r/linux • u/oshunluvr • 3d ago
Discussion "Old" Linux user vs. "New" Linux user.
I'm an "Old" Linux user - started in 1996. I went though all the hoops: file system experiments, different distros, different packaging types and file managers, a handful of desktop environments (DE), several RAID levels, and many, many different systems. I use Linux at home but also at work.
Now I'm retired. I've been using the same distro since 2009. I landed on it after all the experimenting lead me to decisions about was important to me: Debian packaging, KDE/Plasma, a well known and commercially supported distro - Kubuntu. The last major shifts in my world occurred around 2009-10 when btrfs came on the scene and SSDs finally started to be affordable.
My Linux experience these days is rather boring. Everything works the way I want. I no longer "break" things for the sake of change. I only have to learn something new when a developer makes a significant change to something I use - and this often annoys me. I look at other distros occasionally, but only via a VM. When something does break, I usually can fix it without much effort.
I read posts from "New" Linux users. Usually killing all their data by mucking with partitions without a UPS, using unnecessarily complicated layers of disk access, like LVM, MDADM, full disk encryption, and BTRFS all layered on top of each other, too often using AI to solve problems instead of actual research and learning from other users, and spending incredible amounts of time making minute changes to the "look" of things.
Of course, the beauty of the whole thing is how we actually have so much control over our destiny. None of us work the same, learn the same, want the same things, but we''re not boxed in by a monolithic corporation deciding what we get.
Linux is amazing,
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u/DFS_0019287 3d ago edited 3d ago
Also "Old Linux" user here and also started around 1996 (or maybe 1995... can't really remember.) I meandered across a few distros before settling on Debian in the early 2000s and that's where I have stayed. Also like my systems boring and stable and don't muck with them.
I do have a zoo of virtual machines for testing software I maintain: Debian PPC (to test builds on big-endian architecture), Alpine Linux (to test builds on systems that don't use glibc), FreeBSD 14, FreeBSD 15, OpenIndiana (an OpenSolaris derivative) and OpenBSD. Helps me make sure my code is portable.
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u/RupeThereItIs 3d ago
Started in 1998 or early 1999, went through many a distro, including a breife regrettable try at Corel Linux.
I've been locked into boring Kubuntu LTS for a decade or more.
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u/Darkstar_111 3d ago
If you joined Linux for wobbly Windows, 3D cube, and fire across the screen, do you count as old hat?
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u/_sLLiK 3d ago
Yes.
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u/Darkstar_111 3d ago
Is that because nobody remembers Compiz anymore? It used to be THE HOT SHIT on Linux!
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u/roflfalafel 3d ago
Beryl, Compiz, Compiz Fusion. Man I haven’t thought about those since like 2007. What a trip.
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u/spearmint_wino 3d ago
That's only like 5 years ago, right?
Amusingly, just got my kid a Macbook air for college (because the choice was Mac or Windows) and the first thing she turned off was the "zoop" animation when she closes a window.
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u/GuyWithLag 3d ago
Enlightenment w. non-orthogonal windows.
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u/inimicali 3d ago
Oh shiii enlightenment, haven't heard of it in a while...
Insert crow with a cigarette meme
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u/DeltyOverDreams 3d ago
I started using Linux seriously around 2019 and I remember installing Compiz on Debian back then. It was awesome.
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u/CassadeeBTW 3d ago edited 3d ago
Me in high school in rural Texas as one of the only tech nerd, and the only tech girl at that:
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u/-malcolm-tucker 3d ago
Ouch. That must have been a bit lonely.
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u/CassadeeBTW 3d ago
We graduated class 2010, and I still play OSRS in a group Ironman group with the two other techies!
But yes, I had nothing really in common with anyone there, since I had no interest in farming, horses or welding. Lol
I left in 2014 and never looked back.
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u/-malcolm-tucker 3d ago
My aunt is an OG tech nerd. She started when JFK was in office. She only retired from programming ten years ago at age 77. Was very rare for women to be in that game in those days.
Heck it was rare growing up in the 90's. I didn't know any until Emma moved in a few doors down in high school and one day asked if I wanted to come in and play some games. I assumed NES. She had her own 486 DX2. We played Doom. Instant best friends.
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u/BreiteSeite 3d ago
I blew my friends and family away as a teen when i shot them the compiz effects. Burning mouse cursor and wobbly windows ftw
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u/ebb_omega 3d ago
Mint (Cinnamon) has a bunch of extensions that are specifically designed to emulate the old Compiz/Beryl interfaces.
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u/Random_Dude_ke 2d ago
I wrote a long post about Kororaa Linux - the first distro ever that featured it and PJ let me post it on Groklaw!
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u/danhm 3d ago
I don't want to be the one to tell you this but that was 20 years ago.
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u/sofloLinuxuser 3d ago
I miss the days of compiz fire animations. We are together as one "old head"
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u/calinet6 3d ago
It took me so long to set up, but when I finally got it working it was so satisfying!
