Recalling when and why I stopped using MS Windows at home

I have used few operating systems over the years. On some occasions, I had the luxury of running a non-Windows OS at the office too (8 years or so).

At home, I have to confess that I stopped using Windows a "very long time" ago. I do not really play around with any OS since 2007, I'm just the average John Doe doing "simple things" in front of the PC.

Discovering a non-Windows world

Around the end of my bachelor, I realized that there was something called Linux that I didn't know anything about. A friend helped me install it and he showed me some basic commands.

I was eager to learn and I found all daily tasks challenging at first. How do you find solutions when you don't know the problem or the keywords to type?? I think that many recall Google searches with almost no results, daily forums visits, IRC chats with RTFM comments ☺.

The fact that .Net was not open-sourced kept me on Linux too, as I quickly started programming in Java during my master. I became a bit obsessed with the command line and discovering a "new world" was very addictive.

The days of the preacher

At some point, I wanted "help" others switch to Linux. All operating systems have their annoyances in my opinion.

 

 The days of the marginal

I didn't know many individuals running only Linux in my "bigger entourage".

• Why don't you use Windows like anybody else?
• Where is Internet Explorer? Why isn't StarOffice/OpenOffice just like Microsoft Word? 
• Why are you often in a terminal?? 
• Why do you go through so many steps to mount Novell Network drives?
• etc.

 

The John Doe days

My day to day Linux/OSX usage is the same as anybody on Windows. I'm the average John Doe watching videos and browsing the Web, I forgot many things, but there's still lots of muscle memory left. I think that Ubuntu really changed the Linux scene years ago (easier installation, good docs, etc.).

I occasionally get the "Uh, this is Linux?" and that's it, no real stigma. Most of the tools, that I care about are available on Linux or OSX.

Experimenting with Unix/Linux over the years

At work, I do not always have the choice to use the OS of my liking, I'll run any OS that the client prefers. At home, I stopped running Windows a while ago.

2001-2002 until 2008 - Linux and BSD

My first "real Linux distribution tryout" was Mandrake Linux. In order to become comfortable with Linux I decided to simply wipe my Windows installation. What can you do when you've got no other options :-) ? Install it Linux - break it - reinstall - rinse and repeat
During this period, I tried several distributions (Debian based distros including Ubuntu, Redhat based distributions, Gentoo, Arch Linux, Slackware, etc.).
For a year or so, I run FreeBSD as my main Desktop OS. I also spent few months on Solaris.

2008-2010 - Tasting the $$Apple

I had a Hackintosh for about 2 years (roughly 24 hours of dedication for major releases upgrades -> kernel panics and general issues). I created installation guides to help others, as there was nothing working well for my hardware specs at the time, I won't post any webpage links...

If you can afford it, I recommend buying Apple products instead of pursuing other ways for running Mac OS. Installing and upgrading a Hackintosh can be tedious, accordingly to your hardware specs.

2012 - 2019

Nowadays, I run OS X on my home-office machine (iMac), as well as Linux (laptop). As of mid 2019, I've been experimenting with Qubes OS and other specific purposes distributions.

Linux wishes

• It would be great to forget about device drivers (compatibility issues, buggy or unsupported drivers for some hardware).
• Missing or unsupported Kernel drivers: My broadcom wireless card is problematic with new Linux kernels and distributions... Depending on the Linux distribution, solving driver issues can be challenging.
• Less memory hungry tools: If I recall correctly, I first run a Linux desktop on a 256MB of RAM machine, I'm not sure that this is easily possible anymore.
• Recalling tools and conventions across Linux distributions is difficult: switching package managers, tools and conventions is not easy. I'm more comfortable with Debian and Redhat based distributions.