How did you get into Linux?

I've been screwing around with Void Linux for quite a while now. My main computer's ACPI apparently won't support any sort of Linux or other OS, but my laptop seems to work fine with it. However, our family has Eero's (mesh network routers) in our house for their stuff and having 6 different access points with the same SSID can't possibly be any good for when I'm trying to set up the WiFi. I chose a version of Void that did not have a WM or DE, so that I could install i3 and jump right into Linux (again, used to mess with Arch quite often). After spending my entire weekend troubleshooting and trying to figure out ricing, I'm at a loss here. How did you guys get into Linux? I now assume it was gradual and not head first like what I've been trying to do. Did you start with Ubuntu or some other distro? Did you work your way up with simple DE's until you realized what your real needs were and slowly lost yourself in the cyberspace after that?

I got interested in KaliLinux and a friend of my family gave 3CDs of Debian to me thinking it was similar. I used it for a while but the HDD broke so I had to reinstall everything. I searched some tutorials and downloaded a Debian netinst ISO. Switched from GNOME to KDE recently after one or two complete reinstalls. I now use it on my two laptops, one with GNOME for my grandfather to use and one I use myself.

I didn't. Need windows to run my video games. Sure there are ways to play in linux but thats going the round about way.

I started with Ubuntu 4.10 or something like that. I can't really remember the details from it, but I remember that I was fed up with windows rebooting for no reason at all.

I was getting into programming at around 14-15. I said on some random irc that I wanted to learn Linux thoroughly and wasn't afraid to jump in the deep end. Someone told me to install Gentoo (in seriousness, this was before /g/ even existed) so I did. No regrets.

Back in the 8th grade, my then-girlfriend's dad used to chill in the living room all the time bragging about his Linux setup. Would always show off all the cool soykaf he could do, which was mostly the Compiz cube effect and drawing fire on the desktop. Gave me a CD with Ubuntu on it one time. Can't say I jumped in headfirst all at once, but it was a start.

>be me >15 year old >windows stops booting (something with a bootloader) >get my files back via live usb ubuntu >decide to install linux full I started out with Ubuntu and kept at it (xubuntu now) soykaf. it works. I don't see why I would want to switch to Arch or any other wizard OS.

>>4734 The whole install gentoo "meme" is honestly meant as a serious thing and only some neophytes misinterpret to mean something memetic. Also, hail gentoo brotha! Hail portage!

I started linux with debian because a friend told me you could host your own mail adress. Never hosted a mail server, finally. Like 6 months after that, my sister gave me an old cheap ass laptop with a windows starter edition on it that was fuarrrking slow. I installed ubuntu on it, and then I radicalized and installed ubuntu on my desktop. My distro life since then is roughly: debian => ubuntu => fedora => debian => archlinux. Now I have arch on my laptop and debian on my desktop. Feels good man (gnome on both because I find it cool).

Tried installing ubuntu, noob me tried to install it like a fuarrrking windows exe. A month or so go by, try installing mint, actually succeed. Then, I distrohopped for some time. A reasonable timeline would be: mint - fedora - manjaro - antergos - arch - funtoo - debian (current) After I installed arch I was pretty interested in how GNU/Linux works and what drives it, resulting in me installing funtoo. I then installed debian after feeling that I didn't want to fix everything after an update came down the line.

As a kid I was in fact a Vista fanboy. I was the kid trolling for Vista on forums. After a while I mellowed down a bit and instead started to dream abput having my own OS. Then despite having a history of flaming against Linux someone pointed me at Linux and Open source, and I took the bait. I also became quite bored with Windows... I took open source software as my high school final thesis and I installed Mandriva 2010. And boy did that open up a whole new world to me. Mandriva 2011 had some RAM leakage bug so in 2012 I switched to Ubuntu 12.04. It was also in september 2012 that I tried for the first time to go Linux only for at least a month. And I was successful. But after that I still kept a 75 gb partition of Windows 7 just to play World of tanks. Windows 8 was terribad IMO(I tried it for a month). Suddenly I was on the other side of the flame war. At new years eve of 2014 I removed that Windows 7 partition. On september 2014 I installed the first test images of Windows 10, but I also removed them again by december. In the mean time I began using Kubuntu. I discovered Lainchan in march 2015. By this time I was running Arch and Gentoo in VMs. In november 2015 I switched to i3wm and stayed there. In june 2016 I switched to Debian testing. Which is still on my main machine. In july 2017 I bought a Thinkpad x40 and installed Gentoo on it for learning purposes. I might switch my main HP probook 4530s to Gentoo next year. So this is the story. Sorry if I bored ypu.

