 So about a month ago, I asked a question about regrets on Linux. And I wanted to make a video about this because there are some situations when it comes to my daily Linux usage that I have regrets over. And some of them are I would say, in fact, most of them are personal failings. So these are things that I could have or should do better on a daily basis. I have regrets that I don't or haven't done so, at least up till now. So that's what I'm going to talk about today. I don't really particularly expect this video to do all that well, but we'll see how it goes. So let's go ahead and jump in. So to answer the overarching question that I asked in that poll, do I have any regrets of actually installing Linux to answer that? It's absolutely not. I love Linux. I don't foresee a future where I would ever not use Linux as my main distro. Perhaps if I got a job where I had to use Windows, I would use Windows at the job, but I'd still use Linux at home. But I don't foresee that ever happening simply because I'd probably not choose an employer that wouldn't allow me to use Linux. I mean, I'd be pretty damn picky. And I'm obviously lucky enough to have that option available to me. So overarching, I don't have regrets over Linux itself, but there are certain things that I wish over the past five or so years of actually using Linux that I would have done. So the first one is that I wish I would have learned bash a little bit better. So I have some bash scripts that I've written myself. They are not good bash scripts. They're just not. They're very pedestrian, very amateurish. So the scripts that I have just aren't very good. And I wish that I had done a better job of learning that. And it's still one of my goals to become a better bash scripter, a scripter of bash scripts, a user of bash, however you want to put it, you know, I want to be better at that. I wish as I started getting into Linux that I would have focused more on that aspect, because there's so much in terms of automation that you can do with a script that you would normally have to do manually, right? And the fact that I don't know as much about scripting as I would like to kind of closes those doors off to me. So that's one of my regrets. Another one of my regrets is that I didn't try arch Linux sooner. So along my Linux journey, I started with Solus Linux in 2017. It was a very brief encounter with Solus. I meet almost immediately moved to Ubuntu and then moved to 12 other distros within like the first three weeks, it was a nuts two or three weeks of me trying literally every Linux distribution out there, except arch, I was very scared of installing arch Linux. At that point, there was no arch install. There were very few arch based distros at that time that were going to give you a good arch install experience. There were a couple and I did eventually try them. But at the beginning, I was very much a focused on Ubuntu based distros. I moved from mental, elementary to Ubuntu, all the flavors of Ubuntu I tried. It was really I was just basically installing Ubuntu over and over again, but with a different desktop environment. So I really wish that I would have tried vanilla arch sooner, because eventually I did move to like Antrigos. And Antrigos was a arch based distro that is no longer with us. And it was good. And it was my first interaction with the you are and how good the you are was. And it kind of set me on the path of always relying on an arch based distro instead of arch itself. So it took me a good, probably two years before I decided to finally install arch Linux, the vanilla way, the traditional vanilla way. And I regret not doing it sooner simply because of two things. One, when you install arch Linux, the vanilla way, you'll learn a lot. You might not learn as much as you do if you install gentoo, but you do learn a lot. You learn how to use CLI partition managers, you learn how to install grub and manage grub and create an FS tab and all this stuff, where you don't ever really have that experience when you install Ubuntu over and over and over again. So I think that I would have been much further along in learning more stuff about Linux, if I had installed arch sooner. Now, I did eventually get there. But I still kind of regret not doing it sooner. So that's the second one. The third one is that I regret not being active in the community sooner. So when I first started using Linux, I did start a podcast. And I did a little bit of podcasting with my friend Ricky, but that kind of fell by the wayside, but I continued to use Linux, even though the podcast kind of took a two year hiatus. But even past that, I didn't really get involved in anything. When I had a problem, maybe I'd go ask on Reddit, but I would always expect to have somebody help me, and then I would carry on with my day. Hopefully somebody helped me if they didn't, I would distro hop because obviously, I wasn't going to go searching for any answers. I was a horrible member of the Linux community at that point. I was the definition of the person who needs to read the effing manual. I didn't read the manual. Most of the time I just went and asked questions and expected them to get answers. If I even bothered to ask the question to begin with, most of the time I would just distro hop if I had a problem. So I regret now not being a better member of the community there at the beginning for multiple reasons. One, when you are an active participant in a forum of some sort, you tend to get better answers simply because you have a history of asking and answering questions, but also I regret it simply because if you get involved in the community, you tend to make good and lasting friendships and relationships and stuff. So you meet people and you talk to people and they become good online friends. So I regret not doing that earlier and I probably would have met even more people if I had started off as a better citizen of the Linux community. So that's my third regret. So my fourth one on the list is going to be