First time I heard about it

I first heard about Linux in college.

We had an Operating Systems subject, and that's where I found out that Linux was actually a thing. I asked my teacher about it and he told me there were a lot of different distributions. He recommended Ubuntu, so I thought, why not try it.

The first time I installed Ubuntu was actually on one of our college lab laptops. After that I installed it on my own laptop too. It was an old 6th-generation laptop, but Ubuntu worked pretty well on it and I started getting comfortable with Linux.

Distro hopping

At some point I started having a really annoying screen flickering problem on that laptop. I tried Linux Mint, but I was still getting the same issue. Then I tried Fedora and, surprisingly, it worked really well.

I still ended up coming back to Ubuntu.

When I bought a new laptop in 2025, I installed Ubuntu 24.04 LTS on it and I'm still using it.

It wasn't smooth

My first days with Linux weren't exactly smooth.

I remember installing it and somehow managing to lose all my data.

The terminal was also pretty scary at first. I didn't really understand what I was doing. Then I slowly started learning basic commands like <code>cd</code>, <code>cp</code>, <code>mv</code>, <code>rm</code>, and <code>sudo</code>. Once those started making sense, the terminal didn't feel quite as scary anymore.

Why I stayed?

One of the things I liked about Linux was that the system felt like it was actually using my laptop instead of filling it with a bunch of stuff I didn't ask for. On my old machine especially, I could notice the difference.

I also liked the fact that I could actually see what was going on and learn how the system worked, instead of just clicking buttons and hoping for the best.

I've tried Ubuntu, Fedora and Linux Mint by now, but Ubuntu is still the one I keep coming back to.

So I guess I didn't really have some big moment where I decided, "I'm switching to Linux."

I just installed it because my teacher told me to try it.

Then I broke things.

Then I learned how to fix some of them.

And somehow, I never went back.