Wanna get your own Linux server? Visit https://www.linode.com/linuxexperiment for a 100$ credit ! Get your Linux desktop or laptop here: https://slimbook.es/en/ Today, we're going to go to a very happy place: the time when I started using desktop Linux, and why I fell in love with it. So grab a cup of tea, or coffee if you're THAT sort of person, wrap yourself in a cozy blanket, and close your eyes, because it's story time! 👏 SUPPORT THE CHANNEL: Get access to an exclusive weekly podcast, vote on the next topics I cover, and get your name in the credits: YOUTUBE: null Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thelinuxexperiment 🏆 FOLLOW ME ELSEWHERE: Twitter : http://twitter.com/thelinuxEXP My Gaming on Linux Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaw_Lz7oifDb-PZCAcZ07kw Follow me on ODYSEE: https://odysee.com/@TheLinuxExperiment:e Or join ODYSEE: https://odysee.com/$/invite/@TheLinuxExperiment:e 00:00 Intro 01:32 How I discovered Linux 04:14 I loved the look and feel 05:12 I loved the constant updates 06:19 I loved the customization 08:02 I loved learning 09:19 I stopped using Linux 10:18 Linux IS tech personified The year was 2006. I was 18, I had just dropped out of my second year of med school to go learn economics in college, and I had just bought my first own laptop, a refurbished Medion piece of trash that cost me around 300 € and had a single core cpu, 1Gb of RAM, and something like 30Gb of hard drive. It came with windows XP preinstalled, which is definitely my least favorite version of windows, especially in the looks department, and so I set off to turn that into a mac. I found multiple customization packs that were supposed to replicate mac OS X's interface, but they all sabotaged my poor windows XP, and made the computer unusable. Since I wasn't about to give up, I looked online, and found that something was a lot more customizable than Windows XP, and that thing was called Linux. Still, I saw that ubuntu was a version of Linux that was talked about a lot, and they offered most importantly, to ship CDs to your house for free. So I ordered some, and waited. Ubuntu blew me away. It took me a while to get it installed, because I had never installed an OS in my life, and I was unfamiliar with the concept of Live CD, but once I was in... Oh man! It was ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake, probably the first really well polished version of Ubuntu. The color scheme had been the subject of a lot of mockery, but these orange highlights, brown wallpapers, they just were so new and so flashy compared to the playskool type interface of windows XP, that I couldn't look away. Well, the first sign of my love affair is that I completely forgot all about my project to theme Linux to look like mac os X. I could have done so, with global menu bar and everything, but I didn't want to anymore. So I'd say the look and feel and the user experience first drew me in. But then, Ubuntu got updates. Every 6 months, like clockwork, you had new stuff coming in. That's not something you had on Windows at the time. The only new features or looks were in major versions, every 4 or 6 years. From XP to vista, there were 5 years. 5 years where you computer looked and felt the exact same. All these changes, this constant evolution and improvement process really made me feel like the linux desktop was alive, and it made me want more of it. Not only could you get updates, but you could also change the desktop at will. After I got tired of GNOME 2, and its look and feel, and limitations, I moved to KDE 3.5. And I found the Baghira project, which was this incredible toolkit to make your computer look and feel exactly like mac os. This variety, this plethora of options is another thing that really drew me into Linux. Linux taught me a lot about the BIOS, about the components of your computer, about how drivers work, about packages and dependencies, about the kernel, about graphical libraries. It's probably what made me really interested in tech. What reignited my passion for Linux, was the fact that I was bored. When I moved back to Brest, I decided to learn how to edit videos. For that, I needed a computer, but since I had just divorced, I had no money, so I bought one on the cheap, without an OS. Instead of buying Windows 10, I downloaded an ISO of elementary OS, because it looked cool, and I installed that. And I've been using Linux ever since. What really made me love Linux is the simple fact that Linux IS technology personified. Linux, to me, is the perfect avatar of technology: it's amazing, and janky, it moves fast and too slowly at the same time, it's equally loved and hated, mastered or completely misunderstood. This is why I fell in love with linux: I love technology, and there is no better representative of the utter chaos and beauty of tech than Linux.