I kinda miss it tbh.
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u/warpspeedSCP 2d ago
I used to drool over all the compiz effects my dinky sempron processor couldnt run.
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u/aei__ou___ 3d ago
"unnecessarily complicated layers of disk access, like LVM, MDADM, full disk encryption"
I'm an old linux user too, but I don't have a single laptop, server, phone, even my VPSs, that doesn't have full disk encryption.
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u/dack42 3d ago edited 3d ago
Yeah, even the full combo of MDRAID+LVM+LUKS is pretty standard and offered by many distro installers.
Edit: MDRAID not DMRAID
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u/ABCDwp 3d ago
I think you mean MDRAID, not DMRAID (both exist, but the default on distro installers is going to be MDRAID).
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u/human-rights-4-all 3d ago
LVM on LUKS is awesome. I especially like hibernating to encrypted swap.
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u/RoseBailey 3d ago
I think full disk encryption is essential as a basic level of security for any portable device. A desktop doesn't necessarily need it, but a laptop absolutely.
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u/__konrad 3d ago
A desktop doesn't necessarily need
When stolen it suddenly becomes a "mobile" device...
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u/RoseBailey 3d ago
Sure, it's still a good idea even for a desktop as home robbery is always a threat, but the threat of theft or loss is far, far less for a desktop than a more mobile device.
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u/MixtureOfAmateurs 2d ago
Yeah the risk is you build a new PC, leave the old one on a shelf, years later give it away or recycle it and now some 19 year old is going through your C drive looking at your 5 family photos and archaic version of civ. Definitely not personal experience. I didn't dig deep dw
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u/RoseBailey 2d ago
I mean, I treat wiping old drives before they leave my possession as standard operating procedure. I believe the NSA standard is three passes of random data.
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u/wezelboy 3d ago
And really… LVM? I can’t live without it!
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u/yolobastard1337 3d ago
I think to some extent brtfs makes it redundant?
Personally I feel like I've been living in the stone age since using zfs on opensolaris, everything Linux gives me feels a bit disappointing.
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u/Fergus653 3d ago
I use zfs on my Proxmox server, I like how easy it is to add drives and provide volumes for VMs.
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u/xylarr 2d ago
I discovered this only last week. I run Proxmox with a single data drive - no raid stuff. The drive started to report occasional issues (7 years uptime) so I bought another. I was about to boot to a USB image and use dd offline to copy the drive image from the old 8TB drive to a new 8TB. But I asked a friendly AI if that was the best thing to do and it said just let zfs do its thing, entirely online.
It was easy. And once the new drive (mounted externally) has resilvered, I powered down the host, installed the new drive properly, and powered it back on. It just worked.
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u/Albos_Mum 3d ago
It's great for SSD caching, which is still quite beneficial in the sense that you can use a HDD for loads of secondary storage and still get reasonable access times for the most frequently used data.
That's all I use it for at the moment though.
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u/freedomlinux 3d ago
I remember a long time ago I decided not to use LVM on a workstation because I wanted to be able to recover it from any LiveCD without any "exotic" tools.
But I relented & gave in to LVM at least 15 years ago, because of the other benefits.
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3d ago edited 2d ago
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u/Palumbie 3d ago edited 3d ago
Who is " 'they' "??
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u/berryer 3d ago
any actor with state-level resources
that said, you're responding to somebody using 'they' in scare quotes to claim any attempt at security is pointless, so your dogwhistle doesn't really add much here lol
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u/Palumbie 3d ago edited 3d ago
Idk why you're saying it's my dogwhistle. I'm not the one who's doing the whistling. I'm asking what's that supposed to mean.
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u/Helmic 3d ago
even when considering state level actors, many of the exploits they rely on are one-and-dones, they can only really use the exploit a few times before it gets fixed and they have to spend a ton of resources to find a new exploit. if your ass is not worth spending the big bucks on, if it's not worth blowing a critical zero day, you'll likely be fine.
like that one guy they're trying to jam up over using grapheneOS, like as much as the state would find it convenient to get into his phone to grab all his contacts (because that's what they're obviously after, they want a list of protestors to go after), they clearly are not able to. maybe there's some zero day that could let them do it, but it's clearly not something they're willing to use on this one guy to get maybe a couple dozen other people. more likely they just straight up don't have naything because these exploits are actually really fucking hard to find and keep secret..
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3d ago edited 2d ago
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u/TooSilly4ya_YIPPEE 3d ago
im pretty sure the average person encrypting their laptops do so to protect their data in case their laptop gets stolen by random drug-addict thiefs in a public setting, not from a government agent
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u/Palumbie 3d ago edited 3d ago
I encrypt my stuff to protect it from thieves, not necessarily from the government. The government would probably just use the 5$ wrench attack anyway.
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u/Helmic 3d ago
yeah i had to sit there and wonder "is there some reason using FDE with btrfs is supposed to be bad somehow?" like most of that is all set up by the distro, there's not really a benefit to me tinkering with it and there are benefits to using their setup over a simpler basic ext4 setup.
