Why I Switched to Linux

Video Version:

Background

I recently turned in the Windows laptop I had for my previous job and realized I no longer had any Windows PCs at my house.

I decided it was a good time to talk about how I got to Linux. I have worked in Various areas of IT for over 10 years now. For a long time, I was always  on a computer, after work I'd come home, hop on Teamspeak or Mumble and play PC games.

I was using Windows every day for my day job.

Eventually, my main PC went down, I tried fixing it at one point, but just decided I didn't care enough to fix it. I would just randomly use a laptop if I needed a PC, otherwise just use my phone. I was no longer motivated to play with tech.

The Switch

A friend mentioned he was checking out Linux in the latter half of 2018 and I decided to give it a shot as well.

I put Linux Mint on an external HDD and started running that full time. After a month, I hadn't went into Windows beyond grabbing a file or two. So I took the plunge, backed up my files and loaded Linux Mint onto the main hard drives of my laptop.

This is where I really started learning about Linux.

I tried various distros and broke grub. I broke main things in fact, but I kept learning.

After a few months on Linux Mint, hybrid graphics struck (they are still a bit of a pain to deal with) and I ended up hopping to Ubuntu Mate. At the same time I was experiementing with other distros on a different PC. I even installed Arch "the hard way."

Exploring Further

The dive into Linux really got me back into tech.

I had not realized how much I had gotten frustrated by Windows. It felt like Windows was fighting me at times.

As I got further into Linux, I also started exploring other areas of tech. I've learned a good bit of Python. I have started looking at other programming languages. I am looking at learning some Neovim and maybe eventually Doom emacs. I also want to start a home lab up. There are so many areas I want to look at!