>>4749 Oh yeah and I had this Kali Linux phase too. Kali Linux was even my bachelors thesis.

>>4737 Honestly Portage is a great concept but until they fix up the absolute cluster that is all the config files ya need for routine operations it's not worth it USE flags aren't pulled in automatically Dep resolution is hella slow, sometimes it doesn't even work If 32-bit mesa is depended on by an existing program (specified in the world file), why does it also have to be specified in package.use? Why not merge package.accept_keywords with the world file? (e.g., the presence of "www-client/firefox ~" in the world file could unmask both firefox and any unstable version dependencies-but it doesn't) It has so much work to do, sadly, just to even get on par with Ubuntu's PPA system Which is a shame because it has some really nice features which I will probably miss until I forget about them

>>4729 I installed Ubuntu and Kubuntu for the first time in something like 2006/2007 and then forgot about it. Then I installed Crunchbang in 2010 and actually started using it, first dual-booting and then only using Crunchbang. I decided to replace its repos with Debian's after a while and then decided to do a clean debian netinstall. Used it for something like two years and then switched to Gentoo. Be there for a while now. >>4752 >USE flags aren't pulled in automatically That's absolutely normal. You let the users who want to add more features manually add more features, just like you don't ship a distro with every single piece of software preinstalled but instead let the user install what he wants. >If 32-bit mesa is depended on by an existing program (specified in the world file), why does it also have to be specified in package.use? Because you might not want 32bit versions of software on your computer and made a mistake installing software that depends on 32bit software. Making you explicitly add a flag to package.use prevents this kind of mistake. >Why not merge package.accept_keywords with the world file? Because they don't have the same purpose. The world file keeps track of the software you manually installed, the package.accept_keywords file keeps track of every piece of software installed (including automatically installed software) and their architecture/version. >It has so much work to do, sadly, just to even get on par with Ubuntu's PPA system Portage's goal is not to become like Ubuntu's PPA system. Portage has a focus on flexibility and cross-compiling (it's the reason why this guy chose gentoo for installing linux on PS4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMiubC6LdTA ), ubuntu's PPA system focuses on delivering pre-compiled software with most features enabled by default. In my opinion Gentoo isn't for you. You would be better served my Arch/a Debian netinstall.

One day a Red Hat 8.0 cd (before it became RHEL) appeared in my house probably from a magazine. I installed it in our family main machine. I was amazed by the anaconda installer especially the package selection menu. It didn't last long. I was 11 or 12 years old and somehow i managed to switch from gnome to fvwm or fluxbox (i don't remember) and i couldn't go back. Plus i didn't have internet at the time so research cannot be done and family didn't like it. Went back to WinME and a time later i managed to get a Debian 3.0 CD and my own pc. Never went back to windows. After that it was time for Archlinux. Learned a lot also tilling windows managers and cli apps were my way to go at that time. Used it for years until and update broke my system. I think it was glibc. Also, at that time systemd was introduced and they starting deprecated rc.conf. So i installed Crunchbang and used it for a couple of years until it died and then switched between lubuntu and xubuntu. I became a linux sysadmin so to learn RHEL i installed Fedora and stick to it. So basically: Red Hat 8.0 > Debian 3.0 > Archlinux (pre systemd) > Crunchbang > lunbuntu/xubuntu > fedora

>>4752 Those are greats things to point out but for me I've never been bothered by the flaws of portage, I have taken everything it does as is, not having any motivation to think about its flaws. Paladis claims to have gone above & beyond portage in terms of ,,everything'' but eh they seem like even more of a handful than the gentoo guys to an outsider. Speaking of which, anyone here tried Exherbo?

OP, I started probably about 2 years ago. Family not tech oriented at all and no formal education on the matter. Being on this chan and /g/ way back, where it's always talked about informed me of it. Brief exposure through live cd's for cracking passwords and managing (ubuntu) servers for work got me more familiar. I started realizing its' merits and was lucky enough to obtain a spare computer. I installed antergos for a little while, then moved to bsd, then tried slack and qubes. By that time I had gotten good enough to install arch and started running services from my house on it. At this time I was maining windows 7 (on the other computer) with cygwin (about a year ago), but after the windows 10 update bullsoykaf I managed to figure out how to get all my soykaf off and repartition my drive / do full disc encryption (pretty stressful when you have no help / experience). So now that i'm maining Arch Linux it's been a learning experience the entire time. At first it was daunting because I would have to look up every other word in the arch wiki. The arch wiki is pretty good but sometimes they seem to intentionally make language harder / unclear. Now it's just fun though, much rarer that I have to look things up so I can really focus on individual problems and research them. So yea, I would say make it easy on yourself and learn gradually because no matter how you ease into it, you will have a lot to learn and be introduced to things.

