The Linux Thread - The Autist's OS of Choice

[x3firehexx]

it ran minecraft (which was all i cared for at the time) so it didn't really run into any issues that i remember. which was impressive considering this was in 2011-2012.

I mean, not to say linux was unusable back then but it really gained speed this decade.

 

[Eternal Gopnik]

Anyone using Linux here remember their first time using it? Why did you switch and what was it like?

Yeah. I was maybe 11 or 12 and a family member bought me a computer magazine that came with a Linux install CD - Mandriva, not sure what version. So I was like cool, I've heard of that before, and went to install it.

I had a tiny 6.4 gig HD which didn't have much space to spare due to a full Diablo 2 install on it (about 3 gigs) - me and some friends bought one copy together so I had to install the whole thing and run it with a no-cd crack since I couldn't have the CDs on me at all times. So little me, not really realizing what I was doing, just nuked the Windows partition (and my local D2 characters) during the partitioning phase.

Then, upon finishing the install and booting into the DE (KDE, I believe), I found out there were no drivers for my modem - not just in the distro but anywhere, so I couldn't even go online. So I played Tux Racer for a bit, and then reinstalled Windows and went to work recreating a Paladin in D2. After that I haven't really touched lunix until a decade later.

 

[WaveCruising]

Anyone using Linux here remember their first time using it? Why did you switch and what was it like?

The laptop I got came with Windows 10. I couldn't stand how much worse it was to Windows 7, so I installed Linux Mint. Over the next couple of weeks I was surprised to find it was far easier to do what I wanted on my computer. PowerShell is unusable when compared to the Unix shell.

Came back to Linux long after that and hope to switch before Win10 support fades completely. Linux Mint this time. It's absolutely inferior, but way better than my first experience back then.

If you think Linux is "absolutely inferior" to Windows 10 you might as well continue on to use Windows 11. They're not that different.

 

[Frederica Bernkastel]

ssd decided to run debian, with xfce4, which, honestly, has been working great.... except for the times it wasn't. But hey, never looked back at windows 10, never will.

That sounds like a really painful journey. You sound like the type, however, that would distro-jump a lot so I expected a bit more than that.

It was the year of our lord 1992. I was in college. It was an experimental time. But I had a hard drive with 40MB and DOS made me split it into 32+8. So I spent a long time in the computer lab to make a bunch of floppies. It was different. My video card was only supported in X at 320x200, so I played with Xeyes a bit but mostly used the terminal. And could still reboot to DOS/Win3.1.

I would love to hear some old Linux hardware/installation stories. Did you ever mess around with old Slackware or Mandrake stuff?

I wanted on my computer. PowerShell is unusable when compared to the Unix shell.

I can't imagine using Powershell because there's no tmux integration. I can't use my computer without it.

 

[Darkholme's Dungeon]

I wake up in the morning and gentoo devs once again prove that autism and degeneracy are positively correlated.

dev challenge to not be a degenerate, impossible:

Spoiler: degenerate source

https://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2015-07-08/choosing-a-linux-tracer.html

Even ftrace themselves aren't that retarded to use this as their official mascot...

 

[Betonhaus]

Anyone using Linux here remember their first time using it? Why did you switch and what was it like?

I first tried Ubuntu back when it had that gay ass splash screen photo of niggers holding hands on a circle. It was interesting but I never found a use for it, especially when I could get windows licenses easy and cheap.

When Windows 11 came around and began to be buggy and ad heavy, I did stick with Windows for a while longer but grew to get sick of its stupidity. At that point I did try Linux Mint for a month and determined I was fine using it but I needed a reason to switch When I cancelled my office 365 subscription and started to get barraged with ads for OneDrive add-ons and shit I got my reason to switch.

 

[prollyanotherlurker]

Anyone using Linux here remember their first time using it? Why did you switch and what was it like?

I went a while offline, and even longer without an actual computer. Before finally deciding to get a laptop again.

It must have been right at the beginning of windows 11. Coming from windows 7 or around then. To that. I was so disgusted with windows it was enough to push me over the edge. Already not being a fan of Microsoft, or any of the big tech companies. I looked at them more like a necessary evil. That was just when I decided fuck it. If I have to use windows, or apple. I will literally just not have a computer.

