25 years ago today, Google was founded.
On the same day, I wiped Windows 98 off my computer, believing that Debian Linux (which I had been using for a while but still kept Windows on another partition) could do everything I had been doing with Windows until then.
Since that day, many installations of Linux, *BSD, MacOS have graced my computers, but Windows has remained, on a few occasions, only an occasional (unwelcome) guest.
In the spirit of a typical support group phrase, I can joyfully say:
'Hello, I'm Stefano, and I haven't been using Windows as my primary operating system for 25 years.'
@stefano
I started my #Linux and #BSD journey in 2009 - beginning of the year.
It was fresh, new, and all around a good time - fond memories 🙂
I still use #Windows to.
But I can say one thing:
Without #Linux#BSD and #FOSS I would have never grown as a person!
I owe so much to them... so much
I'm jhx (Julian) and I'm still loving #FOSS above everything else - since now almost 15 years 😎
@stefano I stopped using Windows as my primary system when I was 17, so it's been about 23 years for me.
I had been using other operating systems on my family's computer (various floppy based Linux systems, Oberon System 3, and exploring various other small OSes) prior to this. At 17, I got my own machine (a Dell Inspiron 3800 laptop), bought copies of BeOS R5 and SuSE Linux 6.4, and haven't used Windows as a primary OS since then.
Eventually I switched to using Debian, then FreeBSD (which I still use for servers), did a couple of years with macOS, and now use OpenBSD.
I still have to use Windows for a work application, but apart from that am happy to be able to avoid Windows on my systems.
@stefano probably about 20-25 years ago I started looking into using Linux, and tinkered with a few distros (Debian, Fedora, Arch, openSUSE) in dual boot set up or as VMs, to test the waters of having a system I could configure for me, not configure myself for it.
Ultimately I made the absolute switch about 15 or so years ago (Arch...btw, and servers set up with RHEL based, Debian or FreeBSD) and haven't looked back.
I still have a Windows VM which I can spin up for those times I need it, but it's pretty much just 2 uses I have for it, I can do everything else on Linux or BSD.
Of course, I still have to support windows as part of my daily work... But of course I provide solutions via Linux or BSD
@stefano in June this year I had 10. anniversary of full switch to Linux. I only used Windows on work machine in my previous job (2019-2022) and was shocked how much it enshittified since Windows 7 (my last before switch).
@stefano Hi I'm hyc. I only used Windows on my work PC 1995-1999 because that's how that particular company did things. Prior to that I did BSDish kernel hacking on Suns, Vaxes, and Alliant FX. At home I used Atari STs from ~1987 on. In 1999 when we founded Symas I ran a SparcStation 20 at home along with a Linux PC but my primary machine was still the Atari TT I'd been using since 1994.
I've had to run Windows on VMs when porting/testing stuff, but it's never been my primary system.
@stefano very inspiring! I'm nowhere near as close to 25, but have been Windows-free (except work machine) for almost 14 years now. I started with some dual-booting training wheels, but in an accident wiped out the Windows partition a month later, leaving me solely with Linux and no tech support.
I've never looked back. My journey took me to Debian, Arch, Alpine, FreeBSD, and I still wanna try more :D
@stefano yeah, it's the best OS I've found (in terms of performance) for the Pi! Just wish the wifi and sound drivers worked... but with some USB stuff it works very well
@stefano 18 years ago I decided that Apple had gone too far with TPM and replaced it with Gentoo GNU Linux.
I fell back once — after a month, because of audio-problems. But January 2006 my CD writer broke and the seller said that’s not a product problem (more than 1 year old). Instead of buying a new one, I spent twice that and my flatmate helped me build my own computer. And iMac got Linux again.
@stefano don’t get fooled by the "wordpress" in the URL: this is a static copy, because I didn’t want to keep wordpress updated with security updates (that’s some serious upkeep otherwise). Also broken encoding …
You can also look at my even older website … (I set myself a policy not to break my links, so I preserve all the old versions I can) → https://www.draketo.de/index1.html (this goes back to around 2003, if I can trust the news on it)
@stefano the top comic in your blog is fun — got me a happy laugh ☺
(but we don’t speak gibberish at all! All I say is perfectly understandable … last week a colleague who mostly works with customers said “OK, that was too much alien language right now”. I said something about spring with pebble templates and maybe flexbox or so, all totally understandable words … 😬 )
@stefano Now read through that and I have to say I only ever gave Windows support to my wife’s family. Though for one tool I actually said “let’s get an external disk that runs Linux”. Which was Ubuntu and promptly installed itself on the main drive instead of the external disk (3 weeks of panic followed until I had recovered most of the data). I only installed Gentoo since then, because there I type everything that happens …
@ArneBab similar for me. My parents' PC runs FreeBSD and they're happy with it. My father in law can't abandon Windows, and it's the only Windows client I have to deal with. Fortunately, it's stable enough
@stefano … and now she has Linux on an external drive, with KDE and an on-desktop tutorial what to click to do what she wants.
Which is actually pretty cool: with KDE plasma you can build appliances where people have instructions in sticky notes and icons they can click to run exactly what they need, and on-desktop folder-views so they can see the effects without ever having to worry about what lies where.
@ArneBab PS: I've been using KDE for many, many years. Now I'm also using xfce and mate but KDE has been my favourite and only DE for many years, when on Linux and FreeBSD
@stefano KDE is still my favorite DE, but it makes problems with my xmodmap (M-x doesn’t work — that’s a killer with Emacs … it started with their switch to libxcb but no one managed to track down the problem in the past years) so I’m in LXDE at the moment — and for work I actually use exwm now.
I grew up in an Apple family, and had been dabbling in Linux-based systems before then. But when I found elementary OS I loved it & didn't look back. Especially now.
Professionally I still use Macs (or occasionally Windows) some, but I've got elementary OS there too.
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