Hey everyone.
I’ve been a Linux user since the early 90’s when Linus first released Linux on the internet. I remember downloading multiple floppy images from an FTP server on a Unix server at my college campus. Taking those floppies home to install on my 80286 and seeing X-Windows fire up on my personal PC was exhilarating to say the least!
Since then, for 30 years I’ve been in the IT industry working on multiple platforms including Unix, VMS (both VAX and OpenVMS), and of course Windows. But even then, I was running Linux at home off and on throughout those years.
Only this year did I finally decide to make Linux my daily driver. The main factor holding me back was games and also programming. My main development where I work is Dot Net which was built upon by my prior experience with C, C++ and Java. But now with Dot Net Core being able to be compiled and developed on Linux, it’s gotten my Linux juices flowing again!
Over the past year, I had been experimenting with various distros including Nobara, Pop OS, Ubuntu and others, but I happened upon Arch Linux via Garuda and fell in love with it. But just two months ago, I finally decided to ditch Garuda and went with normal Arch Linux which hearkened back to the days of me first installing SLS Linux where I had full control over what was installed. I wanted to control what was installed, rather than having a bunch of bloat installed.
With Arch, there’s no compiling when updating the software like it was back then with distros like SLS and Slackware. Packages have definitely helped Linux come a long way since those early days.
Now, I’m looking at moving to CachyOS. Currently, I’m still keeping my current Arch Linux as my daily driver as I use it for gaming and for work, so I don’t want to replace it yet. So I’ve been playing with CachyOS in a VM, but definitely want to put it onto bare metal rather than in a VM.
Linux just gives me the freedom I want in an OS without the worry of some corporate company collecting my data and selling it. And with how well Proton allows most of my games to run under Linux and just as well as they did in Windows, I’ve finally made the jump to Linux being my daily driver.