My Linux Journey
The Freedom distro linux
Small info/log on my linux journey and my experience.
Linux is not widely recommended or discussed topic among real life friends or circle, every system comes pre-installed with win-dows, and its no big surprise people don’t have a feel towards their usage of OS.
Not many people update their system, not many try to explore Alternative softwares, they stick very much to the default out-of-the-box Application. Tbh if you deep dive and understand windows, it is total crap, Obnoxious.
My reason to switch over to Linux was simple as other had :
- No Freedom
- Slow win-dows
- Cannot even run the browser properly
- Cannot even do multitasking efficiently
- The bloatware crap were too much
- Updates are like eternal sleep (No-sense updates)
My linux journey was from Linux Mint > EndeavourOS > Arch Linux > and now NixOS.
The Embark
I started to explore some YouTube video on Linux (as a normie at that time), soon I got familiar with good explanation, thankfully CTT had made an Linux Mint playlist and it helped to installing the first and the best Beginner Distro, the Linux Mint.
The gain and experience was Ultimate. Loved it, felt the Freedom, felt the deeper understanding of a real System.
I choose the flagship Cinnamon DE and it was very comfortable.
After few months, I finally stumbled upon a drawback here, it was stable packages (old package versions).
That is when I saw the concept of Rolling release, at that time EndeavourOS was the flavor of Linux distro at that time, peaked the distrowatch and all. So guess what, I installed EvndeavourOs and expanded more love towards terminal and latest packages.
Soon i felt i did not needed what all EndeavourOS ships, I want custom or DIY (something i take control of), then i realized, EOS was arch-based, so guess again, went with the great Independent Arch linux.
Boom, the best linux journey (learning), I only mean it for learning, other than that Arch is just cool kids bag.
Finally, now with some other jolt of distro trend, I stumbled the name “NixOS”. It is somewhat reinventing the wheel, but it is so different that I’d hate to even say it as a Linux distro, It stands unique with linux distros.
Tbh I loved LM and Arch alot, I was a devotee to Arch too, and I hated Nix when I tried, cause things were weird.
- You won’t know where to start nor what to refer
- Flakes or home-manager, How to understand?
- Do nix-env or rebuild all the time?
What files to edit to achieve same setup as my previous distro?
These were all the things that I hated and was frustrated about, there was still many things that felt hard. I did leave Nix and install Arch few times back and forth, I was debating with myself and id my own research all over Internet.
That is when I thought nix lacked Documentation or good YouTuber to speak of, I really wish one of them could explain and make it their distro to explain timely on things.
Fine, somehow forced myself and came a long way of setting up Good working nixos config, now I’m on flakes.
Nix is great if it works as expected or if we make it work, but, if I get stuck or the issue goes for days that is when I really hate Nix, because it ain’t easy to solve some unique issues. Most of these apply for HomeManager actually, it adds more trouble.
It is adviced to learn how Nix works or Nix as Functional Programming Language.
Okay, so it was not about shilling Nix or anything, Just my Linux experience.