork distros, I just can't.
71 • Elementary (by jeff on 2021-09-06 18:50:49 GMT from Switzerland)
If there is one useless Linux distribution, then that is Elementary. Trying to invent the wheel...oh let see, Firefox and LibreOffice are not "curated" (whatever this means) so you have to use our useless apps, or if you do not use our useless application then use Flatpacks, despite the fact that Ubuntu repositories are full of software and Firefox and LibreOffice are standard Linux applications, or even worse, trying to imitate Ḿacos, whit no real resources at hand to do anything of value for the Linux community is so frustrating and stupid, than I can only shake my head. I beg the "developers" of Elementary to stop this nonsense for the sake of humanity.
72 • My first GNU/Linux distro. (by Tuxedoar on 2021-09-06 18:55:58 GMT from Argentina)
I began using GNU/Linux in 2001 with Mandrake 8.1, back then. I was introduced to GNU/Linux by a friend of mine, during the secondary school. I had no experence installing or running other OSes, other than Windows. What is more, even my knowledge on IT or computers in general, was rather limited. Since I was an avarage Windows user and my PC back then, only had one hard drive, I bought a second hard drive, to install Mandrake on it, exclusively!. That was because I was aware that by installing Mandrake, I could possibly screw up my Windows installation and may loose my data as well!. So my first attempt at performing the Mandrake installation was unsuccesful. I'm not sure what was the exact symphom, but If I recall correctly, the installer won't even start. I was about to give up, but I had the idea of disconnecting a USB mouse that I was using then. Bingo!. That made it!, but now I didn't have a working mouse. I'm not sure but I think I tried with a PS/2 one, which didn't work neither. I ended up buying a serial mouse and that led me to be finally able ot perform the installation. I remember I felt the installation was quite user-friendly, given that I was an average Windows user with no specialized knowledge. So I was able to finish it succesfuly!.
I fiddled around with Mandrake for quite a while. In fact, I kept using it till its version 9.2!. Then, in 2005 or so, I moved to Ubuntu. I was an Ubuntu user until its version 8.04 (LTS). Finally, I made the switch to Debian and never looked back! :)
Needless to say, I've learned a LOT!. Not only about GNU/Linux, but also about the Free Software philosophy, IT and computers in general!. Quite a journey for me! :) .
Cheers and have a nice week!.-
73 • @67 anticapitalista: (by dragonmouth on 2021-09-06 19:29:05 GMT from United States)
I would be surprised if you did not use antiX. :-)
You're right. BLOAT is an ambiguous and controversial term. To me "bloat" is the developer shoving a language pack for just about every language on Earth into the default install of a distro and then not allowing the uninstalling of the unwanted ones. Or installing by default dozens of video and printer drivers and then not allowing the uninstalling of unneeded/unwanted ones. I know, it is ostensibly for the"convenience" of the user. What about the INconvenience of the user having to uninstall all the unwanted software? After all, the vast majority of users need one, maybe two language packs, one video driver, one or two printer drivers. How many users consider "cowsay" and/or "fortune" essential features of their distro? Instead of cramming every piece of software they can think of, along with the kitchen sink, into the default install, why don't the developers give the user a basic system and let him/her install the applications THEY need/want? Like you do with antiX Core and antiX Base.
BTW - why is it necessary to have some video and printer drivers hardwired into antiX?
74 • Using Linux (by Jay on 2021-09-06 19:29:22 GMT from Romania)
Your survey should have included a 20+ years option.
I ordered my first CD-ROM drive (called "WORM drives" back then) when Linux went v1.0.0; I ended up with a CD with kernel v1.0.1 on it instead.
I used kernel v1.0.28 for a good bit, running Linux on a 386 with 4MB of RAM, but I had to double that to run X comfortably.
Linux didn't become my primary OS (I was using DOS and then OS/2) until several years later, but Linux was always something I liked better than either.
I started out with Slackware, RedHat, and Mandrake and moved on to other distros over time; my first Linux in a professional setting was in 1998 because they expected me to use Windows NT and I was never a Windows fan.
I use Arch variants now (preferably minimal, community-based distros sans systemd) on my primary personal machine and appreciate outlier distros like Alpine on others (especially virtual machines).
75 • bloat (by postertom on 2021-09-06 19:48:47 GMT from United States)
Anticapitalista said it right, short and unmistakably true...
>> one person's definition of 'bloat' is another's 'feature' <<
But then "feature" is a little weak. Sometimes "requirement" is more accurate. So, my wife would never be using Linux without LibreOffice (originally OpenOffice). For me, a spreadsheet that doesn't record macros means I'm back with Excel. Why would I ever waste so much time with a spreadsheet that doesn't record macros?... that would be the definition of stupidity. But then that's just my own requirement and I see that others don't need it and consider it unnecessary.
76 • Time using Linux (by Jim on 2021-09-06 19:51:41 GMT from United States)
I started with Mandrake Linux in 1998 and have moved on from there with Fedora, Ubuntu, and now my Mint as my main distro.
77 • Using Linux since... (by buckyogi on 2021-09-06 20:14:31 GMT from United States)
In April 2019 I bought a laptop preinstalled with Ubuntu-Gnome. In July 2019 I switched to Debian Buster-MATE. I intended to distrohop but I fell so madly in love with Debian I've kept it. I have tried a few distros (Manjaro, Kali, Bodhi) on an old 32-bit laptop. I use Windows at work but when I retire later this year I can kiss Microsoft goodbye. I will probably try other distros in a virtual machine after I retire and have time on my hands but I think I am a Debian user for life. Linux is the best thing that ever happened to me.
