Hello Penguin#
Honestly best mascot IMO. I remember having an on and off relationship with Linux. I downloaded Linux Mint and installed it onto a VM on an old laptop that I have since parted ways with. I remembered knowing nothing about it and dismissed Linux as a whole to be something that wasn’t for me. Boy was I wrong. The opportunity to work as a system engineer plunged me deeper into the world of Operating Systems and terminals, leading me to discover the true power of Linux. The frequent exposure to Linux made me more comfortable and soon, I started learning about all the great things you could do with bash scripts, all the utilities that the Linux power users love. Why check your processes with a GUI when you can just do it through the terminal? You can pipe the output of one command and use it as input to another?! Most of the tools I use on a daily basis are not only also on Linux, but they’re open-source AND provide a better user experience?! THE MASCOT IS A PENGUIN?! I was sold.
A Canonical Event#
You guessed it. I tried Ubuntu. Why? Cause back then, I worked with Ubuntu servers. Also some guys on the internet said it was a good beginner distro. Armed with more experience in Linux, I started the process of nuking my old Windows laptop, following some guides on the installation and setup process. Youtube is a great resource for all of this, by the way. Setup is complete, apps downloaded, and… It just sat there. Unfortunately, my job as a system engineer took up a lot of my time, and no it is not an excuse. I vividly remember having to spend a Friday close to Christmas, in a server room, with my boss and our client until 7 AM, the next day, performing server migrations. So yeah, no playing around with my new system. But the little time I had was a blast and Ubuntu really was easy to work with. But this would not be the last time you hear of Ubuntu (foreshadowing…).
New Job, New OS#
At this point in my career, I had already transitioned over to being a Software Engineer, and that allowed me to play around with the shiny, closed ecosystem of macOS. It was… An adjustment to say the least. Luckily, company documentation was detailed enough to help me get my development environment up and running. And soon enough I was zooming, ehh but not really. Due to company policies, the system was locked down tight, so I never really got around to customizing much of anything. My day-to-day with MacOS did get me used to a non-windows environment, and with the better work-life balance, I decided to re-revive my laptop. The version of Ubuntu I had installed is now a little obsolete, 22.04 LTS had just dropped (this was some time in 2022), and so like a mad bomber, I nuked my laptop again. Did I install Ubuntu 22.04? Nope, I went with Pop!_OS instead. Why? It is Ubuntu-based, so it would be familiar to me, and it also had tiling window management built-in, and at this point in time, I was getting really really sick of alt/cmd tabbing my way to my destination.
Pop!_OS was great. And I actually did some programming on it. For some additional context, my laptop was an old 13-inch Dell Inspiron, and Windows 11 was murdering it. It got so bad that I could hear jet engines in my room. Pop!_OS actually got me using the laptop again fully, I would go for weeks without booting up my PC when I had free time. I started doing some online courses, and played around with some projects that never made enough progress to be showcase worthy. At this point in time, I also started playing around with NeoVim, but we probably won’t talk about that here (there is a lot to unpack there). Overall, fantastic experience, a solid 5 out of 7. The tiling window manager got me zooming around my laptop, and for the first time ever, I really felt like the OS was working with me instead of against me. And then, I started looking to see if I could improve my environment even more.
By The Way#
Pop!_OS was great. I loved it. And if it were a pure work laptop, I would have probably stuck with it because it felt stable. So where to next? Where all distro explorers go to rest, Arch. Like all the Youtube videos said, Arch was where you could learn the most about Linux. Barely anything was installed, and that’s when I learned that it actually does take a lot of work to get everything you need for what most people would consider basic computer functionality. This was when I learned about Desktop Environments, I thought I knew what GNOME actually provided. But even all the little things like basic computer settings were handled and required some kind of tooling to get working. WiFi settings? Bluetooth? Nah fam, you need to install a package for that. At first, it was frustrating, like why did it not come with these core features? But wait, Most PCs don’t come with bluetooth, or WiFi for that matter.
Eye opening as always, the experience (like most others here) taught me a lot. Would it get me a job? Probably not, no company would probably care that much that I have Arch running on my laptop (by the way). But it did get me a lot more comfortable with the terminal, and the importance of good documentation. Now, I fully advocate for good documentation, even at work, it’s basically an extra chore I do here and there so that people (myself included) can have access to the resources I wish I had when I started out with specific projects. Oh, and also, I have my own hyprland config now too. If you don’t know what that is, DO NOT Google it, unless you are willing to spend the next few weeks of your free time playing around with your system trying to get everything perfect. Maybe some time in the future, I will go through my arch configuration and all the work it took to set it up (including all the don’ts I learned along the way).
