 Rise and shine, Zoomers! It's 8 o'clock on Saturday morning. It's the best time to go amble in the woods. Today I want to talk about something that people ask me about a lot, but I've never cared enough to actually talk about, but I figure it might be a little instructive. And that is, how did I originally first start using Linux? How did I get into it? Because I haven't been using Linux very long at all. I mean, I would have never expected that I'd have a YouTube channel that has a bunch of Linux garbage on it, you know, five years ago. Because really, I started using Linux, I want to say maybe around 2016. Now, I had had some run-ins with it earlier in my life, so let me actually explain how it all started. Now, when I was a kid, when I was a young 30-year-old boomer, back when I was, you know, four or five or something like that, we eventually got a computer which I didn't use until, you know, eight or so. I don't know. I don't know how old I was, but it was Windows 95 or whatever. And I guess I imprinted on that operating system. I liked, you know, I liked its user interface and stuff like that. And when the next iteration of Windows came out, I was very disappointed because they moved a bunch of stuff around. They tried to make it look, they tried to make it more accessible to normies, okay? Which I didn't like because, you know, you couldn't go to some of the previous options before. Again, it's totally arbitrary changes, but I didn't like it. So whenever I used, you know, whenever I had, you know, a computer in my room or whatever when I was a kid, I would make sure to customize it to the extent that I could to bring back that operating system that I had first imprinted on, okay? So that was my first exposure to Windows and using a computer. And of course I didn't know any, you know, I never scripted or knew any computing languages or knew how to pull up a command prompt and do anything. The most, I guess the most computer- savvy thing I did was modify Civilization 2 and stuff like that. But even that, I couldn't really figure out in the way I should. But that's basically what I did. Now my dad, he was in a job where he actually had a, you know, did computer stuff basically. And I remember going to his work once and he had these weird computers that I learned were running Linux. And I guess retrospectively, it was some variety of Linux back in the early GNOME days or something like that with GNOME 1 or something. I'm not exactly sure. I just remember as a kid being in his office and being super bored because, well, you know, they had all these games. Of course, I want to play Civilization 2 and I want to mod it and stuff like that. But they just had all these games that were GNOME games and they all started with G. It was like so boring or whatever. But that was my first exposure to Linux. And of course, I, you know, I never touched the thing. We didn't have a Linux computer at our house or anything like that. So despite the fact that my dad knew how to use Linux, in fact, he's a Gintu user, or at least he told me his favorite distros Gintu. But we never spoke about Linux until way after I started my channel. I was actually surprised to learn that he had fallen for the Gintu meme, but, you know, he's an old school Gintu user or something. I think he uses Ubuntu and stuff on work machines or something nowadays, I'm not quite sure. But either way, you know, my exposure, you know, my dad, I guess, had computers around. So I was exposed to them, but not really Linux. The first time I actually ever used Linux as like a personal operating system, wasn't until my first year of college. And I had a roommate who I forget exactly why. But he, you know, he was like, Hey, you should try this thing Ubuntu, okay. And you can dual boot it on your computer, you can run Windows if you need it. And you can run Ubuntu if you need it. And so that's what I ended up doing. And this was back when Ubuntu, way before Ubuntu Unity, this was I want to say 2008 or something like that. So I think it was the equivalent of GNOME 2 or something. And to be honest, I did not like Linux the first time I used that first. Now first off, I didn't do anything approaching what I do on Linux now back then. I didn't do any kind of modification. Again, I wanted I had the same, the same thing that I wanted of Windows I wanted of Ubuntu I wanted to get that old classic look to Windows operating system. I just wanted, you know, a simple user interface, none of this fancy stuff. And I it was actually more difficult for me to customize Linux because my only understanding of Linux is not the command line or the you know, something like that. But you know, just clicking on things and menus. And that was of course very limited. And that's why a lot of people don't like Linux, oddly enough, because I don't understand the terminal, they don't know how to actually change system things and really customize stuff or install new desktop environments. They really just think of Linux as being the graphical environment that you happen to start with. And you can click on stuff to change it. So that's one of the reasons why I only you once my roommate in help me install Ubuntu or whatever. I use that for a little bit. But I ultimately found it useless. You know, dual booting