78 • My history of using Linux (by Ted in Minnesota on 2021-09-06 20:27:47 GMT from United States)
I've been using Linux since the days of Ubuntu when it had only a "brown theme", maybe back in 2007-2009 or so days (?). I enjoyed using Ubuntu until they went to using Unity, which was when I baled. I forget what I went to next, but I did like to use Slax, although, as I recall, I could not download any apps to use besides what came with Slax. (I've never had any luck downloading with any app besides Synaptic.) For a long time, I used Ubuntu Mate 16.04 and still use it on a couple of my machines.
At some point I enjoyed using Solus, in its earlier incarnations, not the current ones. Afterwards, I enjoyed using several other linuxes, and now use MX Linux which I really like. It's comfortable like an old shoe. I only wish they had a version that runs using Mate, although what they do use works well.
Linux for ever!
Ted
79 • Using Linux since (by Antony on 2021-09-06 21:20:23 GMT from United Kingdom)
Since about mid-90's. I remember doing a multi floppy install of early SuSE. Greatest moment for me was the advent of Mandrake. Other highlights for me were sidux, Mepis, Pardus (pre Debian based). Tried out most distros. Currently using Mageia 8 and Tumbleweed.
80 • Using Linux since... (by Mandatory on 2021-09-06 23:38:25 GMT from Spain)
The first time I saw a linux distribution running was Yellow Dog Linux in my old Mac. It was 1999. So fascinating that I bought a PC to continue exploring Linux. I became a distrohopper, (Mandrake, Mepis, etc, dozens o distros) but using BeOS as my main OS in my PC. Some time later I left BeOS (with tears...) for Win2K and when MS left support for it I started to use Linux (Xubuntu) as my main system. It was a mature systemNowadays my main systems are Mint an MXLinux, but always have an eye on Xubuntu, LinuxLite and Sparky (yes, Xfce for ever).
81 • Using Linux since (by John on 2021-09-06 23:55:37 GMT from Canada)
Been using Linux since Slackware 2 in the mid nineties. Tried just about every distro and BSD out there but seem to have settled on MX Linux KDE for main laptop, Linux Lite for older equipment and now Debian 11 KDE on main desktop. Guess I like the debian line best :-)
82 • Running Linux since 2009 (by albinard on 2021-09-07 00:04:31 GMT from United States)
First Linux in 2009
In April of that year, at the tender age of 76, I did lots of “trial” installs using various freebie install CD’s (I lived in a dial-up-only area then) as single-boot, on a hand-me-down eMachines with a severe overheating problem: Ubuntu 8.10, Mepis, then each via text-install for practice, then dual boot of the two of them, then later the newly-released Ubuntu 9.10. In July my main machine, running Windows XP, got the Conficker virus, and the Windows tech support person I paid for help was away for the summer.
In the Linux spirit I had begun to learn, I figured out how to download the Norton Symantic fix for Conficker and did the job myself. My accidental reward was to learn that DSL was coming to my area the next month, so I signed up as soon as it did, then installed Ubuntu 9.04 from DVD as dual-boot on my main machine. Never did see the Windows tech support guy again.
A few months later I got a good deal on a Compaq computer; it ran Windows Vista, but offered a free upgrade to Windows 7. Web reports complained of endless reboots from flawed upgrades, no solutions, major problems. I lucked out on that front and it worked fine, but when I tried to uninstall Norton Antivirus in favor of a freebie AV, it nearly crashed everything. I mention all this to make it clear that when you start using Linux, you become used to being your own IT department. Windows 7 was not bad, but I couldn’t do much to make it seem my own, so I did a Minimal Install of Ubuntu 9.10 on the old eMachines and tweaked it endlessly.
The next year I began distro-hopping with a passion, while running Ubuntu in dual-boot with Windows 7 on the new Compaq. Gradually Ubuntu became the Daily Driver, and by 2012 I found that the only thing I had used Windows for in several months was the required updates, so I finally got rid of it in favor of Xubuntu 12.04, and I’ve been running Xubuntu as Daily Driver ever since.
83 • My Linux history (by debiangamer on 2021-09-07 01:55:48 GMT from Finland)
I started using Redhat in 1996. It installed to my laptop fine. I used Zen Linux with Xfce in 2010 in an old computer. I have used Debian Xfce since 2014. I realized soon that Debian "stable" has old and buggy software and started using Debian testing. I have used Debian Sid Xfce a couple of years because simple-cdd supports Sid only. Debian Sid is stable and it has latest software.
84 • How long have you been using Linux? (by Sebastian on 2021-09-07 02:20:40 GMT from Canada)
Since 2007. I had used mostly Windows until then (though I had initially started with MS DOS for those who can remember it!). I was very frustrated how slow my computer was with Windows, how vulnerable it was, etc.etc. Then, I discovered Ubuntu and I was blown away by how fast, polished and versatile it was. After trying several distros, I ended up using Mint most of the time.
