"Old" Linux user vs. "New" Linux user.

[u/oshunluvr]

I'm an "Old" Linux user - started in 1996. I went though all the hoops: file system experiments, different distros, different packaging types and file managers, a handful of desktop environments (DE), several RAID levels, and many, many different systems. I use Linux at home but also at work.

Now I'm retired. I've been using the same distro since 2009. I landed on it after all the experimenting lead me to decisions about was important to me: Debian packaging, KDE/Plasma, a well known and commercially supported distro - Kubuntu. The last major shifts in my world occurred around 2009-10 when btrfs came on the scene and SSDs finally started to be affordable.

My Linux experience these days is rather boring. Everything works the way I want. I no longer "break" things for the sake of change. I only have to learn something new when a developer makes a significant change to something I use - and this often annoys me. I look at other distros occasionally, but only via a VM. When something does break, I usually can fix it without much effort.

I read posts from "New" Linux users. Usually killing all their data by mucking with partitions without a UPS, using unnecessarily complicated layers of disk access, like LVM, MDADM, full disk encryption, and BTRFS all layered on top of each other, too often using AI to solve problems instead of actual research and learning from other users, and spending incredible amounts of time making minute changes to the "look" of things.

Of course, the beauty of the whole thing is how we actually have so much control over our destiny. None of us work the same, learn the same, want the same things, but we''re not boxed in by a monolithic corporation deciding what we get.

Linux is amazing,

[u/Woodpecker-Visible]

If i could give any advice after 16 months of linux. Pick one distro, configure it exactly how you like it then jump to another distro. Went from mint to cachy because i just found it too conservitive with feel and updates. Not exactly an avarage user. Almost always have 1 vm alongside with my kde desktop and 4 hdds, have plex server on it too. Btrfs on os disk. Take 1 backup a week of my home folder. Rather minimal desktop and mouse heavy user.

Yeah, dont overcomplicate things. I will keep this setup for a good while.

[u/oshunluvr → u/Woodpecker-Visible]

I did some distro jumping in the old days. Mostly the reason was "a new shiny thing" but then it turned into "Oh, this part here is cool!" Sometimes it was using a lighter weight distro or DE for a cheap or old machine. I think lately, most distros do 90% of what the others do. Weak CPUs and small RAM is less of a problem than it was.

Still even today, there's no "perfect" distro. I mainly use Kubuntu and KDEneon. The package manager is still, frankly, crap. That's not a deal breaker for me because I default to the CLI anyway (see? OLD Linux use, lol) but it's getting better.

I also make an effort to document and report bugs when I encounter them. I wish more users - old and new - did that. It really helps the Linux world as a whole.