As those who are around me know best, I use Linux and MacOS as my desktop and laptop OSes by choice. I saw a video on YouTube from BashBunni where she mentioned that she's been using Linux for a long time and that got me thinking of my own Linux journey.
The start - Gentoo
I believe I started with Linux back in 2001/2002 with a 300MHz Celeron machine. I can't remember other details about the system than that, I think I had a Riva TNT2 32MB AGP graphics card and a Sound Blaster of some type as well. This machine first had FreeBSD 4.0 on it, as I was trying to learn how to host my own websites, virtualhosts and such. The FreeBSD install was in 2001 and I them got started with Gentoo in the summer of 2002.
Those who are in the know, realize that a 300MHz, single core, single threaded CPU, paired with a "build-from-scratch" and "compile-everything" is a recipe for disaster, or a masterpiece? All I know is that the learning curve was incredibly steep and the only thing that rivaled it were the compile times. Back then there was no auto configuration of the kernel or anything, if you made a mistake while configuring it the machine wouldn't boot or best case scenario, you had missing modules/support for some hardware in the PC. But, it was a wonderful time, nerd-wise!
It took me 4 days once to get a running kernel, but the small victory to get the base system to boot was unbelievable! I felt like I had conquered Mt Everest without oxygen!
To begin with I stayed with simple WMs such as Fluxbox, that took mere minutes to compile, versus the 3-4 day compile of the colossus that was (and is?) KDE. But configuring X11 was the next hurdle, the wrong modeline in the configuration file could mean the life or death of your monitor back in those days, far from the no-config we have now!
I stayed with Gentoo for many years, enjoyed it maturing and reaching new users throughout the years. I helped a lot of users install Gentoo on their computers, since it was possible to boot from the liveCD, get network running, set a password for the liveCD root user and simply port forward port 22 on the router so I could connect. I actually think I might possibly have installed Gentoo on other peoples computers like this well over 300 times throughout the years. I even registered gentoo.is and ran that and a non-official mirror for the packages when I had a server on a 100Mbps fiber connection with my provider. My gear inside their data center. We had our own, Icelandic, forum on forums.gentoo.is which had remarkably busy users talking about anything and nothing relating to Gentoo!
Binary systems - Ubuntu
At some point I was curious about these "binary systems" I had heard about, Ubuntu being the new kid on the block in my circle of friends. The first version of Ubuntu was 4.10, released in October 2004, but I didn't touch it until 2008 I think. 8.04 was the first time I tried Ubuntu if I remember correctly. It was, fine.. but there was always something missing when I used it, it just felt wrong somehow. A spark was missing. So I used Gentoo, Ubuntu and others in a mix, re-installing (distro-hopping!) when the mood struck me.
There were other distros floating around, some people said that Fedora Core 10 was the best thing ever, I tried installing it but using RPM was horrible at the time (for me at least), so I gave it up really quickly. Others said that Mandriva/Mandrake/etc was good but first glance for me was that they were no different than Ubuntu. So, I mainly stayed with Ubuntu through the next few years.
Enter Fedora 30
Then it happened, I finally gave Fedora another shot and would you believe it, it's where I still am. I completely haaaaaated it to begin with when I tried the earlier releases pre core 30, but now that I was a bit older, a father with less time to spend on compiles, configs and "extra work", I liked how polished Fedora was. It was incredibly easy to install, easy to maintain, really well built and the KDE desktop was amazing. I stayed with KDE after Gnome 3 was release back in 2011, I have hated the path Gnome 3 took since they released it. For me it is way to simplistic and not inviting at all. Using the stock Gnome 3/4x DE has never felt like "home" for me. And believe me, I HAVE TRIED! I have always been more on the GTK side than QT, so Gnome 2 was my home for the longest time. Starting in Gentoo and going with me through my Ubuntu era until the Unity situation happened. But after that I was KDE all the way.
Still now, closing in on the end of 2025, I have Fedora 42 installed, KDE flavour and all.
But..
There has been a small thing growing in my head, poking me and making me think of how Gentoo made me feel, how I long for the old times and feelings. Could it be something I can revisit? Relive?
I'm looking forward to the weekend, got a spare NVME disk here and, who knows what will be on my desktop after the weekend ends.