My Linux Experience

A narrative that unfolds from my early encounters with Ubuntu in school to the unexpected dual-booting trials and, eventually, a switch to Arch Linux.
It will be quite unstructured but hey it's going to be a good read.

Stage 1 - Why does the school use this shitty Ubuntu OS??

My first exposure to Linux was in my school around 7th or 8th grade where we had a pc with Ubuntu installed (lets ignore android for now, ik it uses the Linux kernel). We used it rarely for some videos and notes.

I was quite good with pc's compared to my peers so i was assigned as the guy who turned on the pc and used it. But hey, whenever i was called to help with an issue about it, I was useless, Ubuntu felt alien since most of my windows experience wasn't applicable here. At this point I didn't know that Ubuntu was a Linux distribution, but i knew had heard the name linux from idk where.

Don't have to say it but the random issues and the inexperience definitely left a bad taste in my mouth.

Stage 2 - How do i run C/C++ programs on my phone??

The next time i came across Linux was when i was getting into programming and my 10 year old windows xp pc working all of a sudden in 11th grade.

I came across a few apps where you could run basic c programs but they felt quite limiting. Luckily, i ended up finding termux and managed to run my code on it. Yet, i still didn't know that i was using Linux.

I connected a keyboard to my phone and started out learning C++ and used it for a month or two, at which point i felt limited by termux again due to me not knowing Linux. Thinking back right now, i could have done everything i wanted to in termux.

Stage 3 - Kali Linux is for da hackerss!

Since termux was "limiting" i bought a new laptop, which of course ran windows 10 (also stopped learning C++ and became 3D graphic designer for 2 years instead because i couldn't set vscode up to run it 🫡).

I had hacked my neighbours WiFi (with permission of course ;) ) back in 6th grade, but fortunately they changed the password now. I wanted it back, but the simple old hacking methods and tools didn't work anymore.

I start googling "How to Hack WiFi" on YouTube like everyone has at some point, and ended up hearing about Kali Linux. I followed a few guides, setup Kali Linux in virtual box, used the WiFi dongle from my 10yo pc, copy pasted a few commands from the guide and learnt WiFi hacking using Kali for real this time. At this point, i knew what Linux was and was capable enough to use it by googling my way around. But i never considered using it as an actual OS since it looked bad and i had no reason to switch.

During lock down, I continued to use Kali to attend my online classes. Because, my college used to track if i am active on the chrome tab and notified it to the teachers. So using it everyday for simple tasks such as web browsing did help with familiarising myself with Linux. Yet i didn't know the concepts of distribution's or anything about the Linux command line.

Stage 4 - Wait i had dual-booted Ubuntu?

After my unsuccessful business venture in graphic design XD , i decided to get back to learning to code. I took it up seriously this time and did learn it. Over the past 2 years i had familiarised myself well with Linux and watching SomeOrdinaryGamers's Linux videos were quite informative and it gave it a good look into Linux land, and now i began to see many people use it for coding in tutorials and other places.

I finally took the time to research and learn what linux is, and felt like i should give it a try due to windows being a pain in the ass over the years.I chose Ubuntu as my distribution due to my familiarity and its popularity, and dual booted it with windows.

It was actually pretty good to use, had to google to do the most basic stuff though. i used it for normal usage and windows for gaming. But whenever i found myself doing a task which felt very hard to do on linux (such as formatting a pendrive lol) i would switch to windows, do my work and switch back to ubuntu. App compatibility was quite an issue too since i used many proprietary apps and didn't know how to get them.

This process of switching back and forth was quite tedious. So once i switched to windows i would just stay on it for a few days. This went on for a while then i forgot that i had Ubuntu installed and started using windows always. In the end i had to delete Ubuntu since it was taking up my precious SSD storage space.

Stage 5 - Termux is Linux?!

Armed with my new knowledge from using Ubuntu, I realised that termux is basically Linux and i can use it to code. At this point i used to make react-native android apps using javascript. I setup neovim as the text editor, synced my projects using git and started to code on the go using termux. It felt amazing that i had a more powerful machine than my 13yo windows xp pc in my pocket, with the freedom to do whatever i want (at least somewhat).

