Atari 520 STE & TOS
As a teenager I started in the mid 90’s with an Atari 520 STE running TOS (Atari operating system), my first computer. Well it was more a massive keyboard plugged to a screen.
Without prior computer knowledge I managed to find my way out to create pixel art, play pixels games and having fun.
Power Macintosh & Mac OS
When I started to study graphic design I was equipped with a Power Macintosh 7500 from Apple running Mac OS.
My only concern was to produce quality designs with Adobe products… Yeah I hear you, just to be clear in those days the word pirate was not used, instead we were more talking about “unexpected extended trial” or “software borrowing for test purpose”.
I tried so many times to make some 3D with Amapi, not even decent one, just a simple cube to model without freezing my computer… I gave up.
Games were scarce on PowerPC, so I bought (built) a PC and installed Windows 95, yes another “unexpected extended trial”, just to play my first LAN party with my roommates on Half-Life.
Running a PC with Windows 95 was the first time for many things: formatting the hard drive an re-installing the OS 2-3 times a month in average, installing new hardware and figuring out that the driver was not supported, installing new software and figuring out that the hardware was not supported… I guess I’ve learned the hard way 🙂
Power Macintosh G4 & Mac OS X
When I started my professional life I was proud to buy a Power Mac G4 equipped with the Apple Cinema display running Mac OS X.
Yes you were a rock star if you had a G4
I started to pay attention to the quality of the desktop. I remember those colorful icons and the dock experience. I guess I was the right target for Apple, because I really felt different, ahead of my time, using what really is by the end, just some pieces of hardware and aggregated software glossy packed. Still Steve won a thumb up.
Hybrid setup
In the middle of that designer unicorn rainbow dream their was a gap, something was missing: GAMES. So on side of my professional Apple setup I always had to build a PC running Windows just to play games.
Sometimes when I was tired and frustrated to format/re-install Windows, I kind of getting irational with that hurge to switch to a Linux system because it would be ok to play Doom and Tux Cart forever…
I would usually ask for help from my Linux buddy (Hint he worked on Mandrake Linux) to install the Linux distro in 5 min or less. Ok I might be exagerating a bit, but it was clearly way faster that its counterpart Win95.
I always was amazed when he was telling me “It is done!” with that look and smile meaning “Why on earth would you switch back to Windows ? I can even install Doom for FREE!!!”.
Ho, forgot to mention, it was a time where people had to move physically with floppy disk and compact-disk to help install software.
Despite my clear lack of computer programing and software programing knowledge, I early had the feeling that Linux and Open Source at some point in my life would be the way go.
Again mainstream games had to be played on PC running Windows… I had to accept to return to my format/re-install routine (Win95 & WinXP) for the sake of gaming…
With cheap power comes big mistakes
Then at one point it became cheaper to build a decent PC running Windows that could handle resources demanding professional software and resources demanding games at the same time, instead of maintaining a Mac OS X and a Windows setup.
Also, magically (?) new version of Windows (7 then 10) became a bit more stable. I know for some person this statement can be moderated. Understand me after Win95 and Win XP, Win7 felt way more polished.
Still I was missing the Mac OS X Desktop experience and its stability for my professional use. Let me re-phrase, because I used the same machine for professional and personal use, it was not that easy to keep the system stable. Professional software would usually play nice and be the first that I installed, then games would follow and torrent downloader and many crappy useless softwares that did worst than windows would do natively… Yeah Microsoft products had so bad reputation it made easy for some software companies to turn sh**t into gold.
As Apple was going crazy on prices I struggled to found an alternative.
Loosing faith
Sometimes I decided to give up Windows and to go Linux ( Ubuntu or Debian ) again, hoping that I would become overnight a console command master and being able to cut from Adobe Products to finally use only open source software because Open source Matters!
Trust me on this one, managing to learn a new OS and trying to replace proprietary software with open source ones, throwing years of practices and learning, facing the incompatibility of formats with customers, was a mountain to high to climb for me.
I got back to Windows and its Eco-system for some times, not that I really wanted to, it is just that I had a lack of choices.
During my career I progressively switched from print to web as the demand was growing, until reaching the point where I was doing web only. This is when I started to learn how to code and to enjoy it.
Without noticing it, as Windows was going more mature and stable, my dream of going full Linux (no dual boot I insist) and Open Source was slowly fading away, accepting my burden, finding excuses like “At least I just need to format/re-install once every two years now…” or “I own a Game Pass…” or “It is OK if my system subtlety become slow and unstable if I don’t install the new update right away…”
The awakening
Then a year ago I woke up a morning touch by the grace, with that deep conviction it was the right time to go full Linux and Open Source. Looks like I was ready professionally and as a gamer to jump up the cliff, having faith that I would learn to fly before reaching the ground. I was even ready to lower my expectations in terms of games.
My motivation was reinforced by being more aware about big tech business model, added to the disturbing feeling to not be in control.
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The main reason is that I wanted to quit being the product, being profiled, no more Google or Microsoft in my life.
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The second reason was that I wanted to quit feeling stupid in front of my computer if something went wrong. I wanted to be OS smart (at least trying).
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The third reason was that if I ever had to put money on the table again for professional software it would be for the sole purpose of supporting Open Source project.
A couple of DuckDuckGo research later I found a new distro called Garuda Linux based on Arch Linux, I got really exited. I chose the Garduda KDE Dragonized Gamer Edition.
Garuda Linux
It was a total blast,
I felt right at home,
I felt different again 🙂
It has that Apple desktop inspired style and is built with an easy to use spirit, the whole combined with Steam ( not only ) to please my gaming appetite.
You should have been there to see the same smile on my face that I had when I first met Mac OS X.
Installation was a breeze, first time I did not have to type a command on a console during and after the installation process.
The distribution is packed with TimeShift which avoid tedious re-installation process (Hooray) and plenty of optimizations for games.
It was refreshing to complete my professional setup quickly. Thunderbird being the default mail client is a plus, not mentioning FireDragon the secure focused default browser.
Can I say that it is 100% perfect ? No, there are some glitches, freezes or reboot needed from time to times, but for a piece of software made by passionate enthusiasts it compete pretty high against commercial OS and Desktop, period.
Thank you
It took me almost 20 years since my first encounter with Linux to switch from proprietary OS to Open Source OS. It took me almost 10 years to find my new OS family that make my life much more easier, commited dudes who actually care, Garuda Team you rock!
I end it here before it becomes to corny, stay tuned I’ll post soon a more detailed experience for the first year using Garuda Linux for professional and personal use.