My 6 years with Ubuntu

[GWBouge]

So my journey began around 2001, when Win98SE was about to crash itself on my computer. Again. I looked around a bit and came across Red Hat 7. After a little reading, I decided to give it a go and install it. And ... it worked. Sound, video, internet, all up and running on a fresh new system to explore. That experience lasted, well, about a day. I wanted to play my games, so back to Windows I went. But I never forgot about Linux, or the philosophy.

Fast-forward to 2007. Over the years I had been getting more and more acquainted with open source and 'alternative' software. I had a spare computer that I wanted to turn into local file and web server. After some searching around, I stumbled across Ubuntu Server 7.04. Hmm ... Linux ... I know that word ... wonder how thing's are working out with that. I had some experience with Apache, MySQL, and PHP by this point, so a LAMP setup seemed fitting. I went for it, not knowing what to expect or having any real Linux (or networking) experience, just trying to get my PHP driven site to work. I absolutely loved it. It brought me back to the days I learned computing in a CLI environment with DOS. Except it seemed so much more ... logical. But, after a couple months of playing with that, I had to move, so things got put on hold again.

Then comes 2008, settled back down. I was getting pretty bored and aggravated with Vista, and I remembered coming across something called Ubuntu a while back. Oooo, that's right, there's a desktop version. Wait, you can dual-boot? Sure, why not, let's roll with it. Oh man, the issues. SoundBlaster X-Fi. Hauppauge WinTV. USB cellular modem. Compiling nVidia drivers. Yet, I was not deterred. No, I was addicted. The more problems I encountered, the more I was amazed that I can actually get to the parts of the system I need to to solve these problems. Such a vast landscape of tools and options I had no idea existed. After thinking I knew it all with Windows, it really showed me how little I actually knew about computers and how all the pieces fit. It was awesome.

By 10.04, I didn't really have any more problems. Well, other than the ones I created for myself. Sound card worked with a fresh install. TV Tuner only needed me to install ivtv-utils and change the input instead of compiling v4l. Additional Drivers always took care of my nVidia cards. And by this point, I had really gathered a sense of how to make the system work with me, instead of having to learn how to work with my system; I had disabled the panels entirely, and was running off of a dock (AWN) and GNOME-Do. Everything I wanted within a single click or a couple key presses. I never realized how cumbersome nested menues and a desktop full of icons were, until I found out I didn't have to use them.

So, by the time Unity came around, it was a near-perfect drop-in desktop for me. I never really had to learn it ... it did what I wanted, how I wanted, and felt completely natural. Short of a couple themes and Compiz tweaks, it was everything I was trying to make GNOME 2 be, but better. Since becoming more keyboard-centric in the desktop itself with the Dash and HUD, I decided to bring that aspect into my workflow, which in turn piqued my curiosity about programs such as vim, Midnight Commander, ranger, Finch, weechat, cmus, mutt, and the like. While I still used GUI programs for most casual tasks, it's wasn't uncommon to find me running Terminator full-screen with a few splits when it's time to get stuff done.

Same as many others, I've hopped around to a few distros, desktops, and operating systems, due to both necessity and curiosity. X/L/Kubuntu, Mint, Arch, Debian, Crunchbang, Flux/OpenBox, GNOME Shell, every version of Windows since 3.1, OS X 10.5/6/7/8/9 ... it was always a relief to get back to Unity. Is it for everyone? Absolutely not. But it was for me.

I had run 14.04 beta up until mid-March of 2014, and it was a great, solid OS, even in beta and alpha. However, looking for a little change of pace and workflow tweaks, I started playing around with tiling window managers, and latched onto i3wm pretty quick. After dressing Ubuntu with that for a few days, and with the 14.04 release coming up, I wanted to try on a "rolling release" style for a while. Between my experience with .deb and growing Steam library, I decided to grab a Debian netinst CD and work my way up to a usable system rolling along on sid, and I was quite content with it.

For a little over a year, at least. Some of the software I used was only available (up to date) in an Ubuntu repository, which while technically a little edit to the source file made most of them work, it's a bit of a messy way to do things. Waiting for current nVidia drivers to hit unstable/experimental had become quite annoying (the x-swat ppa didn't play nice with sid), and it seemed I had gotten to the point where most of my searches landed me on the Arch wiki. So, as part of the natural progression I suppose, I'm now running Arch. Perhaps one day I'll grow a wizard beard and jump ship to Gentoo, but that time is not now, lol.

Anyways, that's my story. Apologies for the wall, this document has been sitting around, getting edited and appended for about a year. Just thought I'd finally share it. Thanks to all the gurus and experts here and throughout the web that volunteer their knowledge. And, despite all the controversy and criticism, kudos to Canonical for pushing through with their vision. I may not be running on it now, but it's still my first recommendation.

Thanks!
~bouge

[tgalati4]

I had a similar history. Thanks for sharing.

[sudodus]

Thanks a lot for sharing

[mikodo]

Loved your post. Read it twice, with a smile.

Usually, a wall of text of that size, is hard for met to stay focused on. Not in this case.

[y6FgBn)~v]

An enjoyable read, thanks again for sharing.

[GWBouge]

Thanks for the replies!

I figured it'd get mostly ignored due to its length, and that it's a pretty typical experience for a lot of people here. But it can be interesting sometimes to look back over your journey just to see how you got where you are and how your desktop usage has evolved over time. Still check these forums and hop in the #ubuntuforums channel every so often, mainly to try to keep up with what kind of problems people are having, though I can't really help with anything Ubuntu-specific.

It's been fun!

[tgalati4]

I like your signature as well. It pretty much sums up how I provide support on these forums.

[coldraven]

Nice story! I too went over to the 'Buntus when the abomination of Vista arrived.

[GWBouge]

I like your signature as well. It pretty much sums up how I provide support on these forums.

Aha, thanks! Yeah, I have no formal knowledge of how all this stuff works. Don't remember when I really started showing interest in computers but my uncle gave me a Commodore 128 when I was 8 or 10 or so, got a "real" PC when I was 12-ish (I miss that computer, 33MHz 486DX2, had to reboot to DOS to be able to play DOOM) and basically just been figuring out just enough to keep my PC running since, along with some curiosity. Often asked how I know so much* about computers, and always reply something along the lines of:

I had no choice. Nobody I knew could help, and we couldn't afford to go to a shop. So either you figured out how to fix it with no internet (was only 14.4Kbps back then, but when something broke it's not like you could get online anyways) or you don't have a computer anymore. Or get really, really proficient at reinstalling the OS

* Their words, not mine. As far as I'm concerned it's still magic that semi-understands commands in something resembling english.

[tgalati4]

My first computer was a Commodore 64. I designed an airplane on it for school using a Visicalc spreadsheet which ran overnight to converge to a solution. Decent computer for its time.

Ubuntu was a nice change from Windows--it worked the way you expected a computer to work without the crapware and pop-ups that plague Windows.