My Journey With Linux

Monday, June 30, 2025

If you don’t keep up with the Linux news scene, you might have missed that popular YouTuber Pewdiepie has decided to ditch Windows and Google in favor of Linux and self hosted cloud options. As a Linux enthusiast myself, I am all for his switch and the direction he's going. Watching his journey has made me reminisce on my own journey with Linux, and where it’s led me to today.

Humble Beginnings

My journey with Linux began like most others, with Windows. And unlike most others, it was not with me getting annoyed with the OS or having it crash one me. My story began with me using Windows to learn how to install other operating systems onto my laptop.

It started with the public beta of Windows 8. At the time of its release I was fresh out of high school with my very own laptop. The concept of replacing my computer’s operating system was foreign to me. But after the reveal of Windows 8 I discovered that you could do just that.

Windows 8 was a very polarizing release. At the time I was squarely in the love the new design camp. With the help of a USB stick and some patience, I had installed the beta onto my laptop. But that was just the beginning. From there I wondered, what else could I install on my laptop?

Ubuntu And Linux Mint

My Internet searching led me to my first Linux distribution, Ubuntu 12.04. Installing it was exciting, it was a whole new experience for my computer. I was in my freshman year at college by this point so naturally I used Ubuntu to complete some of my school work, and even took notes in a few classes.

But as this was my first experience with Linux, there were hiccups to be found. I couldn’t get YouTube to play videos, my printer was never recognized, and some other typical issues with software compatibility. After a few months I gave up and went back to Windows.

And on Windows I stayed for a good few years until my senior year of college. I don’t remember what exactly caused me to want to try Linux again, but I had decided to install Linux Mint onto my laptop.

And this time most of my software issues I had on Ubuntu were all but history. Printers worked, YouTube played flawlessly, and I was able to finish school work when needed. Linux Mint served me well, but it wasn’t the end of the road on my Linux journey. It was just the beginning.

Manjaro And Ricing

Linux Mint was a gateway for me, into a wide world of options for computer operating systems. After trying a few options I landed on Manjaro Linux, a derivative of Arch Linux with an easy to use installer. I also at this time discovered what’s called ricing. Ricing, a term coming from street racing (Race Inspired Car Enhancements), is the act of customizing your computer interface to best match your workflow.

At the time I was all about what customizations I could make to my computer interface. I used every desktop known to the Linux space, and dabbled in quite a few tiling window managers. I even went as far as to maintain a fork of the dynamic window manager, dwm for short. Eventually I settled down on one desktop environment (Gnome) to call home. And began to change my Linux distribution around again, after a few unstable updates from Manjaro.

Debian And Self Hosting

By this time I was also full swing into my software freedom phase. Not freedom as in a free price tag, but as in free speech. My distribution hopping landed me at Debian, a good, stable solution to the free speech distros.

Around this time as well I came into possession of a Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi is a single board computer the size of a credit card, that can be used for a multitude of purposes. One of those purposes is to be a headless server, or a computer without a monitor or keyboard. With a headless server you could serve any number of applications, like Nextcloud.

I self hosted my own cloud and my website on that Raspberry Pi for a good few years, and stuck to Debian for just as long. But after a while I grew tired of the aging software that Debian was notorious for having. So I distribution hopped again, until I settled on my next OS.

Fedora And Pop!_OS

While on my search for my next OS, I decided to look to others for inspiration. Namely, I looked at what Linus Torvalds (the creator of Linux) was running. That was vanilla Fedora, a distrobution I had dabbled with in the past. It was stable, had up to date packages, and was backed by the infamous Red Hat. Fedora served me well, and did not crash no matter what weird situations I threw at it.

Not long after a new distribution hit the scene, Pop!_OS. Pop is based on Ubuntu, and rocked a skinned fork of the Gnome desktop. Positioned as a distribution for makers, I was eager to give it a try. I was pleasantly surprised with how stable it was, and how well it worked with my hardware. As a bonus, the developers for Pop are very active on social media, and respond often.

During this time I was also getting more into coding, and was learning to code for Windows at my day job. Inspired by my work efforts, I began looking into how I could code for my hobby at home. Pop was in a unique position around this time, as they had begun work on making their own desktop environment.

Wanting to contribute in my own way, I began using the in alpha toolkit for the new desktop environment to develop a weather app. It was my first real effort into open source development, and the collaboration that came with that experience was more than valuable.

The MacBook Era

While it is true that I was using a MacBook Pro during my Pop era, it wasn't until my birthday this past year that I received a MacBook Air M2. Now for the first few months of owning this computer, I stayed with macOS. I did so because I wasn't aware of any possible way to run Linux on the M series processors. That is, until I found Asahi Linux.

Asahi Linux is a project designed to bring the Linux operating system to M series Mac devices. Since I am still maintaining the weather app I developed for Pop!_OS's Cosmic desktop, I've been utilizing Asahi to develop, test, and build the app.

And that brings us to today, where I use Linux for about 50% of the time when using my home computers. Linux has served me well over the years, and will continue to serve me wherever the future takes me.