I started with Ubuntu, and tried Fedora, Arch Linux, Debian, and then finally I stay at openSUSE Leap. Now I inistalled Leap on all my laptops and desktops. And I'm running Gentoo Linux for experiments and Debian on my VPS(I have no other choices because of my vps provider doesn't support openSUSE or Gentoo) I'd say, if you never tried openSUSE Leap before, you should at least give it a try. But I do not recommend openSUSE Tumbleweed which always rolling and consume much of your bandwidth and upgrading time.

I always knew that unix was superior to cp/m, dos, windows, macos etc. Then I heard there was a new, free *nix-like os. The only cd's available were slackware and yggdrasil. I couldn't get yggdrasil to work at all. But after about a week of trying, I finally got slackware to boot to a text login screen. It was a very satisfying moment. After maybe another week I got the mouse, keyboard, and monitor working well. Next hurdle: X!

>>4729 How I started growing my UNIX beard? Ubuntu on an USB > Debian > Slackware > Tried Gentoo > back to Slack (with a lot of reading in between) Starting out in Void Linux is a daring move I suggest you use Debian for now and then move on to more "exotic" distros later on. I am not a ricer myself if you really want to customise your system there are 3 distros that come to mind 1. Arch (not really source based but still diy) 2. Gentoo (you compile everything) 3. Void Linux (systemD less distro comes sort of barebones) Once you grow a long unix beard you will understand that you can customise any distro but these are good starting points I suggest reading man pages and learn more about common commands like ls,tar,ps,kill(all),rm,mv,find... Also learn either some perl or python (uugh) Suggested reading material 1. http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/downloads/stable/ shows you how to make a working linux system from scratch there are more advanced versions of this book if you are interested 2. http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html Advanced Bash Scripting Guide some day you will need to write a script or just read it for some in depth bash knowledge 3. Essential system administration - Assumes some familiarity with linux beforehand nice book overall https://www.google.com.tr/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.gocit.vn/files/Oreilly.Essential.System.Administration.3rd.Edition-www.gocit.vn.pdf&ved=0ahUKEwiB3rmr3MzWAhXBPBQKHal_DaEQFggjMAA&usg=AOvVaw18XDxWXNbUP20-cztuBB1P 4. Unix haters handbook (ugh) - just to remind you that unix is not perfect even though most of the complains have been resolved it is still a fun read https://www.google.com.tr/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://simson.net/ref/ugh.pdf&ved=0ahUKEwj1uqn52czWAhVGGhQKHQoIBwMQFghvMA0&usg=AOvVaw2b-Wsm2GC56fO_fqDTrP67

First used linux when I was 16. A friend and I got a work experience placement doing IT support with our university's CS department. Supervisor was cool as fuarrrk and taught us some Perl on a Fedora box. First time I did any programming too. Freaked out once when I managed to remove permissions to my home folder somehow and couldn't start X. Wasn't there for very long, unfortunately, and was moved to another department to actually do IT support. Wasn't until a couple of years later that I got a laptop and dual booted WinXP and Backtrack. I was interested in computer security, how stuff worked and how you could attack it. Turns out, if you don't know what you're doing, and you're running as root all the time, you tend to fuarrrk it up... constantly. I'd say as far as learning how linux works, that was the best way for me. I was always breaking something, then looking up how to fix it, on a system that really wasn't designed for any kind of stability or long term use. If I couldn't fix something, I'd wipe it clean and start again, setting up everything as I had it before. Being a dual boot, it also necessitated me becoming familiar with the boot process, the MBR, partitioning and GRUB. The other thing that helped me learn was that I wanted to do everything at a lower level. For example: Wicd and NetworkManager simplify the process of connecting to wifi, but both use wpa_supplicant to actually connect, so why not just interact with wpa_supplicant myself? In doing so, and reading the output of wpa_supplicant, I learned a lot about the process of setting up a connection. This also forced me to use the CLI, which I soon learned is a very powerful tool. In that period I had also exposed myself to Debian, Ubuntu OpenBSD and LFS, but really just to have a look around. No serious usage at all. After two or three years of using Windows and Backtrack I got sick of Windows and wanted a distro for everyday use, so I moved to Arch for its up to date packages and barebones initial installation so I could set it up as I wanted, because I knew what I wanted. This is what I've been using for the past four years and I don't see myself changing any time soon. >>4773 >Once you grow a long unix beard you will understand that you can customise any distro >>4758 Take note ^ https://github.com/drizzt/vps2arch You really can do whatever the fuarrrk you want most of the time. Last thing I could say is learn to love your log files.