Went to Linux mint. Actually enjoyed it. And kept going deeper. Really helps me out that I didn't come to Linux for all the actually good stuff that comes with using it, and more because of the FOSS thing. Because that made everything else like a bonus.

All the big boys use Linux and praise it as some holy shit, so I tried it for the first time a long time ago, which was an OpenSUSE back then. I tried to get used to it, which was very hard. Majorly used it for browsing, tbh. At some point, opening any kind of window started to take around 10 minutes. It was fine after a re-install, but then the issue started again. Went back to Windows right after that.

Came back to Linux long after that and hope to switch before Win10 support fades completely. Linux Mint this time. It's absolutely inferior, but way better than my first experience back then.

Sounds to me like you didn't have trim set up. Highly recommend looking into that now in case you still don't for this install. Otherwise your drives will keep slowing down with time.

 

[del_toid]

Anyone using Linux here remember their first time using it? Why did you switch and what was it like?

I got into it about a year ago maybe mostly out of curiosity, but also because I kind of hate Microsoft's business practices. I came here to ask for distro suggestions and some nice folx here suggested Fedora.

I started with a dual boot on my PC (Fedora, the Plasma version). It was surprisingly easy to set up (even though there's surprisingly few tutorials on how to do it as far as I could find) and has just worked for me since. I've only had a few issues (drivers and some random bullshit that didn't work out of the box, all solved with a quick google search). I was super happy with how it worked.

I don't code, I'm not a power user, I just browse the web and torrent shit really, so for my use case, Linux is just a super clean, simple, light, free OS. I only wish it was better for playing games, I still boot into windows for that. Everything else, I prefer to use Linux for. I don't know why, I just get a really satisfied feeling when I boot up Linux and open all of the FOSS software I use for various things. idk, I just think its neat.

I wiped my laptop and replaced windows with Nobara (Gnome) pretty soon after first experimenting with it on my PC. My laptop is kind of old and was kind of slow with Windows. With Linux, it's super fast and useful again.

(PL, I do audio engineering and have used my Linux laptop with Reaper, an open source DAW, to record bands. It works surprisingly well and even my older laptop isn't too stressed by it.)

so as a fairly normie user, Linux has been super fun and surprisingly simple to jump in to. I've found it more useful than Windows for a few of my needs, except for gaming.

 

[jONALD]

Anyone using Linux here remember their first time using it? Why did you switch and what was it like?

I touched Ubuntu first on an old Toshiba laptop when I was still in Highschool when I stumbled upon Virtual Box somehow. I have no technical background, no old skool computer background, I'm just a curious fellow who likes to poke stuff and watch how stuff works. I was immediately sold on Linux when I used the command line to download something. It felt cool and awesome, that's why I've stuck to Linux. I continue to fumble and flounder through weird oddities and somehow I've ended up choosing Slackware as my daily driver to play video games.

 

[⠠⠠⠅⠑⠋⠋⠁⠇⠎ ⠠⠠⠊⠎ ⠠⠠⠁ ⠠⠠⠋⠁⠛]

Anyone using Linux here remember their first time using it? Why did you switch and what was it like?

Early 2000s or so. Had a 486DX4 with a huge 500mb+ drive to myself, the Linux thing sounded interesting so I used one of those FAT resizing utilities that worked really well at the time to split up the drive and copied stuff over until I could use loadlin.exe* to boot into Debian Potato from DOS and set things up from there. I was able to get fun games like Nethack and even GUI applications up and running with TWM, FVWM, and even WindowMaker by copying .dpkgs over by floppy until every dependency resolved.

I subsequently set up various family machines- and an old Mac 68k** I got for free- to dual boot to Debian or Gentoo, which all worked great for dial up or wired ethernet connections, until I went to college and used Windows for a couple years before moving back to Debian, then Ubuntu, then cleansing myself of systemd with Devuan.

Everything worked pretty great TBH, I skipped the worst years of Linux wifi, didn't play games beyond Quake 1 & 2 on Linux until recently, and always got away with never backing anything up on those old dual booted machines that my parents needed to do their actual work on before making changes that would have blow everything away 95% of the time if I tried something similar in purpose on a modern UEFI machine.