in general, I think is usually a waste of time. Because, you know, you have to double up all your files and stuff like this unless you really know what you're doing, which you usually don't know when you first start dual booting. Because usually that's what I don't want to say it's what noobs do. But you know, if you if you have both your feet in different camps, that's what you have to do. And it's sort of annoying. In the time that I've been using Linux now, I never dual boot I've never used. I've never had a personal Windows machine in a while. But I'll talk about that later. So years after I tried Ubuntu. And again, this was back in the GNOME days of Ubuntu. I want to say around 2012, around the time I was finishing up my bachelor's degree, I decided to go back to Ubuntu or try Linux which Ubuntu was the only kind that I ever knew. And this is the first time I really used it by myself and didn't dual boot it. And the difference is I think as time progressed really what happened is, the reasons that usually you end up using or decide not to switch Linux is you want Windows programs. And usually from my case, there were things like games, like I wanted to play I don't know Rome Total War or something like that. And there's no way of playing that on Ubuntu. But eventually around 2012, I got like sick of playing video games, I just got tired of them. I always knew there were sort of a waste of time. But you know, I guess my hypocrisy ended and I couldn't even put up with them. They were just annoying as a concept at that point. So I started, I used Ubuntu again, but I was disappointed that things had changed in the same way that Windows has changed Ubuntu now. Now, that was the time where they were using Unity. And I was like, how do I get back to that old Ubuntu? What's the difference? What, what menu items do I need to change? And again, that's looking at it in the wrong way. I didn't I still did not know anything about desktop environments, window managers or something like that. So I was basically hopeless. But I did use it. And I use it for a while. I forget exactly why I stopped using it. But there was a period where my desktop just ran Ubuntu and nothing else. But again, during this period, I didn't know anything about Linux. I didn't know this first thing about the terminal. I didn't know how to, you know, change fonts other than in the in the graphical environment. I didn't know anything about it. Okay. Just the only reason I opened up a terminal is for the same reason that a lot of introductory users nowadays do, you know, someone on a website told them to so they can fix a problem. And that's about it. And in general, that like, I thought of Linux is a being being a little bit more limited than Windows because, you know, especially with respect to installing programs, from my perspective and from the perspective of a lot of people who are just starting to use Linux, you're used to being able on, you know, if you use Windows, you can just go on any website, download something and, you know, download an installer and install a program. That's not how it is in Ubuntu or, you know, theoretically all Linux distributions. Because if you have a package manager, you basically are reliant on your repository to install a program, and you're annoyed that you can't just download something and install it. Okay. That's definitely how I was. And, you know, there's the PPA system. And I know they have, I don't know, the snap stuff. I don't know anything about Ubuntu nowadays, but I know they have easier ways of doing it. But as a Windows user, I was used to being able to just go on a website. Now, even though, of course, I am acknowledging that the Linux way of doing programs is much more secure, safe, and honestly, a lot better. But for someone who's always looking for Windows programs on Linux, like many new users are looking for, it definitely seems a lot more limited. So anyway, eventually I stopped using Ubuntu. And I, let's see, I, so I finished up my bachelor's degree. I then did a master's degree. And when I went to my PhD, I moved out to Arizona. And I had, the only computer I had was this, this tablet kind of thing. It's like a dual tablet computer. And it was, of course, it was running, running Windows, Windows 8, I want to say. And I think around the time Windows 10 was starting to be, they're trying to force Windows 10 down your throat. I really start to think maybe I should think about switching to Linux full time because I don't really need anything else. Now, weirdly enough, the thing, the straw that broke the camel's back that led me into using Linux is actually Vim. That sounds like a weird thing. But what happened is when I finished my master's program, I wrote a big thesis. And I wrote that thesis in Microsoft Word. Okay. Or did I write it in Word? It's either Word or Libre Office. I might have just had Libre Office. Either way, same thing, you know, I wrote it in this big document, you know, your typical, what you see is what you get editor. But after I finished my master's degree, and again, in a thesis, my thesis was around 70 or so pages of text, I think, in a thesis, you have so many references and paid cross references and page numbers being referenced here and there, that the good of using something