Linux and I
My first contact with Linux
It was Christmas 2019 I believe, when I got my Raspberry Pi 4 as a Christmas gift from my parents. I’m not really sure why I wanted it for Christmas, but something about it being a credit card sized computer really got me. At that time I saw a few videos on YouTube about it, but at that time I didn’t really knew what Linux was. Raspberry is running a custom Debian based distro called Raspberry Pi OS. Which is made to be lightweight and most compatible with Raspberry.
I remember being very fascinated how the whole OS revolves around terminal. Want to update your OS or install Minecraft? Use terminal. I remember it came with a special version of Minecraft called Minecraft PI. It is a very limited and very different version of Minecraft than you might know. It is like a weird port of old Minecraft Pocket Edition. The one where there was no Nether or End. Limited size of the playing world, limited resources and not that many fancy blocks like the newest version.
From around 2021 – 2023 I was distro hopping. Which means I was constantly switching Linux distributions. I started with Ubuntu then switched to Mint, Manjaro, Arch and now I’m on Arch based distro Endeavour OS. Why? Because I wasn’t really happy with any of them and wanted to test them all. Finally I’ve settled on using Arch as my daily driver.
Arch vs. Debian
I don’t know much about the technical details. Main difference I know is, that Arch is a rolling release distribution. This means frequent updates and up-to date software. You still have to update manually but every time something gets an update, you will get it on your desktop as well. What I’ve described might sound to you as a normal updating process, but it’s not. Arch is always updating bleeding edge software, meaning that it can hypothetically cause system instability. I personally have never experienced such thing, but it can totally happen. Also plain Arch install has a very user-unfriendly process of installing. You have to build everything yourself. But this also means, that it allows more customizability.
What distro would I recommend to newbies?
If you don’t care about the technicals I would go with Mint: Cinnamon Edition. It looks very similar to Windows 10, is intuitive and it just works. If for some reason you wanna go with a Arch-based distro. Try Manjaro or EndeavourOS. Both are also pretty user friendly, but Manjaro might feel a little more bloated, than any other distro. Oh, and if you want Windows-like experience then I would go with KDE as a desktop environment. What is a desktop environment you ask? I might do a more detailed post about Linux in the future. But to put it simply: Arch/Debian is what’s under the hood. KDE, XFCE, Cinnamon or god forbid Gnome haha. It is what you will see, it is the GUI of your operating system. Some are lightweight (XFCE) and some are a little heavy (Gnome).
Why did I switch from Windows to Linux?
Short answer; privacy and security. Long answer; I love suffering. The last sentence is a joke obviously but there’s a little bit of truth to it. Let me explain…
“Linux is free, if you don’t value your time.” - Linux Haters
If you are the type of person, whom just browses the internet, edits a PDF file from time to time. Using Linux won’t be a problem for you. Linux can do such tasks the same as Windows. Unfortunately when it comes to for example gaming or video editing. You gonna have to make a lot of compromises. Adobe products will not work on Linux, most of AAA online games that have an anti-cheat won’t work. Fortunately when it comes to gaming, there’s Steam and their Proton compatibility layer. Thanks to Valve and their recently released Steam Deck (which runs Linux and heavily relies on Proton). Many developers are now focusing on making their games Linux/Steam Deck compatible. There’s also a handy community-made website where you can check how much a specific game on Steam might be compatible with either Steam Deck or your Linux distro.
Anyways I got a little off-topic there. As I mentioned, I switched to Linux because I love open source software and privacy. Ever since I discovered Linux, I started hating the idea of my OS (or anything for that matter) collecting data about myself, my PC usage habits etc. You could say that Linux was the gateway for me to start caring about my privacy and security.
Switching to Linux cold turkey was a huge mistake. When I first installed Ubuntu, I just backed most of my data from Windows and jumped into the cold waters. The amount of suffering I brought upon myself by this was immeasurable. I highly advise that you first try using Linux inside a virtual environment such as Virtualbox and don’t switch immediately to daily driving Linux. This will only cause you to hate it.
But I managed to get though this nightmare. I loved (and still love) tinkering with the system, often to the point of breaking something. This taught me a valuable lesson to make periodical backups of my most important files. So it wasn’t all bad. Linux may have a small market share, but the community of volunteers willing to help you is big enough. There’s plenty of resources online when/if something breaks in your system. But of course (same with Windows) you may encounter very niche problems, that nobody has covered yet. From audio not working, Bluetooth not connecting, to printer straight up not communicating.
I hope this summarizes my experience with Linux. Hope you enjoyed reading this article. If so, send it to your friends/family… Maybe don’t actually send it to your mom haha. And I hope I’ll see you reading my next one.