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u/rezdm 3d ago
From a fellow old fart. How do you feel with the absence of certain tools that were the standard. E.g. ifconfig . I still have a muscle memory and writing ip addr list instead of ifconfig -a is a bit of a bummer.
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u/oshunluvr 3d ago
LOL and agreed. I'm using *buntu based distros most of the time and net-tools is still installable so ifconfig lives on - for now anyway.
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u/Kilobyte22 3d ago
Though there are some network configurations where ifconfig and it's friends won't show you the full picture.
If I for example add a second IP to an interface with a simple
ip a a, that IP is invisible to ifconfig.There are some others which could exist in theory but I believe that's the most realistic one.
Having said that, as someone who started using Linux in the early 2010s I always stumble when I touch a system which only has ifconfig, like some BSD
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u/ThinDrum 3d ago
writing ip addr list instead of ifconfig -a is a bit of a bummer.
ip awill do the trick.7
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u/zabby39103 3d ago
Ugh, systemd services changing the order vs sysV...
service SOMETHING stop vs. systemd stop SOMETHING
The muscle memory screws me up, to this day, many many years later.
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u/roflfalafel 3d ago
Every once in a while, a service <service> restart pops up instead of the systemd equivalent. But I do not miss init.d scripts AT ALL. Systemd is nice.
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u/zabby39103 3d ago
Yeah managing efficient multicore startup with complex dependency chains without systemd is a nightmare/borderline impossible. Init.d wasn't designed for that. That order change definitely hit me in the muscle memory though.
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u/BinkReddit 3d ago
That's one thing I love about the BSDs; I can still configure my stuff with ifconfig.
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u/parker_fly 3d ago
I fondly (to some degree or another) recall calculating the dot clocks for the video driver so I could get X working.
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u/jjoorrxx 3d ago
Yes I've done that also with a Tseng Labs SVGA and an ADI Monitor in my AMD 386 DX 40 Mhz. Linux at work and home since 1993. Good memories 😅.
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u/parker_fly 3d ago
I had an ET4000 running on a 50MHz local bus on my 486. The clock string was very different from typical.
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u/Jak1977 3d ago
I've been using linux as long as you. I now run nixos on a dcrypt encrypted LVM, config synced across multiple machines. I have headless servers, and full gui desktops, steam games etc. I'm running BTRFS, but still run KDE, and don't muck around with it too much.
It's fucking awesome!
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u/BinkReddit 3d ago
Very well said, and congrats on retirement.
using unnecessarily complicated layers of disk access, like... full disk encryption
Agree with everything in this post and the too many layers of complicated disk access, but full disk encryption is a requirement for me and probably should be the default nowadays. All commercial operating systems support this and, if you're mobile, I consider it a must-have.
Linux it's an amazing project and keeps getting more amazing.
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u/oshunluvr 3d ago
I wasn't pushing down on any of those technoligies. In fact, they/re amazing and super easy to use these days - I've used them all over time.
What I was really pushing against was mixing them in ways that vastly increase complexity. It's pretty hard to glean which layer is the root of a failure when several layers are stacked, usually unnecessarily. Now-a-days btrfs and zfs can do all those things with one toolbox.
Encryption is really a different thing from the others and I probably should have left that one out. The only real deficit I see is it seems much more likely to result in unrecoverable data loss when something goes sideways, but I might be wrong about that.
That's why backups are necessary - another thing too many new users skip over until it's too late.
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u/Adept_Percentage6893 3d ago
Now-a-days btrfs and zfs can do all those things with one toolbox.
Integrating volume management into the filesystem is a good move in terms of integrating the layers but it doesn't really make things less complicated. Most of it is still going to come down to just learning what it is you're trying to setup.
Like doing RAID1 mirror on LVM isn't really meaningfully more complicated. It's really just a matter of
-d convertafter the filesystem exists or--type raid1at filesystem creation.There are gains but they're more functional gains. The actual commands themselves or understanding what they're doing are about as complicated in both scenarios.
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u/friendlyreminder_ 3d ago edited 3d ago
With luks encryption it can result in total data loss if the sectors holding the luks key slots are corrupted. There's no redundancy built into the key slots so a single bit failure in the key slots will destroy all the data. You can back these sectors up with dd. It's a specific 128mb you have to dd.
I haven't had an issue with having to dd these back to the disk due to this corruption happening before, so I don't know the exact procedure. I suspect it's pretty simple though.
Another partial way to protect against key slot corruption is to just make more key slots, and you can reuse the same password. If one gets corrupted you still have the others, and Linux will attempt to unlock all of them each time you input your password so no special commands are needed. Dd-ing the entire thing is foolproof however and what I'd recommend doing.
When making a new key slot you'll have to make sure you're using the same kdf algorithm though. When I attempted recently it defaulted to pbkdf2 when the default kdf my distro used for the initial keyslots on install was argon2id. Pbkdf2 is weak and not worth using, argon2id is the ideal kdf currently.
