this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2024
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Linux

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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I started fairly recently (probably somewhere between nine and seven years ago; time isn’t my strong suit, cut me some slack) on Debian. Now I’m on Arch Linux.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

During the pandemic in early 2021, I was bored and browsed Reddit too much. Some people talked about Linux as a way to avoid the problems of Windows (which I was planning to switch to from MacOS). I got curious and wanted to learn more, and discovered Linux was lightweight and could run on old hardware.

After much research, I settled on putting Linux Lite onto my family's old laptop from around 2010. I used it for a while and it worked great, although it was still somewhat unresponsive, so I switched to Lubuntu. That worked even better and brought that laptop to speeds resembling my gaming laptop with Windows 11 on various categories of apps (file manager, basic text editor, moving around the desktop, etc.)

I was satisfied for a while, but recently I installed Linux on two other computers:

  1. KDE Neon on the desktop purchased from my friend because I knew I didn't need Windows for what I was doing, and I dislike Windows 11 enough for me to use Linux full time. I also wanted to try out KDE and avoid Snaps while being in the Ubuntu ecosystem.
  2. Dual booting Ubuntu on my gaming laptop (on 2nd SSD), because one of my classes requires me to run Linux software. They had directions to run a VM or use WSL. I tried the latter but ran into a weird error and figured it was easier to just dual boot. Let's see how this goes, as I installed Ubuntu yesterday.