like law tech to compile a thesis is a lot higher. So I after I actually wrote it's weird. After I wrote my thesis, I actually rewrote it in law tech. And I realized, wow, this is a lot better than doing things in words. It's in Word. It sounds a lot more complicated, but but it's actually a lot more easy. And then I started thinking, well, okay, I'm going to use this to write documents now. So what's a good way for me to write documents? You know, I guess I want to say a minimalist way. That is, I don't want to use, you know, share law tech or whatever I was using, something totally cringe, this kind of Google Docs kind of thing for law tech. Instead, I was like, okay, I want a text editor on my computer, theoretically one that's so small I could run in my terminal. That would be really cool. I wonder if there's something like that out there. And weirdly enough, I was directed to Vim, which of course, I guess soon everyone knows what Vim is here, but if you don't, extensible text editor known for every single key being a shortcut. And I started playing around with Vim on Windows, mind you. I was using Windows at the time. And, you know, that's when, of course, you know, I was very confused at the beginning. But as I started to use Vim, I started to realize, oh, this is actually pretty sweet. And when I learned that Vim and all this stuff is actually a lot easier on law tech, or not on Linux, I started being like, well, maybe I should actually use Linux again. And especially because I don't want to use Windows 10. And I know that Windows 10, like any kind of proprietary operating system is just going to get worse and worse. That's how it is. Like, because that was the theme that sort of unites my annoyance. I just wanted that classical layout of a computer that's nice and simple back in Windows 95, like a literal 30-year old boomer wanting Windows 95. It's crazy. But that's how I was. And I was sick of the interface just changing all the time. So I knew, even though I had never done it, I knew that Linux could be this thing where it's basically, it looks how you want it to look, you know, even though I had used basic Ubuntu and had gone along with whatever canonical one in my desktop environment to be. I had just sort of gone along with that. But I knew that Linux could do more than that. And at the same time, this is around the time I started using, you know, Thinkpads, falling for the literal Thinkpad meme. Because that annoying little tablet computer I had, one day it took the minorest hit. No, I didn't drop it. I just sort of got, it got squished in my book bag. And the thing that screened like totally ripped. It was terrible. It was a really expensive tablet that I'd gotten as a present. I think a going away gift from my parents if I remember right. I think that, or maybe I bought it myself. I don't even remember. Either way, it was way too breakable. And I realized, okay, well, maybe I should figure out what actual kind of computer is going to be long lasting. That's, you know, and I ended up getting used Thinkpads. The first Thinkpad I got was a T420. And when I got it, I immediately installed Linux on it. Now, when I started using Linux, I think I started using, I may have originally installed Ubuntu, but then I went to other window managers of Ubuntu, like maybe Subuntu or something like that. But eventually, you know, all the time I was hearing about Arch Linux in the back of my head. And back then, you know, it's weird. It's weird that Arch Linux is now like the Linux distribution nowadays. That's what I feel like. I don't want to say that I had anything to do with that on Linux or on, excuse me, on YouTube. But I couldn't, I can't help but notice that after I started publicly using it, a lot of other people started to. And it sort of has become in the past couple years, not just like a weird hipster distribution, but people have started to realize properly that it's actually a distribution that is very good for even new users. It is hard to install and get everything figured out, but it's a lot easier. Like I said in a video around a year ago, that Arch Linux is actually a whole lot easier, you know, in terms of long term, what you're going to understand about your computer if you just go ahead and install Arch Linux. But anyway, I moved away from Ubuntu-based distributions to Manjaro. And once I was on Manjaro and you have the Arch repositories and you have the ability to look at the AUR and download programs there, that's basically way better than anything I had ever had on Windows where you can just, you know, go to some random website and download a program that, you know, could be spyware or something. But the AUR is much more extensible. And once I had that, I started playing around with different window managers. I started using i3, which of course is a tiling window manager. And when I first used i3, or just in general, when I first used the tiling window manager, that was like everything I had ever wanted. Now as I said, Windows 95 sort of imprinted on me. And of course tiling window managers are not like Windows 95. But a tiling window manager was so close to what I always wanted a computer to be. It was just so easy. You don't have to, it makes no sense to me, in fact, that floating window managers