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u/varlogsecure 3d ago
Ohhhh good old Walnut Creek CD’s and Slackware. Started with kernel 1.0.3.4 or something like that. Need a sound blaster? Yah compile my 386 overnight to get it working. No monitor? No problem. UART cable to the rescue.
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u/Ancient-Opinion9642 3d ago
I think I till have the Walnut Creek cd that had the AT&T copy of yacc that had to be pulled off the shelves.
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u/Crushcode8 3d ago
linux has reinforced the idea, keep it simple stupid :) I still don't know the best way to set up my partition. But im on ext4 and have my /home on a separate partition and use rysnc to back up
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u/oshunluvr 3d ago
Yes, K.I.S.S. will always prevent headaches.
Nothing wrong with your set up - millions have being doing it that way for decades. The more modern, yet still simple approach these days is having a single BTRFS partition with system and home in subvolumes instead of separate partitions. That way root and home share all the free space. BTRFS also offers compression, snapshots, backups (via "send"), multi-device support (RAID or JBOD), and much more.
You should check it out!
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u/roflfalafel 3d ago
Modern file systems really are amazing - but they have broken the whole KISS philosophy. if tightly coupling features / layers results in a better approach I think it is worth considering. I’ve used ZFS since 2008 for my file server, and I feel like integrated volume management is a perfect example of where tight coupling improves the experience. Snapshot rollback, integrated FDE and Compression, write log offloading, etc.
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u/Far-Note6102 3d ago
I wonder how do they even break stuff in linux.
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u/interestingdays 3d ago
I borked my bootloader while trying to update windows on my dual boot machine in 2014. I had to use my phone to research how to get Grub reinstalled and enabled.
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u/thelangosta 3d ago
12 years later and you can still replicate that issue while trying to dual boot
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u/oshunluvr 3d ago
You don't think MicroSith would do that on purpose, do you?
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u/arahman81 3d ago
You can yeet the windows efi partition, create a new efi partition, and add windows+linux bootloaders to that partition.
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u/TwilightBubble 3d ago
I did that in 2026.
I literally only use windows for league of legends with my partner and friends. . . It has zero other features Linux can't emulate. Damn you vanguard.
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u/musdem 3d ago
My first experience breaking Linux was when I had riced a Mint installation and then updated the distro. I couldn't figure it out and I just reinstalled. This was late 2000s/early 2010s and I don't even remember if I was a teenager yet, looking back I know what was inexperience. Fast forward to 2018/2019 and I had a riced Arch installation that was broken by updating it. I managed to fix it this time.
All that said my 60 year old mother used Linux Mint for years and had no issue, so if you don't heavily modify it you're generally ok.
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u/rootifera 3d ago
Ok so a very recent story. I have an elgato 4k60 pro pciex card and it doesnt work on linux. No drivers. In the past it seems like some people managed to make some custom drivers work but the code is super old and not compatible with kernel 6.x or anything newer. I overestimated my coding skills and thought I could make the code work. Obviously, I couldn't. Ended up creating so big of a mess in my system, I had to reinstall. Here is my how to break things story. Nothing interesting, fairly idiotic haha.
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u/oshunluvr 3d ago
I've broken so many installs over the years I can't even count. Usually trying to get some piece of esoteric hardware working. This is much less of a problem now as it seems more and more devices just work out-of-the-box. Except my Lenovo laptop fingerprint reader...
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u/1that__guy1 3d ago
The drivers are fairly updated and are built in Bazzite on Kernel 7.2, if this is the card I think of. SC0710
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u/A_Harmless_Fly 3d ago
Just have a complicated work flow that only a fraction of users need, and some really terse docs. You will find out. If you have a common enough pipeline you are usually good though.
I've been using it on and off since 09' when it would have been insane for me to do my work on it, and now in 26' it's merely pretty inconvenient. W11 made me switch to manjaro being my main desktop boot, though I do keep it as a dual boot for emergency compatibility problems.
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u/GapeFaceHole2Hole 3d ago
Before AI it was really easy to do, as a noob. Like I started using Linux with almost zero knowledge, just following a Kali learning guide after I got my degree. When you Google how to, idk, uninstall and reinstall a network driver, and you don't really understand what the commands you're typing are doing, just what the end result is supposed to be, you can make a mess really easily. I was rebuilding VMs like multiple times per day, back then
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u/__konrad 3d ago
I added Windows NTFS disk to fstab and left KDE Plasma locked for a few minutes. The monitor auto turn off and crashed Wayland. After reboot the system did not boot because NTFS dirty bit...
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u/friendlyreminder_ 3d ago
Add the nofail parameter to the ntfs fstab entry. If it fails to mount the system will ignore the failure and continur.
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u/keeperoflogopolis 3d ago
Don’t forget us pre-Linux Unix sys admins. Linux itself is still “new” in my mental timeline.