I had a buddy who was into Linux, and later out of curiosity, I installed it on some spare laptops but those things gave out on me before I could really use Linux. Finally got a job and another cheap laptop and finally tried Linux by dual booting between Windows and Linux. I distrohopped for a while, got burnt out on Linux really bad plus I got into PC gaming last summer so I just stuck with Windows 10 because I prefer gaming. Only recently did I go back to Linux for things like servers. I love Xubuntu and Mint. But Solus OS has been really nice for basic use. I don't really use computers like I used to anymore so I don't really give a soykaf anymore what OS it is now. If I wanna game, I hop on my gaming PC, play, and then fuarrrk off somewhere else. But I do enjoy how nice Solus OS is, I think I'll use this whenever I just have a spare device hanging around.

Found a few issues of a Linux magazine in a local news agent when I was around ten years old, and never turned back.

In 2003. The P4 pc came with suse 8 with kde. It was fun but someone gave me an xp disc and took a decade long brake. Since then i barely use any windows system (except work, but whatever). So it was gradual and head first too. I wonder what could i achieve with linux if i can't get pirated windows xp in 2004. >>4772 >yggdrasil Horrible name. >>4793 Magazines were important too. Xandros and new suse releases were fun on the dvd package. I miss those days.

>>4821 >yggdrasil >horrible I see someone not into Scandinavian mythology.

I think I jumped in faster than you. I didn't get into it until I started college, but when I backed up needed files, then formatted my hard drive and installed slackware. It took me a couple of days to build X with radeon drivers but by the time I did I knew a thing or two about the command line. I tend to be one of the more proficient at command line usage even among linux admins and to this day I credit years of heavy slackware use.

>>4729 Work. Already had my degree and settling in to the work environment. We worked on VNC on a SLE. It was a bit touch an go until I got pissed at something and wanted to change it, which sent me down a google rabbit hole. I started getting the hang of things, getting competent at managing my environment, and actually having fun with it. Ended up in 4/g/ and 8/tech/ of all places, learned quite a bit, and eventually decided to give the old girl a whirl. I tried several VMs on my wangblows PC, saw that I liked OpenSuse, and now I have it installed on a memepad x230. I still use the windows PC for gayms, VMs and some studying

I had a garbage laptop at one point and I got really into trying to make it run games decently. One day, I came across a thread where someone brought up ubuntu. I installed that soykaf through Wubi and I never looked back. That particular installation was soykaf but it was my gateway drug into bigger and better distros

Was originally doing software engineering before I changed to journalism. I was talking to my professor once randomly and he said any *nix system is good for any engineering degree. And now that I've changed, having the security/no backdoors of Linux is important. I've always been a security conscious guy, but now I kind of need it for my career.

>>4729 I jumped right into arch linux, realized it was soykaf, then switched to slackware after dabbling in crux for a while.

>>4729 Lainon, I'm also new, if you want to chat sometime!

>My main computer's ACPI apparently won't support any sort of Linux or other OS I have ACPI issues on my motherboard. There's a RAID and IDE option in the BIOS. Selecting IDE fixes the errors I see on boot in dmesg.

Started with Ubuntu and Mint to come to grips with it and for support. Tried Arch for a bit and then moved to Trisquel for a while. It had some problems with hanging at login and lack of security updates that caused me to move to Debian 9 a few days ago. If GUIXSD gets stable I'll move to that.

I jumped right into Arch Linux. Had a terrible time at first, ton of reinstalls and confusion, but it grew on me. Now i feel right at home.

>>4977 Beautiful story, lainon. I'm inspired.

