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Linux - My History & Opinions

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Preface

I don't have strong feelings or convictions when it comes to the Free Software debate. I adopt a pragmatic approach to computer use, tending to choose software that best suits a given job, though I am increasingly concerned about the trend towards diminished user privacy.

One could of course argue that the principle of Free Software is a direct answer to issues such as Software as a Service, subscription models or serving ads within operating systems, but I take issue with extending this approach to the point of limiting software or system usability in the real world.

Linux has always been a hobby of mine that I would only consider using as a primary OS if it was provably the best tool for the job. Thanks to the aforementioned trends in the IT industry, as well as Linux as a whole improving, this appears to be rapidly becoming the case.

How I Started

I've been a Linux user since 2010 and have since used a wide range of distros and software across many different devices.

My first Linux distro was Ubuntu 10.04 running on a Dell Inspiron 530. At the time, I jumped into Linux with minimal understanding after discovering that alternatives to Windows and Mac OS X exist. This installation was promptly broken after a failed attempt to replace the desktop manager.

Shortly after that, wanting to try out a more minimalistic setup, I switched to Debian with Xfce 4 for over a year.

In early 2011, I gathered enough old components to build a PC out of spare parts. It was housed in a "case" made out of a cardboard box (sadly I have long since lost all photos of this build). I've decided to give Arch Linux a try in order to "learn Linux". This was around the time tiling window managers started gaining popularity, so I attempted putting together a setup consisting of AwesomeWM, using the terminal whenever possible. This got me started with scripting, learning vim and a variety of Linux concepts. Using a completely new desktop metaphor interested me as a new experience, but even after a few months of use, I couldn't get used to it as see it as a significantly more efficient or usable experience. Dealing with many graphical applications became a lot more cumbersome.

In late 2012, I obtained a higher-spec gaming PC and installed Windows 8, shockingly the first version of Windows which I bought a retail copy of. I didn't hate it quite as much as the rest of the internet and used it as my primary OS with Linux being a secondary/learning hobbyist option I ran on various spare PCs.

Nvidia & Niche Hardware

Nvidia GPU compatibility issues were a major reason I didn't adopt Linux as my primary OS after 2012. -- Until recently, drivers and performance were sub-par and it was difficult to avoid running into issues. For me personally, even minor graphical glitches in the user interface have always been a dealbreaker.

Using other niche hardware such as various external DACs (and consequently having to fight Linux audio even more so than usual) or capture cards certainly didn't help matters.

Windows has therefore been my primary desktop OS to this day.

Given the recent improvements with Wayland and Nvidia drivers, Linux might soon become my primary OS again, depending on how Windows progresses over the next few major versions.

Opinions on Distros

• Arch - I view Arch Linux as the go-to "default" Linux experience. This is the distro which I became somewhat of a self-proclaimed Linux power user on. Any kind of elitism (or accusations thereof) are completely unwarranted, as the install & setup experience really aren't as complicated as they might appear. They simply offer a way of setting up a desired Linux experience from the group up, with upstream software offering developer defaults instead of having to uninstall unwanted packages or fix a distro maintainer's esoteric presets. Thanks to the AUR, Arch has an unmatched software selection. The Arch Wiki is also by far the best resource for any Linux user.
• Debian - My preferred server OS; This website runs on Debian. It's also one of the few distros besides Arch that I would consider for desktop use, but the default "stable" release channel ships packages which are too outdated for my liking. Despite it being promoted as a stable and reliable experience, I've experienced more strange behaviour with unexpected default configs etc than with Arch.
• Ubuntu - My first distro. Usually recommended to Linux newcomers, offers a good package selection. Xubuntu, an Xfce4 fork of Ubuntu, has been my primary laptop OS for many years, with fond memories of using it on a painfully underpowered Intel Atom netbook when away from home or on holidays as a teenager. Recent changes such as the push for the Snap package manager have really diminished Ubuntu's usability and reputation.
• OpenSUSE - I haven't used OpenSUSE extensively and ran into driver issues which I haven't experienced on other distros while testing it. YaST is a good utility for managing a Linux workstation, with no other distro seemingly offering a comparable alternative.
• Fedora - Another distro I have minimal experience with. I've ran it for a few days while trying out GNOME 3 when it was still relatively new. It was never a distro I thought that I would benefit from switching it.
• Slackware - One of the oldest still maintained distros. I've briefly tried it out of curiosity due to it offering an alternative to many now ubiquitous standards such as systemd. Package management on Slackware is a hard sell for me, and the way it encourages bloating your system with a large number of packages when first installing goes against what I look for in a Linux distro. I might revisit it, attempt a more minimal installation and give utilities such as slapt-get a go.
• Gentoo - I've never tried it. Compiling all packages from source on a standard x86 PC has always felt excessive and would most likely offer minimal performance gains. Building a custom Linux kernel seems interesting, however. I might give Gentoo a try soon.
• Misc Distro Forks - Anything which is simply a repackage/rebrand of another mainline distro with a set of preinstalled software or default settings falls under this category. Examples include Manjaro & Linux Mint. I see these distros as redundant and only contributing to confusion through over-abundance of choice. These distros needlessly fragment the userbase at best and introduce bugs, incompatibilities or other issues through offering more downstream packages at worst.

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