* loadlin is still packaged (presumably for installation to a DOS system) by Debian and received updates (probably to specify the preferred gender of the package owner, admittedly, given that it is the current year) in 2024
** a great experience, loading into a console Linux from the Mac System 7 GUI environment is surreal AF

 

[Another Char Clone]

I subsequently set up various family machines- and an old Mac 68k** I got for free- to dual boot to Debian or Gentoo, which all worked great for dial up or wired ethernet connections, until I went to college and used Windows for a couple years before moving back to Debian, then Ubuntu, then cleansing myself of systemd with Devuan.

This anime image just popped up in my mind. Thanks.
Edit: Found it, Mnemosyne OVA episode 1, data exfiltration attempt through a modem that isn't just random HACKERZ text.

 

[Max Free]

Sounds to me like you didn't have trim set up. Highly recommend looking into that now in case you still don't for this install. Otherwise your drives will keep slowing down with time.

Don't know what that is, don't know what it does, don't care to look it up and read through a mileage of FOSS terminology that makes no sense. and I don't have any problems so far anyway.
I don't know why people are so accepting of shit like this. Drivers slowing down randomly, so install this random-ass software you never heard of before to make them work again? Whut?

 

[teriyakiburns]

Don't know what that is, don't know what it does

Trim is a function in modern SSDs that is essentially a built-in defragmentation system. It's not always turned in by default. If it isn't on, your drive will slow down over time, as files end up fragmented and spread across different sectors. Windows suffers the same issue in the same circumstances. No specialist software is required in either case.

If you spend a few minutes actually learning about your system, your experience will improve no matter which os you use. There is no benefit to be gained from willful ignorance.

 

[Max Free]

If you spend a few minutes actually learning about your system, your experience will improve no matter which os you use.

This has nothing to do with my old problem with OpenSUSE back in the day, as it was still on a magnetic disc, and I don't experience any trouble with my system now. I don't even know why it was brought up.

There is no benefit to be gained from willful ignorance.

Sure there is. More time for stuff outside of starring at monitors and hearing of new tech nonsense at every turn that should work optimally out of the box anyway.

 

[Heliantheae]

Sure there is.

People like you are the reason the modern Internet is shit.

 

[Max Free]

People like you are the reason the modern Internet is shit.

Sir, this is the Linux Thread. And I don't know how having to know about a magic switch in your SSD that turns it away from its default slow-down-and-die-early configuration and complaining about it makes me the guy that makes stuff suck.

 

[Carpe Jugulum]

Anyone using Linux here remember their first time using it? Why did you switch and what was it like?

Two and a half years ago. Y’know, I can’t remember the exact reason but it will have been Windows related coupled with a healthy skepticism of cloud based services (tinfoil hat moment: can see microshite pushing windows as one).

I’m a normie. I don’t code or really know what I’m doing. I used to dick around with DOS and the Spectrum as a kid so using the terminal was never daunting. Picked Garuda because it was pretty, bricked it first week, tried again and never looked back. I’ve used Mint as well but prefer arch based so run EndeavourOS on both PCs and my ancient laptop (which runs a million times better). I still have dual boot on all of them but it’s exceedingly rare I have to use Windows. All my vidya works fine and I would like to learn more about how it all works one day.

People tried to get me interested years ago and I wish I had listened to them.

 

[Flatline]

Why did you switch and what was it like?

Simple: I hate Windows. GNU/Linux gives me more control over what I install and run on my machine, something Windows users will never understand.

 

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View attachment 6768002
This anime image just popped up in my mind. Thanks.
Edit: Found it, Mnemosyne OVA episode 1, data exfiltration attempt through a modem that isn't just random HACKERZ text.

Welll... they did kinda just copy the text from the web page where it says at the end 'put the phone number where XXXXXXXXX is and hardcode the password where it says MY_PASSWORD' .

Dial up modems were good times. I remember using some curses-based monitoring tool that would do a sick bar graph scrolling across the screen so you could see how close you were to maxing out your 56k modem speed.

Spoiler: stolen screenshot of pppstatus

 

[Eternal Spirit of Light]

This question has probably been asked hundreds of times before, but:
Is Emacs worth using? I'm currently using Vim.