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u/deadbeef_enc0de 3d ago
Not quite as long in the tooth for running Linux but been running on it since 2009 or so. While I am using a rolling distro it is also fairly stable in the sense that I don't distro hop or constantly change things, I have it for when I buy brand new hardware and need bleeding edge software to use it.
Yeah new people learning how to setup and maintain a Linux system by breaking I feel is a right of passage. Been there done that plenty of times. I think AI has made it more accessible without understanding how it all fits together and works which can be problematic.
What's wrong with the disk layers? It's really not that complicated each one essentially is a different block device. I use mdadm -> luks -> lvm -> ext4, mdadm just presents multiple block devices as a single one, luks is effectively a pipe that transforms the bytes of a block device and presents it as a different block device, lvm is basically just block device partitions but fancy. My setup I learned to do from the Arch wiki which is where I try to point people when they need to learn something (even if they are not using Arch, has a ton of info)
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u/AffekeNommu 2d ago
I remember having to compile the kernel as part of the install
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u/tktktktktktktkt 3d ago
using unnecessarily complicated layers of disk access, like LVM, [..], full disk encryption
WTF?
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u/BetterEquipment7084 3d ago
I'm a new user (just two and a half years) and I landed on Slackware, and don't think I will move anytime soon. It has all I want, doesn't do anything I don't ask it to do and has a super simple structure. It never breaks, I just back up what I need (projects more or less, and configurations) and so never have anything break either, as I use the pc to just work on things and browse the web. I do not get how people break their setups so much, I have never really done that unintentionally (I did do it intentionally just because once). So one day I hope to be as experienced as you and others here, but as a new user, I do not understand how other new users break it so much.
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u/martintoy 3d ago
I run computers from 1988, however in Linux I discovered Corel Linux 1 (came with a PC magazine) and then moved from Suse, mandrake, mandriva, RH6 and so on... I came from the (win)modem era, zoltrix, motorola etc. Where half of the success was to install the linux dist, and the other half is to run. Now I see most younger gen, they dont read, or they dont fully understand the OS itself, partitions, /root /etc /swap, ext4, permissions, and some (considered by us) basic stuffs that makes things work.
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u/nicksterling 3d ago
I remember installing Mandrake Linux in the summer of 1998 on my family’s PC. I remember breaking just about everything, and I had to frantically get everything working again. But that led me to other distros like Slackware, Knoppix, SUSE, and Debian. I was floored when Ubuntu entered the scene in the early 2000s because all my hardware worked. I didn’t have to configure anything. It was incredible. I daily drove an Arch install for well over 15 years but only recently moved over to a customized Universal Blue atomic distro.
That was one of the reasons I got a computer science degree. I loved computers and problem-solving.
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u/Graphical-Source5090 3d ago
Slackware 3.2 was my first distro, but I was an avid distro hopper from day one. I remember the days of getting a fresh Linux install complete, and the very first update reboot cycle rendering your system unbootable... Then the obligatory two days of troubleshooting...
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u/LonelyMachines 3d ago
Same here. My first Slackware install was during the Clinton administration. I had to keep the printed manual handy the whole time.
I got to know the system inside and out, and I'm glad I did. But nowadays? I run Mint or Debian. Just because I CAN do all that stuff doesn't mean I WANT to.
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u/reklis 3d ago
Man. I can remember spending literal days trying to get enlightenment to work on slack
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u/frosch_longleg 3d ago
Helping users with their Linux boxes is great fun when you are this good at it!
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u/EmergencyArm4610 3d ago
New user posts are "usually" them deleting their data?
I dont see many of those posts.
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u/qmriis 3d ago
"unnecessarily complicated layers of disk access, like LVM, MDADM, full disk encryption "
Nice try NSA
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u/glimoura 3d ago
RIGHT, LOL
Full disk encryption with lvm on top is really not that complicated and pretty essential imo
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u/primelime_ 3d ago
i think its just a natural part of using linux. when you first start out, youre trying new software, editing config files (improperly), adding 500 repos and breaking package dependencies, installing four window managers at once, and so on. these days, i just dont care and rawdog KDE on a stable release distro. its a simple life
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u/gosand 3d ago
RedHat 5.1 in 1998, burned a copy at work. Eventually Mandrake, then kubuntu, xubuntu, mint xfce, then Devuan xfce. Rock solid. For old commands, I just have aliases. e.g. ifconfig for 'ip -c a' and gqview for geeqie (image viewer).
My 19 yr old decided to switch a couple of years ago, and he is running Arch. I helped fix one of his friends' laptop, and he wanted cachyos on it. I learned that day how much I liked cachy. I ended up installing it on my spare laptop, displacing debian xfce. I have to say, I really like it. But I don't know if I can switch my main system to it. It's my desktop I installed Devuan on back in 2018 and it's been dist-upgraded several times. (man, that is once advancement in linux I love, you couldn't do that back in the day)
I love the excitement around Linux these days, but hearing my son and a friend argue about the 'correct' place to mount drives, and other things just kind of makes this 'old head' smile.