85 • Random thoughts, EOS on VBox, Surveys (by Angel on 2021-09-07 02:37:25 GMT from Philippines)
@Jeff and @58. I just installed Elementary on VBox. No problems, except: If VBox is not in full-screen mode, the installer window is truncated and the "select" button at bottom is not visible. Thus, you are stopped in your tracks. Other than that, it's running fine. Although I like the general layout of EOS, I like choices, so I don't use it. Ubuntu Gnome with Dash to Panel extension and Plank can be easily set up with the same look, plus it gives you many other options. So can KDE with Ktrans theme and Latte.
I like the last two DW polls. They ask about use, rather than just opinion. Going by the weekly banter here, I would not have expected Debian and derivatives to show over 80% use. So much for opinions. Some good and (maybe)some bad from this week's survey. It's nice that Linux users are so satisfied and loyal. On the other hand, such a high percentage of users over 6 years show not many new people joining the fold. Could be a statistical quirk, in that the DW readership may consist mostly of veteran Linux geeks and old farts like me.
Me, I tried Linux back when it was etched on stone tablets, but had no use for it at the time. Began again in 2006 when I had to repalce a non-booting XP. Windows now resides on VMs. Tried many distros ove the years, Settled now mostly on the Debian family.
86 • Running Linux (by Gary W on 2021-09-07 02:39:32 GMT from Australia)
I started with Linux in 1996, liked to make out I could see some of its potential (as an OS/2 refugee). Installed Slackware, I forget which version, on a purpose-bought Compaq SLT (starting my affection for laptops), because I could install it from (exhaustingly downloaded) floppies. Got the hang of it via the book "Running Linux".
Eventually wanted more features (GUI, package management), so bought an old Acer server (with CDROM drive) and installed Red Hat 5.1. Had great fun with that until I discovered Debian package management, ran testing for years and years and years. Then a flush of cheap hardware enabled a spate of distro-hopping, which continues to a limited extent today. The only survivors are PCLinuxOS (continues to be well put together) and EXE GNU/Linux (very economical). Otherwise, running MX for several years, and completely happy.
87 • How Long have you been using Linux. (by Charles on 2021-09-07 02:57:10 GMT from United States)
I started with Linux Mint 17.x and found the biggest thing was you had to do more things for your self. This is a definitely a good thing. If you want to be spoon-fed on your computer you are going to give up all of your personal information to somebody and probably more than one.
88 • Linux user since '92 (by Bob McConnell on 2021-09-07 03:33:32 GMT from United States)
I found Soft Landing Systems in the spring of 1992 and downloaded most of the diskette files. After copying them onto floppies, I installed the system on an Everex Step-386. It was far better than the early versions of MS-Windows, but SLS folded their tent later that year. In September '93, I replaced it with Slackware, and have never looked back. I currently have four workstations and four servers running either 14.2 or -current. The only other distributions present are Raspian on three Raspberry Pi's and FreeBSD on the WD MyCloud and OPNSense on the firewall.
89 • linux user since? (by pengxuin on 2021-09-07 05:17:20 GMT from New Zealand)
also in the +11 year bracket.
Mandrake sometime in the late 90s. (I still miss the "dragon" in the grub boot screen).
Dual booted with Win95, the HDD was larger than the bios of the day supported, so ran on a proprietary HDD FS overlay that the bios could "see". learnt a few things about where to (or not) put the boot files. so, a few re-installs.
came as a single CD , and, as the cd rom was not a bios bootable device, learnt another trick -the boot floppy.
used an external 14400 modem to get on the "information superhighway"!
(the kids these days have it so easy).
Tried Ubuntu off a PC mag front cover - couldnt make it boot, so gave it the flick.
when Mandrake merged to form Mandriva I stayed until Mandriva 2010.
learnt the wonders of VirtualBox, and have trialed many distros over the years - still have about 30 VM images.
Currently have Mageia 8 on an assortment of hardware, from a real 32bit Athlon 2400xp system to an Asus T100A (32bit EFI) and assorted other 64bit Laptops and desktops.
oh and it just works.
90 • A Linux Journey (by Peter on 2021-09-07 06:18:44 GMT from Australia)
Started running Linux with Red Hat in 2001, following Apple 2e's in the 80's and Macs and Windows in the 90's. Started distro hopping through Mageia, SUSE, Fedora, Debian and countless others. Have eventually landed on a multiboot system with Mint, Manjaro, Fedora, Debian, Archbang, MX, Q4OS, and Garuda running a variety of desktops (excluding Gnome) to a common Home partition. No real favourite - depends upon the task in hand, and my mood for the day!! Have long abandoned the Windows world, but keep a copy of the venerable XP installed to occasionally run my scanner which has no Linux drivers.
91 • First Contact 2000, only Linux since 2008 (by MonteDrago on 2021-09-07 06:42:45 GMT from Germany)
I hat my first Contact with Linux at 2000 with Suse Linux 6.0.
From 2005 i have use Mandrake Linux as second System on my Computer.
On 2008 i have delet my Windows XP and uns first Ubuntu as only System.
From 2009 to 2015 Linux Mint was my System.
Then a short Time Debian And MX Linux.
Since 2017 my System is Arch linux.
And i be very happy with that, so i think i will not change this again.
92 • First attempt in early 2004 (by Luke on 2021-09-07 13:44:58 GMT from United States)
It's fun reading all these stories! Here's mine:
I don't remember exactly how I first heard about Linux, but after some research I decided to jump right into the deep end and install Gentoo Linux on my laptop all the way back in early 2004. I'm pretty sure I started from scratch - stage 1.