>>4977 What a powerful boy. I got into linux because I was 11, and a friend of mine told me I would be a 1337 h4><0r if I used it.

i put off linux forever. windows xp and windows 7 just worked for what i needed. i don't have any plans to be part of the botnet 10 though. plus, now you need to worry about hackers getting zero day cia/nsa exploits and suddenly encrypting your harddrive for bitcoins and botnet 10 is only going to make that worse. a week ago i installed arch linux on a laptop and have been learning the ins-and-outs so i can go completely to linux on my desktop. video tutorial for this have been really incredible along with the arc wiki. couple weeks i should be ready to make the leap completely

I started with Ubuntu, the exact reason I don't remember. After fiddling around with nvidia drivers and failing I dropped linux for a while. Five years ago or so I gave it another chance and installed arch. This is when I learned to RTFM and I've been happy ever since. Hopped distros a couple of times, but I've settled with arch for now.

Started programming when i was 11 yo, with the K&R C manual. Ended up learning with a (really good) tutorial on the internet, explored the website (openclassrooms.com, back then it was called "Site du Zéro" and only in french. and way better too imho) and found about linux. Asked my dad to install ubuntu on the family computer (it was the recommended distro in the tutorial), he had no problems with it (he's pretty skilled in IT). So I used it ocasionnally to try things, and because I was really happy to learn how a computer could work in a different way than windows (and also because I love the whole "free as in freedom" philosophy). At this time I also tried Unix with FreeBSD, for exactly the same reason. Since then I've never used Ubuntu again for a really long time (more than 7y actually), bc I had no personal computer until this year, so I wouldn't mess with a computer which isn't mine right. 2 months ago I knew I was eventually having enough money to actually buy a pretty good computer, so I tried Arch and i3 in a VM, and I kind of liked it. So when I bought my computer, I just had to copy my configuration files and install the appropriate packages to get it to work (and im really happy about this). I didn't use Windows for a while now, but sometimes reboot into it just to play cuphead since a week or so.

>>4729 >how did you get into Linux[sic]? > PC Master Race here.

I was looking into free (as in free beer) software, which lead to me discovering Linux. I tried out Ubuntu in a VM and then dual-booted my family's computer with it. I used only it while my siblings used Windows, until my mother was convinced that Ubuntu was a virus, and reinstalled Windows. Then I was forbidden to install any Linux distro again. Later, in college, I took an Intro to Unix class, where we played around on a Linux server writing Bash scripts and using Vi. After I finished that course, I started using solely Linux.

It's what we used in the graduate labs at university aeons ago and I liked it. I didn't even know Linux existed until then.

>>5296 I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX. Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called "Linux", and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project. There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine's resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called "Linux" distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.

>>5324 No, Richard, it's 'Linux', not 'GNU/Linux'. The most important contributions that the FSF made to Linux were the creation of the GPL and the GCC compiler. Those are fine and inspired products. GCC is a monumental achievement and has earned you, RMS, and the Free Software Foundation countless kudos and much appreciation. Following are some reasons for you to mull over, including some already answered in your FAQ. One guy, Linus Torvalds, used GCC to make his operating system (yes, Linux is an OS -- more on this later). He named it 'Linux' with a little help from his friends. Why doesn't he call it GNU/Linux? Because he wrote it, with more help from his friends, not you. You named your stuff, I named my stuff -- including the software I wrote using GCC -- and Linus named his stuff. The proper name is Linux because Linus Torvalds says so. Linus has spoken. Accept his authority. To do otherwise is to become a nag. You don't want to be known as a nag, do you? (An operating system) != (a distribution). Linux is an operating system. By my definition, an operating system is that software which provides and limits access to hardware resources on a computer. That definition applies whereever you see Linux in use. However, Linux is usually distributed with a collection of utilities and applications to make it easily configurable as a desktop system, a server, a development box, or a graphics workstation, or whatever the user needs. In such a configuration, we have a Linux (based) distribution. Therein lies your strongest argument for the unwieldy title 'GNU/Linux' (when said bundled software is largely from the FSF). Go bug the distribution makers on that one. Take your beef to Red Hat, Mandrake, and Slackware. At least there you have an argument. Linux alone is an operating system that can be used in various applications without any GNU software whatsoever. Embedded applications come to mind as an obvious example. Next, even if we limit the GNU/Linux title to the GNU-based Linux distributions, we run into another obvious problem. XFree86 may well be more important to a particular Linux installation than the sum of all the GNU contributions. More properly, shouldn't the distribution be called XFree86/Linux? Or, at a minimum, XFree86/GNU/Linux? Of course, it would be rather arbitrary to draw the line there when many other fine contributions go unlisted. Yes, I know you've heard this one before. Get used to it. You'll keep hearing it until you can cleanly counter it. You seem to like the lines-of-code metric. There are many lines of GNU code in a typical Linux distribution. You seem to suggest that (more LOC) == (more important). However, I submit to you that raw LOC numbers do not directly correlate with importance. I would suggest that clock cycles spent on code is a better metric. For example, if my system spends 90% of its time executing XFree86 code, XFree86 is probably the single most important collection of code on my system. Even if I loaded ten times as many lines of useless bloatware on my system and I never excuted that bloatware, it certainly isn't more important code than XFree86. Obviously, this metric isn't perfect either, but LOC really, really is like kicking dead whales down the beach. Please refrain from using it ever again in supporting any argument. Last, I'd like to point out that we Linux and GNU users shouldn't be fighting among ourselves over naming other people's software. But what the heck, I'm in a bad mood now. I think I'm feeling sufficiently obnoxious to make the point that GCC is so very famous and, yes, so very useful only because Linux was developed. In a show of proper respect and gratitude, shouldn't you and everyone refer to GCC as 'the Linux compiler'? Or at least, 'Linux GCC'? Seriously, where would your masterpiece be without Linux? Languishing with the HURD? If there is a moral buried in this rant, maybe it is this: Be grateful for your abilities and your incredible success and your considerable fame. Continue to use that success and fame for good, not evil. Also, be especially grateful for Linux' huge contribution to that success. You, RMS, the Free Software Foundation, and GNU software have reached their current high profiles largely on the back of Linux. You have changed the world. Now, go forth and don't be a nag. Thanks for listening.