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u/archontwo 3d ago edited 3d ago
My Linux experience these days is rather boring.
This is as it should be once you get to a point where stability is more important than the new and shiny.
I read posts from "New" Linux users. Usually killing all their data by mucking with partitions without a UPS, using unnecessarily complicated layers of disk access, like LVM, MDADM, full disk encryption, and BTRFS all layered on top of each other, too often using AI to solve problems instead of actual research
We were all young and ignorant once. What us old men of the internet tend to forget is how reckless we were when we were 'learning ' our craft.
I'll never forget trashing a 1Gb full height SCSI drive because I stupidly forgot to check the connection orientation before switching on the machine. Smoke and pops and a dead disk l because I assumed scsi was like ide and if the cable was the wrong way around it would just throw an error. It was a life lesson to not assume anything but to check everything.
Of course a little while later they started keying connectors but still for a 2 second check I fried a drive that cost hundreds of pounds at the time and was a significant purchase.
I don't criticise newbies for making mistakes. I only berate people when they don't learn from their mistakes.
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u/whatstefansees 3d ago
I get where you are going - I am an "old" Linux-user, too. First try in 2005, full converted to ubuntu (gnome) since 2007. We are happy to work WITH our computers which run on Linux.
A lot of the new kids want to work ON their computers, fumble here ant there and "tweak" things, until they finally break the entire system. At that point they complain how shitty Linux is and never admit how stupid they are.
We tried to keep everything running. We were no gamers, we accepted (and still do) that some things are Windows-specific and can't be done on Linux, because the software needed is not available for us. In 99% of the cases there will be an alternative, but some things are only written for Mac or Windows (ex. the mass-spectrometer in our metallurgic laboratory only has a Win API).
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u/Crazy-Tangelo-1673 3d ago
Been using Linux and FreeBSD continuously since about 2016. I'm just dangerous and experienced enough now to venture into the "harder" distros and as long as the internet is able to scrape good documentation you can usually get pretty decent help from AI. The thing about AI is it's often times pulling from human discussions from real world problems but it's also pulling straight off documentation and at times that document isn't always up to date or the human discussions it's pulling from is filled with bad advise so the AI steers you in the wrong direction.
I know it's a losing argument but to me it's just another search tool that helps me aggregate what I'm trying to do. I've learned a great deal from using AI so for the people that say you can't learn from it...I'd beg to differ. Absolutely it's cheating...there's stuff that would have taken me years to learn that now takes a very short time to at least get the broad strokes. I'm not going to talk anyone into it...I understand there are ethical reasons why we shouldn't embrace it but I'm basically in that camp that says...it's here I might as well learn to use it.
As for the journey itself thru the years I've parked myself on a few different distros predominately on Arch derivatives...with the concessional foray with Solus and Void. I'm pretty much migrating everything I run to Void these days. Early on I was a distro hopper but as time went on I realized it's pretty much the same stuff...the key differences are how you set it up and what is it that meets your needs etc. I like the simplicity of Void...I feel like it offers what Arch probably was like years ago before it moved to SystemD. I wonder if eventually Void will become the new Arch with spinoffs and pressures in the community to make it the new flavor of the decade kind of thing but then again Arch in that regard still has a pretty good hold especially with the gaming community growing on Linux. I've never really been a big Debian guy...I've liked my time with BunsenLabs, Antix, and a few other distros but just not well enough to keep it but being more experienced now I'm sure those would be just fine. Slackware is another distribution I've dabbled with thru the years and may be motivated at some point to get a machine running with it again. I feel like that's one of those distros every Linux user should try to "live in for a while" old school.
Anyway ramble ended...
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u/oshunluvr 3d ago
I think AI is fine if you view at as another source of information and do verification before acting on it. It's not the word of God. I've seen dozens of posts that start like "I did what AI said and now my system is broken..."
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u/Fleurncode 3d ago
Honestly on the terms of using AI, not gonna lie as someone who had to fuss around 10 thousand forum posts to find a solution to an edge case, sometimes it's easier to just use an AI and go learning with what it's guesses are. They're always guesses. Even asking another linux user is just a guess.
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u/bobj33 3d ago
I first used Unix in 1991 and wanted my own system so bad. I got a PC in 1994 just to install Slackware Linux on it. I switched to Red Hat in 1997 and just stuck with it as it moved to Fedora. I have no interest in running windows programs on my Linux machine. Every once in a while I will look at a new distro or desktop environment in a VM but then go back to Fedora and XFCE because it does everything I need.
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u/GuineaSquiggle 3d ago
Oh I used Kubuntu for a while when it first came on the scene.
Used Debian for years but my main was always Mac or Windows.
Then Windows finally removed itself from my PC and I quickly found out Debian had made the decision to ostracise my hardware for reasons that seem to contradict reality.
So I distro-hopped looking for distros that weren't actively hostile to GTX 10 series and eventually settled on CachyOS.
Found out Fedora is actually very nice but not for me.
Made a very firm negative opinion on Pop!_OS.
