Around a month ago, I was getting tired of my mid-to-low tier HP laptop being slowed down by bloat, crashing every other day, and knowing the boys over in Redmond WA were collecting every bit of my data they could. So, after some research and decision making, I installed Ubuntu, (I said screw it and fully transitioned, no dual booting or even a VM).
The first few days were strange, but also really fun. I had no idea what a package manager was, why all the tutorials started cli commands with sudo, or what the hell a focal fossa was. For me, it was like learning how to work a computer all over again. At some points I got frustrated, because a lot of stuff isn't as simple as downloading an .exe and your problem's fixed, (my internal wifi adapter didn't work out of the box, took me 45 minutes to figure out how to manually install the drivers), but I actually found it really fun to figure out how to fix these problems.
After those first few days, when I started to get comfortable using Linux, I started noticing things. I started really enjoying using my computer again, like how you felt after learning on your first one. I didn't think of it as just an everyday item that does the same things over and over again, I started thinking of it more as a machine with working parts I could take apart to see how they work. For the first time in forever, I actually started having a great time just using my computer.
Another thing I noticed was how great the community is. Everyone's willing to help you solve a problem, and everyone is just as passionate about it as you are. You don't see stuff like this for any other OS, so I think that's honestly really cool. It's so cool to see new posts on all the subreddits of people showing off their desktops, helping others with problems, and sharing their thoughts and opinions like this.
So, 1 month later, here I am typing this out on my wonderful Manjaro Xfce machine, feeling great about the choice I made. I just wanna say thank you to you guys for making this 20-something feel excited about technology again!
