As of this post, I have been a Linux user of some kind for at least 13 years. I wanted to document how I started using Linux and how I got to where I am now. I’ll be covering the important milestones, since my memory of the specifics is a bit fuzzy.

First Personal Computer

I’ve been into computers since the moment I started using them. For the longest time, the only computer I’ve used is someone else’s, such as the shared family computer. Sometime before high-school, I received a computer of my own. It was an Acer netbook that ran Windows 7 Starter edition. Windows 7 Starter was only available in 32-bit and had many limitations, such as not including the Windows Aero theme.

First Desktop

During high-school, I was given a desktop that was a significant upgrade over the netbook. Getting it online while at my father’s wasn’t an issue, but once back at my mom’s, I didn’t have a way to go online. The desktop didn’t have Wi-Fi and I didn’t have the privilege of running Ethernet to my bedroom.

I made the logical connection that my netbook had Wi-Fi and I could connect it to the desktop via Ethernet. Searching online confirmed my theory and I learned about network bridging. Of course, one of the limitations of Windows 7 Starter is that it lacked the ability to bridge network adapters.

I eventually came to the solution of using an alternative OS to get around this limitation: that OS being Linux, of course.

First Distribution

I remember searching for netbook-oriented distributions and somehow stumbled on something called Joli OS. Joli OS is very interesting in retrospect. It was a cloud OS designed for netbooks and recycled computers in mind and used Chromium for rendering the desktop and web apps. It was very much a precursor to ChromeOS.

The Rest

After learning of Linux, I began exploring it on the desktop and started dual-booting Linux Mint. I eventually acquired my new laptop for college and started using Arch Linux (btw) while continuing to use the Cinnamon desktop environment.

Since Linux Mint’s Cinnamon started as a fork of GNOME 3, and I was experiencing an issue, I decided to give GNOME a try. This began my love of GNOME as my forever DE.

While at college, I had switched to Ubuntu GNOME and ended up back on Arch by the end. The desktop was now running Plex (now using Jellyfin), which ignited my self-hosting journey. It continued to be my media server until recently.

By the end of college, I was using Linux full-time and haven’t used Windows on a personal computer since.

Around 2020, I moved to Fedora Workstation. Like Arch, Fedora gives you current software and is upstream first. Most of Fedora Workstations defaults are how I was configuring or doing things in Arch anyway. I figured why not use a distribution that aligns with me and is less work.

That concludes my journy from the beginning. From trying to solve a tech problem to becoming a pro-FOSS Linux user. My distro journy was a bit unusual, and I do regret never using the canonical (🥁) Ubuntu flavour and experiencing Unity. But, I eventually settled into my two go-to distros: Fedora Workstation and Arch Linux.