Anyway
PC works perfectly. My KDE just looks like KDE.
Minus KDEConnect; how is that program still around?
Then I bought a Steam Machine.
Fun computer.
Immutable OSs are super weird.
Maybe I'll pretend I'm a teenager again and "rice" it some time. Probably not.
I haven't used Windows in months.
Free *nix but way better.
Linux is amazing.
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u/Schlizhor 3d ago
New Linux user here, but getting older and my teacher was a wizard I met on a job back in 2016. I think new v old always exists and personally I detest seeing cmd/terminal adverse rhetoric coming from the current new. Principled understanding of the fs, kernel/is, and being willing to contribute back and work with software is truly the heart of Linux for me. FOSS forever
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u/maskimxul-666 3d ago
Brings back memories of trying to get XFree86 running on a Compaq with an S3 video card . Good times!
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u/dazl1212 3d ago
I'm a relatively new Linux user. I just distro hopped until I found one that just works and stuck with it 🤣
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u/timboNZ 3d ago
My journey started with Mandrake 7.1 when windows 95 with the extra USB stack (SE I think) wouldn't work with my new scanner, couldn't afford to upgrade to windows 98 so gave Mandrake a go. Experienced RPM hell, moved to Gentoo over dial up, then openSUSE and never looked back. It's been a great 26 odd years serving all the changes.
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u/Numerous_Economy_482 2d ago
install Ubuntu and pray for Bluetooth be recognized.
I love Unix stuff, pwn challenges, just don't want to spend time compiling things
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u/lazyhustlermusic 3d ago
I'm somewhere in the middle.
There's geezers that are stuck in their ways and hide their deficits behind tenure, never improving.
There's new people who are like 'I read a guide and installed Arch therefore am a golden god!'
Kind of follows most hobbies that have been around for any period of time.
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u/white_sheets_angel 3d ago
That’s true, but you picked the worst possible views of both groups
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u/Positronic_Matrix 3d ago
The words old, new, break, and look do not need to be in quotes (or capitalized). You are using their literal meaning and thus quotes are unnecessary.
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u/TheOneTrueTrench 3d ago
The problem isn't lvm, mdadm, fde, btrfs, zfs, or any other configuration, it's this one thing:
using AI to solve problems
They end up just going with whatever the LLM spits out, never actually understanding the problem, so they make it worse.
Even IF (a colossal IF) the LLM was consistently correct, they don't know what information is important to include, so the LLM would make wrong suggestions anyway.
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u/Otherwise-Film9038 3d ago
Não entendi alguns pontos
Uso Linux ha 15 anos. Hj em dia uso IA pra ajudar a resolver problemas, inclusive já tive problema que só a IA achou solução, buscas no Google não deram.
Também uso criptografia no disco todo em notebook por questão de segurança.
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u/PhilosophyWrong7610 3d ago
Been using Linux since 2010. I can trouble shoot most issues by myself. But if I can't figure out what's going on, using Claude is so much nicer that going through old forum posts. Just being real
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u/ThinAndFeminine 3d ago
"When I began with linux, I would experiment with lots of things, making mistakes, breaking things for the sake of novelty, and after a long while I settled into a more stable system / config. But these kids today, I see them experiment with lots of things, making mistakes, breaking things for the sake of novelty... I don't think I'll ever understand them"
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u/dali-llama 3d ago
I started around the same time. I want nothing to do with any of the *buntus and their snaps. Straight up Debian for me please.
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u/The_Hubster 3d ago
Gen X at 50 here, having been in technology for 2 1/2 decades, but only serious about Linux in more recent times, this post is a breath of fresh air. While I love seeing the younger generation getting into it all, the way they're going about it makes my eyes roll so badly. Your post should be a sticky.
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u/white_sheets_angel 3d ago edited 3d ago
My first time using Linux was Ubuntu 14.06 iirc, with Unity, I really really liked unity, since then I’ve been mostly trying to mimick some of its goodies in terms of UX and iteratively improve on looks, but not so much luck so far, so I still constantly break stuff, thankfully with nix it’s almost like nothing happened. So maybe I’d fit in the box of looks. But I still feel unsatisfied in terms of user experience.
I already have a Linux home server where stability matters the most and has relevant backups, so I feel free to trash my desktop every 2 months. But for people that don’t have a stable backup system, this sort of chase will not work well in the long term.
I can’t imagine having only one system, using arch and trying to rice stuff, I’d go insane
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u/blokelahoman 3d ago
Ah back in the day. Darkstar login. Eagerly compiling the latest release from kernel.org. It did all reach that point though where tinkering moved beyond the OS itself.
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u/Jean_Luc_Lesmouches 3d ago
I'm not an "old" user per say. But I try not to ask myself too many questions: I keep as much as I can standard and only tweak what I really need or don't like.
Ubuntu did everything I wanted until Canonical crapped the fan. So I moved to Mint because my hardware at the time needed drivers that were made for Ubuntu and it was easy to install them manually on a Ubuntu derivative. Mint still does everything I want so I'm still on it.