>>5325 this feels like a copypasta

The first time I installed Linux was when ChromeOS had just been announced, so probably around 2009 or 2010. Somebody had packaged up some basic linux desktop with Chrome on a live CD, so I tried it a few times, though it took ages to boot. At the time I had an old computer of my dad's, and he'd set up parental control on it so it would lock up at a set time and forbid me from using many websites, so I was looking into this also as a way of getting around the lock. I'd also knew about this dual boot stuff and so I tried installing it on the computer to make it boot faster, but I accidentally the whole hard drive. I managed to reinstall everything the way it was, though my dad eventually found out what I did. After that I think I installed Ubuntu and used it for a while, then I think I distro hopped very frequently and either tried or install Crunchbang, Xubuntu, Arch, and one or two years ago I installed funtoo on my old laptop and used it as my main OS and computer. I got the computer I'm using now last year an I've been using FreeBSD on it as my main OS since, but I think I'll switch back to Linux due to some issues with the drivers and supported software. I still don't know whether to use gentoo or just do it from scratch and use Nix on top of it. I'll definitely use a custom init system and daemon manager or write my own, and then replace some basic software with better alternatives.

>>5326 That's because it is, lainon.

I got into it when I was super young because I wanted to be a 1337 h4x012. but I had grown out of that by the time I became reasonably proficient in Linux and ended up just loving the speed and the way it worked, so I have been running it semi-regularly for a while now.

>>5325 >Linux GCC I liked that part. Even more relevant now that LLVM is taking over the BSDs.

>>5326 >>5330 I'm sorry I may have been drunk at the time of posting.

I started becoming aware of internet privacy/security stuff at around the start of the decade, and through that I stumbled across linux distros. Towards the end of 2011 I got my first computer that was for my own use and not for the family. I used it for gayming for a while, then dual-booted, then eventually I got rid of win7 entirely, not realizing the laptop didn't come with a disc to reinstall the OS. I said fuarrrk it and ran ubuntu as a daily driver from then on. I distro-hopped to mint for a few years for cinnamon before moving back to ubuntu after mint's colossal fuarrrkup with malware in one of their direct downloads. Cinnamon is in the official ubuntu repos now, so I don't feel the need to trust the mint team with the whole os. I find apt-based distros pretty cozy, but I've experimented a bit with manjaro and fedora, and some super light distros on an old emachines(!) laptop I kept alive until the hardware failed. I want to try devuan too, but I'm too stupid to figure out the installer. tl;dr blundered my way into using linux as my main OS, stuck with easy distros because they're comfier than anything else for me with minimal tweaking.