After many hours, I made it all the way through the installation, rebooted, and...kernel panic. Rebooted...kernel panic. Tried a second time with stage 2, and once again made it through the whole installation, then rebooted...kernel panic again.
I went back and downloaded my second choice: Mandrake Linux. This mostly worked out of the box, but once I started installing software...RPM dependency hell. It was *bad* back in the day, and soured me on RPM-based distros for a long time.
I fought with it for a while, but I had kept an eye on Debian and various DEB-based distros. Everybody back then was talking about a brand new, somewhat opinionated distro with a kind of silly, alliterative nickname, and it was about to get a formal release. I downloaded Ubuntu 4.10 Warty Warthog (back before they named them in alphabetical order) on release day in 2004, and never looked back. I've had a few brief forays into Arch and Mint and even elementary OS (how topical!), I've used Debian on some home servers, and I've used CentOS or Red Hat extensively at work, but I always come home to Ubuntu.
93 • I have been using Linux... (by Semiarticulate on 2021-09-07 13:52:26 GMT from United States)
...in some capacity or another since 1993. Slackware 1.0 on 24 floppy disks. Looking forward to Slackware 15!
94 • . (by Tad Strange on 2021-09-07 14:14:41 GMT from Canada)
*reads review, deletes elementary iso*
Thanks for saving me some disk space. I've no patience for idiosyncratic software.
I've dabbled with Linux off and on for 20 years, but never really got into it, mostly because the NT-derived systems had better hardware support. I remember the pain of making USB drives work the way that we expect them to today. I remember the pain of making WPA work, assuming that your wifi card was even supported. It was a hassle.
For the past couple years I decided to dive in. I no longer have access to volume license keys, for one thing, and I'm not about to start paying for an OS.
I also have some older hardware that hardware vendors and MS have stopped supporting, but which I would still like to use.
I began, oddly, not with Linux but with a chromebook. A colleague had been using one for years, and I figured why not? I'm no longer doing a job where I *need* to use software that only runs on Windows.
I fairly quickly ran into the limitations of Chrome - mostly being that you are tied down to Google to the point where you cannot have 2 different google accounts logged in (without resorting to incognito, which is a half-assed solution), and that you;'re pretty much limited to running web-based apps, other than some of the android stuff.
So I went looking for ways to install Chromium and found the Linux subsystem for Chrome. Having set that up I was pleased with this newfound freedom to run local apps from outside of the Googsphere.
But ChromeOS itself....eh... The memory leaks are awful. I am a tab guy. I open and close tabs all of the time. Inevitably my chromebook would run out of memory and lock up solid - video glitches would be the herald of this. This was a daily occurrence.
So I took and old laptop and loaded Linux on to an SD card (I forget which distro, as I tried many of the old standbys before eventually settling on Manjaro).
Low and behold Chrome ran as I expected it to here.
So I sold the chromebook and went to running Manjaro on my old laptop. I found Plasma to my liking, and the learning curve hasn't been that bad. Printing had been the only real irritant, but that's been fixed.
I bought a new laptop recently and installed Kubuntu on the secondary drive - I've only barely bothered to configure Windows, though it exists there. Kubuntu I chose because Manjaro at the time did not have a recent enough kernel to recognise the SATA SSD in the machine. I'll likely switch back to it once Kubuntu falls out of support.
The one Windows utility that I have yet to find an analogue for is robocopy. I use that for syncing folders over the LAN, or quickly backing up to a USB drive. I looked at rsync in the past, and had no luck with it.
Oh, and to something that I read in a comment above - Windows technically *does* ship with a word processor / office suite. MS has made it very difficult to stand up a PC without using/setting up a Microsoft Account and Win11 will absolutely require this - that gives you access to the basic Office365 stuff.
I'm not a fan of that practice, having always used local accounts (one more thing to dislike about ChromeOS as well), so it's a good time to jump ship.
95 • Linux Usage (by ToddTheDuck on 2021-09-07 14:47:36 GMT from United States)
I've been using linux since mid-90s, but Unix since 1982, so this question always confuses me.
96 • elementary (by Cheker on 2021-09-07 15:06:27 GMT from Portugal)
elementary is mimicking macOS right down to being annoying with the hand holding and assuming the users are dumb. "Noooo you shouldn't install things from outside our beautiful garden!".
97 • Poll - Using Linux (by Robert on 2021-09-07 16:00:37 GMT from United States)
73% answering 11+ years. You can really see the sampling bias among DW readers.
My first look at Linux came mid-2000s, before Vista came out. I was concerned about the telemetry "spyware" it was going to have (and look where we are today) and started looking for alternatives.
I first installed Debian because it seemed like a big name. Booted it up to the text interface and had no idea how to use it.
So I searched online for a book on Linux and found my way to LFS. Given I had no experience with Linux, compiling, or any of that, it took months to get to a working desktop. Learned a lot, but I can't say I recommend anyone follow in my footsteps
Since then I've mostly bounced between OpenSuse and arch, though I've tried some other distros and spent some time on BSD and solaris.
98 • #84 Elementary & How long have you been using Linux? (by vern on 2021-09-07 16:27:39 GMT from United States)
...and yet its #8 on the all time hit list. Somehow people really like the distro. I used it one time years ago and had the same complaint then as I see the same problem today.
Apparently many others don't share the views of DW.
