Rolling or immutable, desktop environment or window manager. Whatever it is, distro hopping is given

Whatever the Linux flavor I'll in my machine, I have couple of things I want to achieve:

• Want to learn something with that experience
• Don't want to struggle for finding supported software
• Prefer to be keyboard centric
• Make me productive
• Preferably, stable
• Have some fun
• And possibly, give a pleasing look, not too flashy

With these ideas in mind, I've been distro hopping almost for the last one year and I finally settled (sort of) with a combination, which I'll talk about in sometime. But the journey to reach here is quite interesting and I'm sure, in another couple of months time, I'd probably go towards finding another settled (sort of) flavor of Linux.

I started my Linux journey (in my personal use) when I used to rent the PC (full set, monitor, keyboard, mouse and CPU), on a monthly basis. The vendor used to give with an unregistered Windows machine and whenever the machine was returned, he used to wipe it completely and install a new version of Windows. So I made it a habit of trying to install some version of Linux before returning the machine.

At that time, I had access to Linux OS only through the free copies of OS they used to distribute through magazines like "PCMag" and these magazines too used to be available only in the Railway station bookstall, because my hometown was a small town.

I remember that I made multiple attempts starting from installing Redhat used to come in multiple floppies till they used to ship the OS in CDs and never had a successful installation esp, because the drivers not being available and the lack of internet connectivity. But I've enjoyed every single try.

After a few years, I've bought a new PC, assembled on, again with unregistered Windows and got a dial up internet connection. After using the machine in this state for a couple of months, using internet on and off, trying to keep Windows updated (believe me keeping Windows updated is not an easy task, over dialup internet), after one update, I started seeing this very awkward message that the Windows is not registered. I was able to cope up with that message, maybe for a week, and decided to try the Linux route again.

This time, I tried multiple distributions like Ubuntu, openSuse etc, downloaded the OS, burned them to CDs and had all successful installations. But this time, a different problem, everytime power goes off when the machine is on, the OS used to get corrupted. Even though I had power backup, I used to get very less time, like 5 - 10 mins backup before I could properly shutdown the machine. There is only one Linux flavor that never gets corrupted when power goes off and system shutdown abruptly, it's Ubuntu.

Ubuntu has become my only Linux flavor on my desktop for many many years. At that time Ubuntu used to ship OS CDs throughout the world. Every time a new version of Ubuntu releases, I used to order one and keep, even encouraging my friends and colleagues to use Ubuntu and re-distribute the CDs I have.

This went on for a few years, I've become comfortable with .deb packages, apt and GNOME, definitely practiced BASH scripts, played some Linux games like Tuxedo, understood SWAP, a little of the ext file system.

I'll describe the rest of my journey in a later post.

This is my first attempt to describe my tech journey and post to social media. Please let me know your comments, memories with Linux and in general your experience esp. if you can relate to a similar experience.