Linux

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

Since I started daily driving it last summer. Before that, I used Debian in a VM on my Chromebook.

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.

During Covid, 2020-2021. I was under the weather and bored out of my mind. I spontaneously decided to install Arch Linux, and the rest is history. Installing Arch was invaluable to my learning experience, and taught me a lot about Linux

It's 1995!
Now that I'm older stress weighs on my shoulders
Heavy as boulders but I told ya

Uni, around 2019! Had a professor on the web team who encouraged all students to do the entire uni education on Linux.

All tools and course material was tailored to work on Linux. Hand-ins, exams and anything related either functioned or had custom solutions built by the teachers, student and professors on the web programme.

Everything was open source and if we found any bugs we could just open issues on GitHub. Weekly hand-ins were done on the student server on your own instance of the web server.

In almost every aspect i think that programme was so well tailored for learning real web dev work.

When I saw Windows 11.

When I "solved" teering on nvidia by installing i3 and started using only terminal, because any gui program was still freezing.

After I switched to Linux Mint because Windows 7 got EOL a friend showed me Manjaro. I used it for a while and it was a pain in the ass. This was the moment I took a look at Arch Linux and after my first successful install I went full Linux nerd. This is roughly 5 years ago and now I even work in IT despite having studied social science.

Every few years since the mid 2000s I've dual booted Linux (often Ubuntu) briefly before removing it again and just using windows and then I stopped for many years. I've gradually become less happy with windows, increasing ads and tracking but then the announcement of recall made it clear I had to switch. I was going to wait but then windows 24H2 update broke my Bluetooth audio so that was the last straw.

I installed endeavourOS on a separate drive and really liked it. GNOME at first. Then I installed nixOS and for me was almost perfect but I couldn't get a few things to work like PIAs GUI app and doing some software development was more awkward than I liked.

Now I'm back on endeavourOS but with KDE plasma and it's great.

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

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.

When I got frustrated with Windows around 2019 and I had spare time I decided that enough is enough and spent a couple of days to take the time to learn Arch Linux and all of its quirks.

Around 2020 I started tinkering with NixOS as well which culminated as my NixOS configuration.

Although at this point I'm going back to Arch Linux as I actually know how to fix and make modifications faster and better than I could on NixOS.

I think I was still occasionally using Mac OS in early 1999, but I made the leap sometime that year.

I started using linux in 2011, but went full linux nerd in 2014/2015, while still in high school. Changed distros, changed OSs, changed everything, but full time it was linux all along, from ubuntu, to elementary os, to arch, to hackintosh, to solus, to endeavouros, to a lot of distros, but now i'm stable at cachyos (the optimized packages are amazing, ngl).

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.

Super long time ago. Mandrake anything? How about Slack? Ha ha good times. Probably 20 years ago. I loved freedom Linux offered. Back then graphics divers sucked bad. Just getting opengl working was an accomplished. I can remember thinking "I'm going to just run Linux". It was rough, then I discovered Slack, then I discovered Debian, then I discovered Ubuntu, then Debian, then Arch.

These days I dual boot usually with two disks. 97% of the time I use Linux, but if something dumb comes up I'll bring up Windows.

i don't deep dive into it enough to be a 'nerd', but i've been using some form or another since the early days of slack and debian.

Around 2024,late 2024-early 2025 is where I fully ditched windows

Summer of 2020. Lockdown was in full effect and I was working from home. I wouldn't say I had a lot of extra free time (my kid was 1 year old at the time, lol), but I spent many hours that Summer tinkering with various projects, and that led me to eventually adopt Linux as my daily driver on all my machines.

I've dabbled with Linux since 2005, but was never savvy enough to completely ditch Windows until 2020.

1994

When I bought my first PC in 1994.

At the time, the choice of hardware I could afford and operating systems that didn't suck was extremely limited, a PC with Linux was pretty much the only practical choice and I've stuck with that ever since.

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.

When I built my own PC a little over a year ago. I only knew about Linux in the first place because I was trying (unsuccessfully) to make a media server out of an old laptop (I eventually figured it out)

Back when I was first in high school, I got into torrenting and gave myself pretty bad malware that just black-screened my laptop, and even though it had shipped with windows, the installer would not detect my ssd for whatever reason. Linux detected my hardware and I installed Ubuntu, then Mint, and I moved to Arch a few years ago after having learned the ropes. That's about when I fully spiralled into linux nerd.

On and off over the last 15 years or so.

Only recently have I become much more comfortable & able to resolve things without resorting to search, stackoverflow etc.

The turnover point was the day I finally learned vi & cron so I could fiddle with an old Buffalo NAS, that was long out of support, riddled with security holes, and offered only very limited tooling.

Was a great learning experience, but it didn't pan out the way I wanted. So it runs Debian now, supports modern protocols, and continues to serve. Amazing what you can keep in service when you try.

I used Linux on and off since 2009?

But it was mostly just for work. I never really converted until proton came about. It made gaming viable on Linux and really provided a way to use Linux everyday.