===
I started Linux in the beginning. I was working for the Bell System on a Unix system, PDP 1170 mini computer, at the time. Noticed someone had a stack on floppies on his desk...that's how it started. Linux fix right in there with my Unix knowledge.
99 • Great topic. (by Friar Tux on 2021-09-07 17:43:51 GMT from Canada)
Wow... in my neck of the woods it's Tuesday and we're already at 98 comments. Great topic, though.
ElementaryOS... I tried it a couple of times but they're ideology and method of doing things was a turn off (and, as I see, here, others also agree). Too much like Microsoft and/or Apple.
Also, I always thought I was the only one to ever hear of Mandrake Linux. You never hear anyone mention it. Looks like it was quite a hit in late 1990's/early 2000's, though.
100 • since 2011 (by Shade on 2021-09-07 18:03:06 GMT from Indonesia)
I have been using linux since 2011 when my laptop got broken and I need a laptop/ pc, desperately, because I need to write my thesis. Turns out all of the pc in my campus laboratory were using linux mint. That's our first meeting. Been loving linux since then. Tried many different distros.
101 • How long have been using linux (by Fekix on 2021-09-07 18:17:22 GMT from South Africa)
Since 2008, Ubuntu, Linux Minth, Mandriva, Fedora, Centos, Debian slackware (my favourite), opensuse back to Ubuntu. No longer distro hopping because I have no energies to struggle with, say, making slackware work on macbook air, my current machine. With Ubuntu 20.04 everything is works.
102 • @99 (by Tad Strange on 2021-09-07 19:46:13 GMT from Canada)
Mandrake was The One for relatively painless set-up, in my own memory.
Hearing the name Caldera brought up some memories I had forgotten. Lawsuits or some other anti-competitive BS...
103 • Poll (by StephenC. on 2021-09-07 21:07:18 GMT from United States)
About 1999 I experimented with RedHat off and on for several years, but it was too cumbersome. In 2005 I installed Xandros for a person who kept killing her Windows XP. It was a year before she realized that I hadn't just installed "a different version of Windows". A year of no phone calls was enough to convince me to stop waffling and migrate my family. Windows free by 2007. We use Debian Stable. AppImage or VirtualBox for anything else.
104 • running linux (by marty on 2021-09-08 00:27:56 GMT from United States)
Been using Mint since Mint 18.1.
105 • @94 Try SyncThing (by Randy on 2021-09-08 01:33:09 GMT from United States)
Hey Tad Strange,
For LAN syncing, I recently found SyncThing and am very pleased at it's abilities.
I have an AIO I use as the main source.
I sync a 2TB data drive to two MX Linux and one Windows machines (another desktop and two laptops).
I also sync DropBox, Onedrive, and Sync cloud accounts from the main desktop to the Linux pc's. This way I have all my cloud storage available in my Linux systems with only one background service. It's also good way to get around DropBox's 3 device limit for the free account.
This setup saves me a lot of manual work keeping my data synchronized, and now more accessible. I used GoodSync before for the manual sync, and now it's purpose is for removable drive backups.
GoodSync is a per computer license, and I use it to do a local backup of my cloud services on one computer. I just started using FreeFileSync Portable to do the same on a separate laptop that is my music player and also has the native cloud apps.
I just started this configuration a couple of weeks ago, and hope the program and process continues to be easy and productive.
106 • Linux Since 1998 (by Brian_T on 2021-09-08 01:40:53 GMT from United States)
I have been using linux in various flavors since 1998, using Red Hat 5. Those early days were painful as hardware support was limited. Over the years, I gravitated more toward Ubuntu based distros purely for community support and endless applications. I run linux on all non critical compute at my home, from single board computers to laptops, and a variety of VMs. Linux has not replaced my main desktop, and likely never will. For various reasons. Mainly that in today's information technology arena, Microsoft rules and they make unequaled products. I dont like the Windows 10 intrusion anymore than the next privacy aware person does, but I dont have the desire to constantly settle for less when using a linux desktop. LibreOffice works OK for free, but cant compete with MS Office. Printing and scanning support in linux is horrible and has been forever. When will the Devs get this fact. Printing and Scanning should be included as seamless, but no, you still in 2021, have to buy a linux compatible device. So I have HP devices, that do work. I could go on, but I digress. I currently use KDE Neon rolling release, and I have to say, its been rock solid while rolling through upgrades. The Plasma desktop is beautiful and the performance is getting better. At this point, I am even considering using KDE Neon as my office computer main OS, and running a Win10 OS in a VM for the things I cannot compromise on. I am just about at that turning point. I will continue to use linux and will never abandon it. My one grief of the overall linux community is that there are way too many directions of development. Think of if primary development was a central focus of creating a core desktop that could actually compete with windows or mac. Let the sub-developers make these senseless and endless spins of other distros. Linux could be a force to reckon with on the desktop. That day may come, and if it does, I will fully convert. Until then, its a mix use case for my needs.
107 • First successful installation (by AdamB on 2021-09-08 07:07:32 GMT from Australia)
My first successful installation of Linux was OpenSUSE 10.3, on two computers at home; I liked it, but it quickly came to end of life, so I moved to Ubuntu (8.04 initially),which had good hardware support and an excellent installer. I stayed with Ubuntu until Unity, then moved to Mint MATE, and subsequently various other distros (and GhostBSD) running MATE.