I got into when I was told that windows was malware and that I could use it to hack people. Being 9 at the time this sounded really cool and being a fat kid who torrented games all the time I thought that being a linux hacker would be just as easy. It wasn't, so ubuntu sat there on my computer and was just there to annoy me at the dual boot screen. Fast forward a few years and I see the prism leaks and here from so many people just how pozzed windows is. I once again try to switch to linux but find out ubuntu can't connect to the internet with my wifi usb. So this is the state of affairs where I continue to use windows until about a year later and I get an ethernet cable. Connect to the internet learn how to do a sudo apt-get and think I can play all my windows games on ubuntu. This was a few years ago when wine was in their app store and it had compatibility issues beyond my skillset. Don't care I'll just do everything through steam and I delete my windows partition because I was going to force myself to learn something. Turns out I didn't want to have to learn everything about UNIX file structure and executing things in the terminal. But I used steam, which made games require 4x the amount of RAM they do on windows. So after a kerfuffle I go back to windows. It honestly wasn't until I got burned by windows 10 on a laptop deleting all my work for an update I made a full dedicated switch. I use a few distros lately and it pretty much has me going in between arch based and void. If you need any help with void op post some questions here I'd be happy to help. Void makes a few demands of you but they make you better in the long run. Things like making symlinks and manually enabling the services are a few I can think of. But the thing they have where their repo is pretty barebones is my only complaint, its better than having a repo full of crabcrap pulling in 12 libraries(debian) but their are very few differences between distros and it boils down to; init, package manager, repos. Other things that are more technical and form the justification for a lot of distros seems to be mainly the server aspect of Linux. ubuntu -> lubuntu -> kali -> arch -> void/slackware/artix >>6558 >too stupid to figure out the installer What the fuarrrk do you do on an install? Do you have some lvm setup that requires its own man pages? Its just like install debian nine out of ten times its probably UEFI/EFI fuarrrking up the usb you're booting with.

>>5325 You're probably actually using a GRUB/Linux or LILO/Linux based operating system. Of course Linux can be replaced with HURD or something else. There's no reason to bother with the '/' when it's merely the Kernel you're specifying. My operating system is GRUB. Linux is merely the Kernel space. And look at that, GRUB is a GNU project. I guess I'm using a GNU operating system after all.

>>5324 >>5325 ironic stallmanposting is still stallmanposting...

>>6560 >lvm I don't need anything convoluted, no. I just want a standard setup like I have on ubuntu where my main drive is encrypted except for /boot, but the installer is odd. It's recommending I use the bootloader from a separate install, and the included version of gparted doesn't seem to offer lvm volumes as an option. I'll look into UEFI since I'm using modern hardware, and I guess I can open it up and temporarily plug in a dvd drive if that's absolutely necessary.

I spent a lot of time on fourchan in grade school and found the /g/ board. I fell for the install gentoo meme and completely failed installing it but eventually got around to ubuntu. From there it was ubuntu/unity > mint > xubuntu > arch > fedora > debian stable > debian testing. At the time (and still now!) it feels like I'm in the matrix whenever I'm using the command line on a shared server. In the past few years started working with linux at work and now make a living off it. Luckily I never played too many games so I don't have to fiddle around with duelbooting anymore. Same with wine. Recently I made a really simple install script that configures my needed configuration files and installs packages, like a really dumb version of puppet.

When I was 15 I used Game Maker a lot, and along the way I learned about text files, binary files, executables, etc. I think it was along that line that I heard of Linux but both Linux and "real" programming languages were too intimidating for me (plus, I didn't have a computer of my own). Fast forward to my early 20s (22 or so) I got my first computational device that I owned, an android tablet. I realized it was a full blown little computer so I started learning Java because I remembered how fun it was making games and I wanted to make my own. After a while I got interested in "darker" stuff, I wanted to know what the whole hacking thing was about. I was intimidated by the command line interface but I thought "hey, if I just learned a PL that I had thought to be intimidated because it's used in the industry, I can too learn the command line!". So I installed a terminal emulator and started reading "The Linux Command Line" and exploring Vim on it. I had also been interested in computer viruses which leaned me in the direction of low-level programming and consequently I learned C. Read Jon Erikson's Art of Exploitation and eh.... it's all history there on, as they'd say. Actually, I've spent most of my time trying to understand the internals of Unix more than anything else, though mostly through trying to get a system with which I feel comfortable (haven't quite found it yet), thus installing a bunch of linux distros and the BSDs. The latter got me interested in kernel implementation, and now I'm peeking back into the linux kernel. So as of late I am less interested in the userland and more in the kernel interface. I have little interest in userspace applications per se, I am more interested in how the kernel can be used as a sort of firmware atop which an arbitrary userspace runtime could be run, not necessarily Unix-style. Yet the tools of Unix are imo superior for the system engineer/administrator for their control of low level details on disks, networks, processes, processors... and all that jazz.

