Past experience with Windows

I used to use Windows as a main operating system, since it is pre-installed at my laptop in 2020. I don’t know about other operating systems except it. I just started using it and immediately got to work. It was quite enjoyable, largely because it came pre-installed, allowing me to dive straight in and simply install the programs I needed. While this setup offered immediate gratification, I was soon to discover that ‘convenient’ didn’t always equate to ‘optimal’ in the long run.

However, my enjoyment started to shrink. My once-snappy machine slowly began to feel like it was wading through treacle, or perhaps running a marathon with concrete shoes. I’m pretty sure my morning coffee brewed faster than my desktop booted up some mornings. And yes, you’re not wrong – all those seemingly “un-meaningful” updates truly crippled my laptop’s performance. It got so bad, I could actually finish my ranked games before the operating system finally decided to fully load and present itself.

But even slower than the glacial pace was my arch-nemesis: Windows Update. Seriously, that thing was infuriating! Not only did it pop up demanding restarts at the absolute worst times, but it had this incredibly sneaky habit of eating my mobile data in the background. It wasn’t an update; it was a digital vampire, draining my precious internet without so much as a “by your leave.” I knew I could disable Windows updates by tweaking the services, but it was complicated since I needed to play with Windows Services.

First Meet with Linux

At 2021, at my 3rd semester, there was a subject named “Networking”, and I was taught how to install Linux. The first Linux distribution (people called it “distro”) I ever laid my hands on was Ubuntu Server 20.04. It wasn’t just a choice; it was mandatory for what I wanted to do, since my goal was to learn how to configure a server.
That marked the start of my journey with Linux.

I learned more how to install Linux in bare metal (my laptop) without virtualization (Virtual Machine). And on November 2021, I successfully installed Linux Mint in my laptop, with dual boot. My first impression was overwhelmingly positive. The UI was incredibly slick and intuitive, and it’s worked out of the box completely shattering the myth that “Linux is hard to use.”

It wasn’t the end of my Linux journey. I discovered other Linux distros and tried to compare between them. I moved from Linux Mint to Fedora 35. I also needed to learn about the distro since it is from different base Linux distro. Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu while Fedora is a Red Hat based distro. Months later, I moved to Ubuntu, then went back to Linux Mint, then back to Fedora. I tried NixOS for a while, and days later I uninstalled it because NixOS has a steep learning curve. Lastly, I decided to install Arch Linux and also removed my Windows, so right now my laptop only has single-booted Arch Linux.

End of Journey?

While Arch Linux has been a stable and empowering home for a while, the spirit of exploration that led me through all that distro-hopping still lingers. I’ve been thinking about Fedora again, perhaps for its cutting-edge stability and strong community. And then there’s NixOS – a truly intriguing beast. If (and only if) I can finally wrap my head around the Nix language and its unique approach to system configuration, that might be my next big adventure. It seems the quest for the “perfect” system, or at least the next fascinating challenge, never truly ends!