But my interest in Unix/Linux goes back much further. A long time ago - in the 1980s I think - Byte magazine had a very well-written article introducing the principles of Unix, and I was immediately hooked.
In the mid-1990s my city's PC User Group held a special meeting discussing alternative operating systems, and I came away from that with CDs carrying Yggdrasil Linux and QNX, both of which I booted up at home; but Yggdrasil was not really useful to me at the time - and I also couldn't afford an additional linux-capable computer at the time. I still have that CD somewhere.
Around about 2000 I tried Debian, but again I concluded that it wouldn't serve my everyday purposes at the time. I still have a Caldera box which had the same problem - and I wasn't enthusiastic about using a commercial distributionl.
At about the time I was using OpenSUSE at home, I was using Mandrake or Mandriva on a work computer at a non-profit. After a hard disk failure, I tried Fedora for a while, but settled on Ubuntu which worked well for me.
When Mac OS X came out, i was interested in it because it was related to Unix, and I have done quite a bit of work on Macs. Using SSH and Rsync, my Macs are closely integrated with my Linux computers.
108 • dev followers (by followee on 2021-09-08 08:36:30 GMT from Canada)
wonder how many ppls choose a distro based - not necessarily on its characteristics - but on its developer/s and their philosophy: Volkerding / Murdock / Knopper / Texstar / Kauler \ Woodford \ Lefèbvre \ Matějíček \ Shuttleworth \ Duval \ Doherty......
Afterall, some ppls like following other ppls - as a guide / mentor / idol / or maybe just someone to vent about......
109 • Elementary OS (by Carlos Felipe Araújo on 2021-09-08 12:47:08 GMT from Brazil)
Diolinux, a brazilian youtube channel, 521 thousand subscribers, did a video about it. The title is "elementary OS 6 - The best distro in... NOTHING?" (elementary OS 6 - A melhor distro em... NADA?), if you understand portuguese you should watch this video.
110 • @104 (by Tad Strange on 2021-09-08 13:11:35 GMT from Canada)
Thanks for the recommendation, Randy.
I had done a fast search yesterday and saw Sync Thing mentioned, but had not yet looked at it, having tossed the coin and tried FreeFileSync instead, which looks like it might be the thing to replace my old robocopy batch files (heh, I used to use dozens of robocopy batch files and the task scheduler to back up file servers to home made NAS boxes in schools with limited tech budgets. It was better than tape...).
I've not tried it across the LAN yet, so whichever one works best overall should do for my needs. If Sync Thing can run as a service and keep a mirror up to date, that could be a good backup for those "oh hell, the hard drive died" moments.
Cheers
111 • Linux usage (by Cheker on 2021-09-08 14:28:41 GMT from Portugal)
Reading all of these stories was very interesting. Fascinating that a lot of you have been using Linux for longer than I've been alive. Unfortunately my story is nowhere near as interesting as a lot of yours, as it's far more recent.
My first interaction with Linux was in 2009ish, the high school PCs had a dual boot setup of Windows Vista and Caixa Magica, which was based on Ubuntu, Mandriva or SUSE depending on the exact time frame. The PCs would boot to grub with a 5 second or so timeout, with Vista as the default option. Every now and then I would boot into Caixa just for sh*ts and giggles. I knew it was "Linux", but I knew next to nothing about Linux other than "it's neither Windows nor macOS". I believe the DE was GNOME 2, and I remember loving a specific game which I think was like KBounce, probably the GTK equivalent though.
Not long after the PCs got upgraded with just Win 7 and that was the end of that. It would be another 8 or 9 years before I touched Linux again, this time with a lot more curiosity.
That's also how I ended up here - I was looking for a distro database of sorts, and I kept coming back for the reviews and the knowledge.
112 • From Desktops to Development (by Kyle on 2021-09-08 14:35:54 GMT from United States)
Back in 2010 or so, one of my friends at school mentioned that he used this alternative OS called "Linux." A little while later, I found an ISO of Puppy Linux on the cover disk of a computer magazine, along with an article explaining how to use it. I decided to give it a try, and I was amazed at how well it ran on my ancient, hand-me-down computers. My distro-hopping phase began shortly thereafter, when I realized that there was such a wide variety of versions of Linux with different desktop environments. I stuck primarily to the Ubuntu family and the occasional independent distro like PCLinuxOS, amusing myself by trying to find out which DE I could warp into the craziest-looking desktop. That was my first taste of the freedom and customization offered by Linux and other FOSS.
In high school, I learned about the "do-it yourself" distros like Arch and Gentoo. That came at the perfect time, because I finally had the confidence to actually try them, along with a discarded laptop whose (literally) fried video chip only allowed me to use it in text-mode. I gained most of my command-line prowess by installing Arch Linux to that machine and turning it into a file server.
I switched over to running Linux full-time in my first year of university, where all of my professors either allowed or encouraged FOSS to be used for coursework. In reality, I configured both my laptop and desktop gaming PC as dual-boots with Windows; I occasionally needed Windows-only software for lab exercises on the former, and the latter's GPU was just one generation too old to be supported by the then-new AMDGPU driver. The fact that I spent most of my time in Linux and dreaded rebooting into Windows was proof enough to me that a full switch really was feasible.
