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

I’ve been running 99% Linux for ten ish years or so. I finally got rid of the last windows vm a few months ago. The one hold out piece of software now runs in wine properly and I got to delete that vm.

I’ve been using Linux since 1995, but had an on-again-off-again relationship with it for a while, because I wanted to play games. So it was usually dual boot. But in 2007 I bought a PS3 and have been gaming on PlayStation exclusively since then, which allowed me to go fulltime Linux. I also worked a lot with OpenBSD and still miss pf, which is such a lovely firewall. iptables is horrible shit compared to it (I am aware of nftables, but it’s too new to replace the long years of iptables).

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

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

Ubuntu 7.10 so late 2007, but I guess the nerd part came when I installed Arch in 2011. Still running that very same install.

when apple took all the USB ports out of their macbooks. i needed a new computer, one with a practical set of ports, and windows was never an option

Some time after I went OpenBSD and then FreeBSD nerd.

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

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

0.92

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

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

Then I put Linux Mint on it. And…wow.

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

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

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

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

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

It’s a great feeling.

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

I originally used linux because I could only get my hands on ancient or broken tech.

Then I switched to Windows again because I was able to buy a modern laptop and started university which more or less required Microsoft services.

Two years ago I started using Linux on my dual booted machines more frequently. Last year I realized I mostly didn’t need Windows so I decided to find a daily driver distro.

I forgot how easy it is to get caught up in distro hopping lol. I started with Debian because I remembered apps with Linux support typically only provide .deb packages.

Then the new KDE came out and I couldn’t wait to use it so I moved to fedora. Then, in looking into visual aesthetics, I decided I wanted to give hyprland a try and honestly just try Arch and make everything my own.

That was a mistake. Too many options to the point I was only using my computer for messing with the visuals.

I moved to fedora because it would just work, used it for a semester, and then moved back to arch (w/ xfce) and have been using it ever since.

I’d say around the switch from Arch to Fedora was when I became a Linux nerd because I realized that there isn’t really a best distro for every circumstance. My nerdiness has reached enlightenment lol

Windows 7 had this annoying Windows Update notification, but my four-person household at the time collectively only had 10 GB of 16 Mbit/s and given my former experiments with Knoppix, I knew that the UI of Linux was more configurable and less authoritarian and I assumed that I could learn more easily within Linux how to save on data usage (including the update process). Some people also told me that there would be no viruses on Linux due to its relative obscurity back then.