>>6591 How is it that you used GameMaker at age 15 but only got your first computer, a tablet no less, at age 22?

>>6592 At the school labs dummy. Also parents' technophobia I guess.

I started with Arch, i3 as my wm. Took some time to get everything running, but once I did it was very satisfying indeed. That was around a year ago, now I use Gentoo on my desktop, and only ever use windows for muh vidya.

>>6575 So if you're going to do a devuan install to get away from systemdicking, which totally recommend by the way, and your computer is giving you trouble based on the bootloader it may be that devuan has a soykafty version of grub for whatever EFI/UEFI setup your laptop has. Or Intel has decided to move their 2020 plans up a few years. If you can I recommend Artix/Archbang(Arch based OpenRc) or Void. Artix and Archbang one of them has a dedicated installer, albeit not with lvm, and both put you in a gui environment, it gives you access to the internet and lvm is actually really easy to setup as long as you don't have to make the fstab which I've only encountered on Gentoo. But Arch based systems have incredible package managers and access to the AUR which once was a point of bragging over but I haven't found anything in there which will compile or install that you couldn't do from github with less heartache. Pacman is still a good package manager however. Void is recommended only because xbps is a little more speedy than arch. I've attached an instruction manual for a void lvm install. But the instructions apply across distros with very little difference in between them.

Our family bought a new desktop with Vista on it and it was soykaf ad I wanted to go back to Xp, but there weren't drivers, ad I didn't know about this until after installing it, so I googled "free operating system" and downloaded Ubuntu. I used it until Unity came out and I couldn't run it on my PC (I never knew how to change DEs/WMs back then) so I installed Debian which I used for a little while until moving on to Slackware which I have been using for about the past 5 years. Never been happier.

As a windows rescue disc to get a family members files back from a verry infected machine. Then as an os for old laptops. Thats where I learrned linux.

>>4729 Laptop couldn't handle windows 7 upgrade. So ubuntu.

>>4729 This is probably a bit cliche, but I just "had to know" how this mysterious box sitting in front of me worked, but Windows was actively getting in my way. It took a couple of tries to really make the switch though; there was a pretty long period (probably a year or two) where I got into a cycle of breaking everything and then going back to Windows. >After spending my entire weekend troubleshooting and trying to figure out ricing, I'm at a loss here. I had a lot of that, too. It's all a part of the learning process. Basically, it's all super-easy, but you've got to struggle to find that out.

I got an old ass laptop as a hand-me-down from some familiars, but I had no internet, I don't remember how, but I managed to get my hands on wifislax iso (a soykaftier kali), I followed the instructions and managed to get the passwords for a couple APs (all I did was run reaver), I finally had internet, I was happy, I started using wifislax as a desktop regularly just because it was faster than windows XP (it had xfce). Eventually I decided to install a proper linux distribution on it, it was arch, only because I read it was lightweight (which now I know it's a fuarrrking lie).

>>7810 That's pretty impressive and stupid in the same time.

It was somewhat head first for me. I did not use much other than Microsoft Windows XP and a hobbyist operating system I developed further back. (Nothing special, just a uni-kernel to reaffirm my understanding.) I never got into Linux per se; rather, I detest Linux, it is counter intuitive for most of the basic things a normal user would expect, and extremely anti-intuitive for what a developer would expect. I use it, only due to working for F500 company. In which I have a kernel module in tree, which I essentially maintain and improve along other stuff I do. I tried three DEs, GNOME, KDE, and Xfce. Disliked the last, and the first two were bug havens I did not have the patience for. I mainly work in TTY + Tmux, with Vim or if I really need to, I start a X session with Emacs (+ evil) alone and it sort of becomes my full DE. Distros are all the mostly the same just some very subtle differences. I have used all the most popular ones I would say. I do have some nice sentiments for what GoboLinux and NixOS are doing, I like those types of attitudes which to try to redefine the end-users experience to something better. Speaking of which the AUR of Arch was/is great (haven't tried it since they moved to git based AUR). I tried Gentoo, never had the patience from building from source. I heard they now have a binary cache option though.

Was pretty young, installed it with the help of my dad and just rolled with it. Pretty sure Mint was my first distro, but at the time I probably didn't care all that much and mostly liked messing with my computer.