Today, I still have both of my PCs configured as dual-boots, but Windows rarely sees any activity. I need it occasionally on my desktop for some particularly ornery games, but even most "Windows-only" games run beautifully on its Linux installation thanks to WINE and a 5700XT card that is fully supported by AMDGPU. The Arch installation on my laptop from my early days of University is still going strong, and its Windows partition is little more than wasted space these days. I work for an automotive electronics manufacturer where I am being trained on maintaining our embedded Linux distributions. I'll be continuing my adventure into Linux for a while to come.
113 • Since ~2011 Partially Full Time Since 2017 (by Thomas Leon Highbaugh on 2021-09-09 00:27:56 GMT from United States)
I first used Ubuntu for some comp sci class I took in undergrad. A year or two later, my windows 7 killed itself and I ended up using (but never doing much with, including update...) a Ubuntu install on that system for a few years to write papers and such, since then I didn't care about tech and lived a very different life than I do now but once I could justify buying a windows system, I did and didn't much care about the difference then. This was back when I could effectively use my iPhone for most of my needs, wasn't very interested in tech and is now regarded as a dark age in my memory of my life.
i rediscovered Linux while nursing a really painful and life changing illness that I recovered from luckily but never recovered from my love of tinkering with the system. Between the slipping migraines that characterized this period of my life, I would spend all the time my head would allow trying and failing to do things on Linux systems and explore the wide breath of the options available in the FOSS community, which gave me hope and some amount of respite from the unpleasantness that was otherwise mine at the time. For a few years I ended up keeping an install of Debian or Ubuntu (it changed) on a secondary laptop that I would play with but since I still played video games I didn't go all the way.
Then I started learning web development, figured Linux made more sense and was easier to tool while having lost the desire to game really and installed over my WIndows 10 and never looked back (except fixing people's computers or when my gf's fickle system wants a bios update which is impossible to correctly locate on Asus' website)
It started with Manjaro, which was newer then and not as user friendly, so I ended up switching to
Ubuntu, moving around the various DEs ther and getting highly irritated with the PPA system. So I moved back to Manjaro where I found AwesomeWM then to Arch and am close to finishing my own variant of Arch using my AwesomeWM configuration as the default complete with its own partial distro of packages I need for the archiso build.
114 • How long using Linux (by J on 2021-09-09 03:45:20 GMT from Panama)
I have been using Linux on-and-off (my first PC was a crappy compaq desktop PC that was very propietary and bad in hardware compatibility) since 1998, in 2001 I got an Apple iBook and installed Linux in dual boot with OSX, been using Linux since, replaced that old Mac with a Toshiba laptop that I installed Linux on (came with Vista), then that laptop got replaced with a HP, which then got replaced with a Gateway and now I'm on a HP EliteBook. Running Arch.
115 • Since around 1995... linux kernel version was around something like 0.95 (by Steve Brueggeman on 2021-09-09 03:56:35 GMT from United States)
I had been using HP-UX and Sun's solarus at work for about a decade at this time, and the internet was young... newsgroups were the rage... Around 19i95, can't remember for sure where I found out about linux, but it was probably something like comp.os.unix.... My first "distrib" was slakware... a year or two after that, redhat made a release. I gave that a try, and kept using it for a while. Then I found out that Mandriva was based on RedHat, so gave that a try, and fell in love with their control panel... Still using Mageia, but.. thinking it's time to change now...
116 • Linux time (by Trihexagonal on 2021-09-09 05:44:03 GMT from United States)
I started using Linux in 2000 or 2001. Last time I checked, I still had a Linux screenshot at dslreports UNIX forum with a gaudy BioHazard wallpaper from 2002. It was all the rage.
I found PC-BSD in 2005 and have been using FreeBSD as my mail desktop OS since, but still have a Linux box.
117 • I use Linux since 2007.... (by Torsten on 2021-09-09 07:24:46 GMT from Germany)
Well, I started with Ubuntu in 2007 or 2008 or so (I am not sure), but now, I am using Debian. I have tried so many distros, but I always come back to Debian or Debian-based derivates, but not to Ubuntu anymore, simply because I hate Snaps and all the other crap that Canonical had done in the past years. The first 1-2 years were hard & difficult, but I really learned alots since I have Linux - and today, I do not want to miss it anymore.
118 • WindowsME is when I started using Linux (by Matt on 2021-09-09 15:35:28 GMT from United States)
When Microsoft released to horrible crash prone WindowsME edition, I switched to Linux and haven't look back since.
119 • Windows failings = Linux experimentation (by Otis on 2021-09-09 15:46:31 GMT from United States)
Windows 95 caused me to look for alternatives. All I wanted to do was explore this "world wide web" thing without the frustrations of screen freezes and blue screens of death and all the rest. So... there was ReHat 5.2 sitting there on a shelf in a box next to Windows 98 and several other Linux distros-in-a-box.
Windows has changed for the better, after a lot of stop-offs at idiocy in development (ME? Vista?) it seems to have stabilized with 10.. and coming 11.
But, my goodness why not build your own OS to your liking? Linux. BSD. Do your thing.
120 • Linux (by MeCrumbly429 (*\/*) on 2021-09-09 16:20:35 GMT from United States)
Was using various desktop distributions on and off in VMs over the course of a few months. When I installed Vmware as an alternative to virtualbox (it was faster on my hardware), the system slowed to a crawl, and I had had enough. Had a short stint on openSUSE before booting and installing Linux mint. Used that for a few more months before getting bored, and distro-hopped ever since.