even exist. I understand the desktop metaphor of them, but that they even, like how much sense does it make to have windows on top of each other as like default? You can't see anything, you know. And of course, Windows and stuff like that and other Linux desktop environments, they've gone in the way of at least enabling like snapping to corners and stuff like that, which is really imitating a tiling window manager. But when I started using a tiling window manager, man, everything changed. So one of the reasons I'm saying this, mind you, is what drew me to Linux is not that it was easy to use. It's that it's easy to get what I want from it. And a lot of times, like literally the things that drew drove me to Linux is tiling window managers, VIM, not having Microsoft Word. Instead, I use LaTeX. Now of course you can use LibreOffice. Most people on Linux probably do. But the ability to do things that are a little beyond your experience, that's the real reason I was driven to Linux. It's not like, oh, Linux was easy to use. Because when I used Ubuntu and stuff like that years ago, it was just totally okay, whatever, you know, who cares? This is like nothing special. This is why I sort of advocate the idea of Linux, you know, again, I don't do Linux evangelism. I don't give, I could not care if people in the world use more Linux. I mean, I think in general it's probably good because we avoid, you know, I guess proprietary operating systems and the dangers that come with that. But I don't really care that if more people use Linux. But if you do, I think the thing to remember is like Linux is, you know, if you want to, you know, make Linux stick out, you have to make it stick out. You have to say how it's different, what kind of things it can do. And don't try and say it's exactly like your experience on Windows because it isn't. And that's one of the reasons that, you know, I was drawn to what I was drawn to. So anyway, once I used Manjaro and I started playing around with all these window managers, my mindset was then, well shoot, I could just like install everything from the bottom up. And there's this thing called Arch Linux, where you're supposed to do that. So I might as well figure that out. And it wasn't hard at all installing Arch Linux my first time just using the Arch Wiki. You know, I probably had to do it once or twice before I really really sort of sunk. But it's not that hard. I mean the hardest thing to do, I remember, is I was on a university Wi-Fi. That was a period during my during my life, which I guess some of you guys know about, where I didn't have internet at home. And that was a deliberate choice. For two years I went without internet at home. And so the only place I could get internet is on my university Wi-Fi. So hooking up to the Wi-Fi went from the command line is sort of a pain. I had to do all this kind of weird stuff that I wasn't used to. But once I got used to it, you know, it was it was pretty bearable. So anyway, that's basically how I got to where I am. Now of course I, in the past couple years, I've used different distros. Like I've used, you know, people, the weird thing is people on YouTube, they really care about the distribution I use. I really don't. Because all the ones that I've been using, you know, Arch, or Parabola, or Void Linux, or now I'm using Artix on my main machine, there's just so little difference. Especially, well most of these are Arch-based distros anyway. And Void is pretty close. I mean, at least in terms of how it works, it's nothing too crazy. But you know, it doesn't really matter once you get to that point where you understand how Linux works. It's not so hard, you know, and there's really no big difference between different distros, I guess. Mind you, that's one of the videos that I guess first made my channel go pretty big. I saw a video a while back when I was like, you know, stop thinking about a Linux distro. Just pick whatever. It doesn't matter. But anyway, that's how I started using Linux. And that's why, where I am now, I'm probably never, well I'm definitely never going to go back to something like Windows. And I'm definitely not going to use macOS unless I have some kind of job related reason to do that. But, you know, it's literally difficult for me to find anything that, you know, any of these other operating systems can do better than Linux. If anything, if I stop using Linux, it'll be because I switched the BSD or something else. But either way, you know, that's all sort of, I mean, there's some sense in which all of that's the same kind of pot. It's the same kind of experience. Anyway, so that's about it. So over the time, I'll say I've used a good bit of distros. People always ask me my opinions about them. But again, like, it's not an issue of distributions or anything like that. And I'll say it one more time, that when you're trying to communicate Linux, if you care about that kind of thing, I don't. But when you're trying to convince people to use Linux, don't show them what looks like the stuff on Windows. Show them the new kind of stuff that they can do. Show them the new experience they get, how everything can work together, and how really you can get the experience you want to get. So anyway, that's about it. I'll see you guys next time.