related to one that I just talked about a couple of minutes ago and that it's kind of the opposite. So once I tried an ArchBase distribution and I was very much entrenched in, first it was Antergos and then it was Manjaro and then it was Arco. That's basically my transition into Arch. I was very much an Arch fanboy, but I wouldn't call myself an Arch fanboy. I would call myself an AUR fanboy and I was very, for a long period of time, even fairly recently, very much a proponent of the AUR. I still think the AUR is fantastic and I will still preach it to everyone as much as possible. However, there was a time where I was a elitist. I'll just go out and say this. I was an elitist when it came, comes to the AUR. I would tell you that the AUR was the best thing ever and that if you didn't use the AUR, you were obviously an idiot. I don't know why you'd not want to use the AUR because it was absolutely amazing and like I said, if you didn't use it, I was definitely looking down on you. I was judging you and I found you lacking. There was a long period of time and like I said, that was even up till recently. I was very much an AUR fanboy. Now, I no longer use Arch. I'm a Fedora user and now I would say I'm a Fedora fanboy, but I've tried to dial back the enthusiasm when it comes to things that I personally use, especially over the last few months. I've tried to be better at when I make a recommendation for something to kind of understand that maybe the things that I use that I enjoy aren't necessarily going to be good for everyone. So I try to keep that in mind. There are still things that I would say are just way better than anything else and I would fight anyone who says otherwise. So I'm still in the elitist in some places, specifically when it comes to Linux. I mean, I still think that Linux is the best operating system out there and I would be very tempted to go fisticuffs with anybody who said otherwise. So there are places where I'm still that elitist and I try not to be, but it's kind of hard. So I regret a little bit. I should regret it more, but I regret a little bit being such an AUR fanboy simply because I've realized now looking back on it that in some cases I was an asshole to some people who just didn't really care for Arch all that much and I didn't really understand why. So I looked down on them. I judged them and I was a bad, bad person. Luckily, I'm somewhat over it. I'm not completely over it, but I'm somewhat over. I try. I'm much more self-aware now when it comes to my own recommendations and my own likes and dislikes than I was a year ago or so. So that's an improvement, I suppose. So my last regret has to do a little bit with the channel and that regret is that I regret not installing more of the distros that I reviewed on hardware. I have many videos on this channel where I do a first look of a distro and I do those videos not because I think that they're really interesting or whatever, but because they're popular. People really like them and I'm I aim to please. So I do those videos fairly often. I've tried over the last two years since I started this to innovate a little bit on those and try to do a little bit so that they're at least a little bit more interesting for me because sometimes they're kind of boring. That includes doing things like the WTF series where I kind of ridicule or roast a distro, but even that kind of Peter off into that kind of mess area. So I think that if I were to start a channel now and focus on Linux like I did in 2020, one of the things that I had promised myself is that I would always install whatever distro I was going to review or do a first look of on hardware. And the reason why I think that that is important is because you get a much better sense of how a distro runs, how a distro installs, and all that stuff when you install on actual hardware, you don't get that when you install on a VM. Everything will install in a VM. If you have the right parameters, you can install every single Ubuntu version ever in a VM, you can install Windows 3.1 in a VM. Good luck installing it on hardware nowadays, right? So the point I'm trying to make is that if I again, we're starting it over again, all of my distro reviews and first looks would be on hardware and I've started to do that. I haven't been always been successful simply because I was installing to a hard drive that was going bonky. But I have at least for the most part over the last couple of months tried to do all of them as on hardware. And I think that it does at least somewhat improve those videos. So I wish I would have started doing that a little bit earlier. And I think that as I go forward and kind of improve my setup a little bit more, where maybe I get like a mini PC or something that and a KVM switch and a capture card, maybe I'll be able to do even more where I kind of do some work with the installation and stuff like that, those kinds of videos where it's a little bit different. And it's not just, Hey, here's a distro, here are all the apps that come on the distro. Here's how much memory uses it boot the end, you know, I mean, those videos are, they're popular, but they're beginning to be kind of boring. So I wish I had done more on hardware and I'm going to do that definitely going forward. So those are my Linux regrets. And I know that they're kind of all over the place. And they're probably more. That's it for this video. If you have Linux regrets, I'd love to hear about them in the comment section below. You can follow me on Twitter at the Linux cast, you can follow me on Mastodon or Odyssey, those links will be in the video description. You can support me on Patreon at patreon.com slash the link to the cast is to go to these fine people. Thanks to everybody who does support me on Patreon YouTube, you guys are all absolutely amazing people. Without you, the channel just would not be anywhere near close to where it is right now. So thank you so much for your support. Thanks everybody for watching. I'll see you next time.