I have been using Linux for the past 240 months, and it changed a lot...
Post date: 2026.10.08.
Today is my 20th anniversary using Linux as a sole OS on my machines. I used as dual boot before, but in 2006, October 8th, was the day when I got fed up with Windows Xp so much that I made a backup of my stuff, and just wiped my HDD and installed Ubuntu 6.06.
Mind you back then Ubuntu was pretty good. While they usually release versions in April and October, this one version got delayed to June, cause they cared about quality back then. My first distro however was Mandrake, which I still got the disc, from a computer magazine.
First years
I was really just a noob. But I liked the system. Learning and using the terminal was no problem, since I grew up on using MS-DOS, and I liked typing a lot.
As many other people, I also distrohopped, and I learned quickly to use a separate partition as my home directory, which just made installing a new distro pretty easy. Sometimes I did it, even during when I had some serious works stuff. Of course back then I didn't know that I am ND, so my mind would go crazy every few months for a new distro.
One of my early favorites was Zenwalk, which was an easier Slackware. Unlike its father, Zenwalk does come with dependency handling. As for Slackware I owe many others of compiling stuff, learning how to do things in terminal, and it's mostly fun. If you don't want to learn stuff, other distros are there for you.
I still say that if you want to learn Linux, you either do Slackware or Gentoo. I never used Gentoo myself, as I need my machine every day, and I feel like it's a bigger commitment. With that sad, I never used Debian either, although for a 3 month long period, I used it at my workplace.
Later
I wish I documented my hopping better, however I used some interesting distros, like Foresight Linux, purely for the theme itself.
Over the years I used many distros: Ubuntu, Linux Mint, earlier Fedora when it was called "Fedora Core", Elementary OS (had a tumblr for it, went downhill later).
Manjaro was my great favorite for a while, right before I switched to non-systemd distros.
Non systemd distros
Over the years I had one particular problem with Linux, or should I say an element of Linux, and that one is systemd. An init system that wants to do everything. I run into bugs during many updates, and I had enough after a while, and completely switched to distros that are not using it.
My favorite is now Void Linux, but I used Artix (used to based on Arch, I don't know now), Slackware, and Devuan as well. They are reliable, and had less problem with it than systemd distros.
What about gaming?
Gaming doesn't require a special distro, it just needs the driver for your graphics card and softwares like Steam or Lutris, or some emulator if you are not playing PC games. Updated Wine or Proton stuff. Really not that hard anymore. I played games via Wine even in 2006, heck some of the bigger titles had Linux ports luckily, but that was rare at the time.
What's next?
I don't really think of using Linux as some grand next thing in the tech space. While DHH and Omarchy wants you to think that 2026 is the year of Linux, for me it is the system that I use and I highly doubt I will change. Maybe if AI becomes even more intrusive, but then I would just build myself a retro machine, put my favorite games on it, and use that offline.
I think the past decade I pretty much used the same software. I use Emacs for writing stuff, and organizing part of my digital life. I use a browser for the web, and I sometimes game. I don't have big dreams or requirements for the future, as in the age of AI, I become more and more disillusioned with tech. I am not even sure this site will exist 5 years later or that I will still use computer. I don't really have high hopes for Linux surviving this, unless people get together and save it from the machine obsessed people.