Even though its not the most convenient setup, it was pretty useful and better than scrolling Instagram reels in my free time and while travelling.

I had also been using WSL(windows subsystem for Linux) for a few things in Linux coz some open source projects didnt support windows for development.

Stage 6 - gimme back my storage windows 🔫

A year had passed since i dual booted ubuntu, I was all fine in windows world doing my work being ignorant. But something was building up, my windows experience began to diminish over time and i had more and more reasons to switch to linux. I eventually got serious about privacy so i started switching to open source alternatives where ever possible.

Windows used to fill up my SSD storage and i would have 10 GB left, i would find and delete a few stuff and make 20GB free but it would go back to 10GB in a few days or weeks. This was tedious and storing everything on my hard drive felt slow and bad. This was the final nail in the coffin for windows.

I got frustrated to the point that i came in one fine evening from an exam i had, and instantly wiped my windows and installed Ubuntu on it.

So the switch was made and there was no going back, for i had ditched windows forever. With no option left, i had to learn to do everything on linux.

To be honest, it felt pretty easy and normal to use ubuntu this time, everything worked, i wasn't scared of terminal anymore. I spent around 2 months on Ubuntu and it was pretty great. Except for gaming, well most of the games worked fine due to vavle's involvement in proton and steam deck being popular.

But initially it was hard to figure out how to play pirated games on ubuntu since i could not find any good guides on it, most guides didn't work and it was confusing. i didn't understand the concept of wine prefix, wine runner, etc. but with trial and error overtime i did manage to get a few games working without any issues.

I got curious about customising and i installed KDE plasma in ubuntu and didn't like it so i uninstalled, doing so i ended up breaking my gnome dark/light mode setting. A few apps such as nautilus(files) app didn't have a dark/light mode option in setting, it got it from the gnome setting which was broken. This felt quite jank and made the experience worse.

I wanted to try hyprland since most of r/unixporn was filled with cool setups using hyprland. But i learnt that its hard to set it up in ubuntu.

During this time i got into linux youtube and started to keep in touch with the community and the developments happening in the space. Learnt a lot from this and was well informed about linux by this point. I didn't want to distro hop but i knew that ubuntu wasnt the answer.

Overall it was a great experience and linux wasn't just an operating system anymore, it was a hobby. It also helped me with setting up servers since they basically run linux which felt like home to me.

Stage 7 - I use arch btw

At this point I was ready to switch distro's, but still wasn't sure to which one i wanted.

I installed arch linux in a virtual machine and followed the guide on arch wiki and was able to set it up pretty easily. I wasn't as hard as the memes made it look.

I also gave fedora a try in a vm since it had more up to date packages compared to Ubuntu, ofcourse i just ended up experiencing gnome again and didn't get to know fedora.

So i backed up my files and switched to arch linux finally using the archinstall script so that i don't mess things up.

Initially many features that i had on Ubuntu was not there on arch, but all i had to do was some googling and install a package to make it work.

I liked the went with gnome initially for the familiarity and then installed hyprland too (finally!).

Surprisingly, I had no issues running games on arch. The only games which didn't work were the competitive online games which i hate with a passion.

Using arch made me learn much more about linux as an OS and all the things which make it work.

By this point i was totally into the linux ecosystem and kept exploring new things.

I don't know, i dont have much to say about this stage except that I used linux without any issues for the first time.(I did nuke my desktop environment twice but managed to fix it)

I wasn't afraid of messing things up anymore, since i knew i can fix almost anything that happens.

I'd say arch linux isn't that hard as they make it sound, if you're a developer, arch linux is pretty manageable.

Stage 8 - Hate Windows? low disk/ram space? I have a solution

Of course, me alone using linux wasn't fun. So i started getting my friends interested in it.

I made a few of them switch and now i am the linux tech support till they get adjusted to it.

Although i use arch linux and used Ubuntu, I recommend fedora for beginners since its a good middle ground between those two.

Conclusion

I use Arch btw
Had to go through all that just to tell the above line XD. The journey wasn't easy but the destination is definitely worth it.
If i have piqued your interest in linux, do consider trying it. You wont regret it. As chat GPT puts it "Linux is more than just an operating system — it's a realm of continuous exploration."