That was around a year ago.
Now, I've been compiling my own kernels/software, installing advanced distributions with almost no sweat (not lying, this is real. god, my first emerge-webrsync was gratifying), doing desktop rices (and currently attempting to jump to i3wm), and still learning to this day. each and every one of those days, I attempt to get more and more people on Linux.
I've gone pretty far, right?
(just to prove that this is real, I know a lot of Linux users get testy:
to compile a basic, functioning kernels, you need block drivers, SCSI drivers, Symmetric Multi-processing, networking, GPT label support and IA32 emulation in the case of a multilib system. After kernel compilation, an Initramfs needs to be generated. typically, on gentoo installations, this is done with the Genkernel utility, but other linux distributions provide their own tools, such as mkinitcpio from arch-install-scripts)
121 • MX Linux NOT Ubuntu! (by Chris Whelan on 2021-09-09 17:45:09 GMT from United Kingdom)
@11 - MX Linux is not Ubuntu based, and never has been.
122 • Linux Story (by Justin on 2021-09-09 20:18:31 GMT from United States)
Bill Gates spoke at my school, and after the talk, the Linux club was passing out Knoppix CDs. I still remember expecting to boot into something completely alien only to be surprised about how familiar everything looked. It was exciting to send an e-mail with Linux that I told everyone. I started to boot off the live CD for more and more things (media player, Frozen Bubble, a compiler... remember when you had to buy those?). I discovered VMs a few years later and used Linux for software to both keep my XP machine clean and have a reason to use Linux (Puppy FTW). I still remember being so mad at Windows I said I would install OpenBSD that weekend because I heard it was perfectly secure, but (thankfully) I tried it in a VM and realized I was over my head. However, I still decided to migrate away once my XP machine died, so I started using cross-platform apps, most of which were better than what I had anyway (VLC versus WMP9, Firefox versus IE6, etc.).
Today I get paid for knowing Linux (one job hired me specifically for that) and use it everyday both personally and professionally. It rocks! Bill, thanks for coming to tell us about the future of computing. Thanks also to those crazy kids protesting Microsoft and Knoppix for being so awesome!
123 • Linux (by ro0t on 2021-09-10 07:57:30 GMT from Germany)
Since 2006 Linux freak.
Mandriva ;)
124 • Linux (by Archdevil on 2021-09-10 08:21:23 GMT from Netherlands)
I am not sure what year I started using Linux. I remember downloading Peanut linux, being only 89Mb, with my 28k8 modem. It took forever. After that I bought CD_roms with Mandrake. Later I started using Mepis. I spend my evenings on IRC helping people to get started with Linux. Fun times. Later I ran Archlinux for quite a while (hence my nickname), i used Opensuse until I got issues with my soundcard that never got solved. The last couple of years I have been using Solus OS, while continuing to play with other distros. Alsways on the search for the perfect distro...
125 • Linux since ... (by Sohl on 2021-09-10 15:44:54 GMT from United States)
2006 with a significant amount of use. I had tried installing Debian from floppies on an old PC at home in the late 90s, but failed to get it to boot. Maybe around 2000 or so I installed RedHat at work to host some eCOS embedded systems experimentation that ultimately was dropped.
First extended use of Linux was in 2006 at my paid job in embedded systems. Mostly using Fedora. During the first several years, the target system was a Motorola-provided Linux for PowerPC embedded controller. Later I shifted to Xubuntu & Ubuntu for both development host and PC-architecture embedded controller targets.
At home I dabbled in Knoppix before 2006, then became a regular Puppy Linux user from 2008-ish to 2010, when I shifted to TinyCore for a few years, then moved on to Xubuntu at home about the same time I did for work (2014). More recently I've tried Budgie, Mate, and MX, but that installation was not working quite right so I've reverted to mostly using (gasp) Windows 10. I'd like to try TinyCore, Puppy, or EasyOS again on my home laptop and maybe try Linux From Scratch, or maybe even non-Linux choices like OpenBSD, Haiku, or still-in-early-development SerenityOS.
126 • how long (by dave on 2021-09-10 19:43:27 GMT from United States)
I first installed Ubuntu in 2004. I don't clearly remember the initial catalyst. I think I was just tired of pirating Windows, Photoshop, etc.. and was tired of the reinstall ritual voodoo that had to be performed every time there was a minor problem. I was aware of GIMP but it took me a while to break the Adobe addiction. At some point, I went back to XP for about 6 months but finally returned to Ubuntu and never went back. Forced myself to really learn to use GIMP and I can say with confidence that my (digital) art skills are far improved from my Photoshop days.
Another factor in my switch; I had a few friends who used Linux prior to that and I remember seeing screenshots of their desktops. Back in my XP days, I used Stardock's desktop theming products to heavily alter the look and feel of Windows. When I realized that this level of customization was a natural part of the Linux experience, I knew it was the right choice for me.
I came for the cost, but stayed for the freedom.
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| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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| Random Distribution | 
BigLinux
BigLinux is a Brazilian Linux distribution localised into Brazilian Portuguese (with support for English). It is was originally based on Kubuntu, but starting from 2017 the distribution was re-born based on deepin. It then offered two desktop environments - Cinnamon and Deepin. In 2021 the distribution switched bases and desktop environments again, migrating to Manjaro Linux running KDE Plasma.
Status: Active
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| TUXEDO |
TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
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| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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