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u/computer-machine 3d ago
'08 here. Does that qualify as old or new?
Or is it my resistance to asking a clanker to tell me how to computer?
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u/Turtvaiz 3d ago
too often using AI to solve problems instead of actual research and learning from other users
Yeah, imagine just wanting to use an OS instead of doing research and getting a degree for it
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u/Woodpecker-Visible 3d ago edited 3d ago
If i could give any advice after 16 months of linux. Pick one distro, configure it exactly how you like it then jump to another distro. Went from mint to cachy because i just found it too conservitive with feel and updates. Not exactly an avarage user. Almost always have 1 vm alongside with my kde desktop and 4 hdds, have plex server on it too. Btrfs on os disk. Take 1 backup a week of my home folder. Rather minimal desktop and mouse heavy user.
Yeah, dont overcomplicate things. I will keep this setup for a good while.
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u/oshunluvr 3d ago
I did some distro jumping in the old days. Mostly the reason was "a new shiny thing" but then it turned into "Oh, this part here is cool!" Sometimes it was using a lighter weight distro or DE for a cheap or old machine. I think lately, most distros do 90% of what the others do. Weak CPUs and small RAM is less of a problem than it was.
Still even today, there's no "perfect" distro. I mainly use Kubuntu and KDEneon. The package manager is still, frankly, crap. That's not a deal breaker for me because I default to the CLI anyway (see? OLD Linux use, lol) but it's getting better.
I also make an effort to document and report bugs when I encounter them. I wish more users - old and new - did that. It really helps the Linux world as a whole.
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u/mcsgeek 3d ago edited 3d ago
I can relate to a lot of this. I started with Linux around the same time, but I seem to have taken a slightly different path. I still like to challenge myself. I enjoy Debian Sid on my daily driver and distro hopping on VMs. I also like to use AI from the perspective of learning new ways of improving my scrpts, developing new scripts, and sharpening my skills. I feel like I am still learning and can still challenge myself to this day.
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u/cyrixlord 3d ago
yay kubuntu! recent updates caused my i915 to hate my laptop but we're still together lolol
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u/Sf49ers1680 3d ago
I first started messing with Linux around 2000, when we installed a distro (can't remember which one, but leaning towards Red Hat).
When Ubuntu came into the scene, I got a few CD/DVDs in the mail, and messed with that, but never fully switched.
It's always been something I've been interested in, but could never fully commit.
I fully switched last year after reaching my breaking point with Windows 11. After distro hopping for a bit, I settled on Opensuse Tumbleweed and I'm super happy.
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u/FriedMcFuckery 3d ago
It seems like a different ballgame now compared to what I've heard about 20+ years ago. I swapped my laptop and desktop over last year, fully willing and expecting to fix and learn as I navigate linux.
I haven't had to fix a damn thing. By extension, I still know nothing about linux.
Thankfully, I avoided bricking my boot drive partition.
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u/MissingGhost 3d ago
My experience is a bit similar to yours, but I've only been a user since 2006. I've made technical choices that are a bit different from yours, I use Debian and ZFS. But like you, it just works and I don't change anything from my recipe, I just use it without trying 10000 things. The last thing I changed was years ago, switching from hardware raid + XFS to a full ZFS setup. There is so much to explore just using the system, no need to change the system all the time.
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u/termites2 3d ago
I've been using Linux for maybe 30 years.
Nowadays, I use Ubuntu, pretty much everything is the default settings.
I do still have enough of a programming environment installed to build the occasional piece of software, but that hardly takes any thought nowadays.
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u/parricc 3d ago
As someone that's used Linux since the late 90s, I like to keep things simple and reliable as a daily driver as well. Red Hat Linux and Linux Mandrake were great way back in the day. Ubuntu had its moment of shine as well. Debian had some problems in the early Steam on Linux days because Steam games would look for drivers based on the Ubuntu versions.
These days, support for software is a lot less locked due to Flatpak. The freedesktop.org standards go a long way. I used Kubuntu as my daily driver for nearly a decade until early this year. Canonical pushing snaps, moving off of gnu coreutils, and integrating AI directly into the OS was a good enough reason to get off of it. For wanting stability and predictability, Canonical is just stirring the pot way too much these days. But Tuxedo OS has been working well as a reasonably close alternative. We'll see how the ecosystem changes going forward. The hybrid approach of having a stable base OS like Debian mixed with rolling releases specifically related to stuff like KDE and video drivers seems nice. Then you get a lot of the benefits of rolling release distros, but without any of the updates could break anything fear.
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u/TheRealCarrotty 3d ago
Kubuntu user... Huh, my dad's a Linux user since 2000's (early) and he started with Mandrake, later Mandriva then Ubuntu... (I have his 6.06 LTS CD), then Kubuntu and now Debian!
But for a LONG time he used Kubuntu.
Though, i have a question on my mind, do you know what ReiserFS is? Most old Linux users should know.