Michaelsoft Binbows

Obviously it all started here,if I used Mac this might have never happened but luckily for me windows in one of their windows 10 updates decided that adding a widget that spams you with news was a good idea.To be honest I was already burned with Microslop since the X box one and windows 8 days,but I just skipped all that and jumped into windows 10.It felt like a return to form…When it worked,I had a crash every 10 days or so,sometimes even daily.That isn’t the worst early windows experience ever to be honest,computer OS before used to do that a lot,windows XP died on me so many times I blocked those memories in a dark corner of my brain,and windows 7 was marginally better in that sense,but crashes were a common occurrence.

Honestly the first stable modern OS for desktop was probably modern Mac OS,but I was poor so no dice for me,also Linux sucked back then,at least in the sense of normal daily use in a desktop,even when 10 released back in 2015 I was eyeing Linux.but it wasn’t ready for basically any use besides servers,in fact,the improvements that Linux got just from 2020 to 2025 are like the kind of improvements you were able to see during the 80’s and 90’s in most technologies,a lot of my problems with some of my early adventures into Linux probably aren’t even a factor anymore.

Cover yourself in oil

Everyone knows that the best way to start in Linux is with an easy,stable distro that eases you into the world of open source,so of course I jumped into arch the moment I saw Linux as a real alternative. Now,this move made sense back then as new updates to both usability and gaming were constant back then.It making sense doesn’t make it any less stupid,or brave,but mostly stupid.

I first started with Manjaro because I heard that it was a stable and easy to use version of arch,it wasn’t for me at all,it took so long to make the WIFI work just to have my install crash and burn several times,all of them for different reasons,using the AUR in any way?nope,updating to a new version?I hope you like chroot.I know that sometimes arch breaks with updates,but when that happened in arch I was able to find a fix quickly,not here,also please do something about the certificate of your website because it keeps expiring…

Luckily that was the only ugly duckling,the next one I tried was Arco Linux,excluding the horrible website and naming of ISO’s,everything was great,it all worked just fine and every time I had a problem the maintainer of the distro already had a video up teaching you how to fix it,I’m pretty sure he “had” thousands of tutorial videos up in his channel before he retired from maintaining it,had is in quotes because he still makes arch Linux tutorials on his channel,mainly focused on his scripts.

After using Arco Linux for around a year I wanted to try something different,I really liked arch but the updates sometimes gave me problems.This was accentuated by the horrible internet connection I had during my entire live until a few weeks ago that made certain updates corrupt and forced me to roll back,so I wanted something more stable hoping that all the cool stuff that I liked about arch linux was already available on other Linux distros.(the newer versions of proton were a must.)

Tip your fedoras

At first I really didn’t want to use fedora,not only because of the stable release,but also because of the name and logo,sounds like a dumb reason because it is,so when I realized that and I grew tired of chroot again I decided to give it a try.

Back then I’m pretty sure fedora only came with gnome,but that’s fine because I wanted to give gnome a try.My first impressions were good for the most part,I wasn’t a huge fan of gnome,nor the way they handle their project,but I tough it was unfair to just hate without giving it a fair shot.I quickly realized I was right,as the desktop experience wasn’t that bad,but the ricing one was,I’m not a fanatic of ricing,but I like my desktop to look pretty and gnome just keep fighting me,besides that my experience daily driving fedora was buttery smooth in every way,it was great until I had one of my desktop pc gaming streaks.The gaming experience in fedora was pretty bad,I had a lot of problems that I just didn’t have to deal with in Arco.

So I switched to Nobara,and I had the opposite experience,games just work?Great,lots of small stability problems that don’t crash the pc but still give me problems?Not so good.

I stayed in Nobara for a long time as it was great,but after almost a year I grew tired of it too,it worked but even if it was more stable it felt held together by duct tape,my gnome filled with extensions didn’t help either,so it was time to jump around again.

The final ones

Having used Linux for 3 years I felt confident about my abilities,like if I knew everything abut linux and I was able to do everything.I was quickly proven wrong in my net hop.

After a year of using Nobara I wanted something different,so I went with Cachy os with hyprland.Just setting it up to be usable beyond what Cachy gives you was a painful experience,but using a window manager felt amazing,after the learning curve I was amazed at how much it improved the computer experience,sadly it also breaks some video games as they don’t like the forced windows sizes,its also the most user hostile user experience ever,I know that window manager are just that,but its still a user interface,and to be honest being thrown into a terminal is probably more user friendly,it took me way less time and I feel more confident in the terminal at least.Not only that but the whole ricing experience is terrible,most of the time your desktop will look the exact same as another one because of how hard it is to use and configure.

What I wanted was a window manager that was on top of a desktop experience,and that I could turn of at will to play the stuff that does not enjoy the forced window sizes,so until I found something that convinced me I went with the boring choice of Mint,Mint is a great “just works” distro but is boring and provides a safe and uninteresting desktop experience,I wanted to use it because I was tired of managing my OS like if my side job was being a sysadmin,but it really is just windows 7 2.0,and by this point I was extremely far away from my origins as a hardcore Microsoft loyal that did everything on windows 7 and played all the time on his X-box 360,so when I found pika OS I decided to give it a try.

It was exactly what I was looking for,a stable Debian distro with constant updates thanks to the fact that its based on the “unstable” version,that has a focus on games,and that has various tiling window managers!If that’s true then why the image on top has gnome?Because I found a solution to my problem,paper WM,thanks to this gnome extension I can have a tiling WM that I can disable at will,exactly what I needed.

So that’s it,finally found my home after 4 years!

What I learned

An absurd amount of deep Linux knowledge that I will only use once I a blue moon,that menus are a waste of time when you can use your keyboard,and that Linux does need all these differences,variations and distros,as everyone has different tastes,wants and needs.Every distro is different and works like a tool in a toolbox,you use a hammer when you need a hammer and a screwdriver when you need a screwdriver,I think that most of the Linux distros are necessary and born out of a necessity,even if that necessity is extremely niche.Which is the reason why I think most of the discussion I have been reading about this or that distro being the best is dumb tribalism,some distros can be objectively bad,for example the many windows 11 copycats that are probably malware(if you want a real one this one is pretty good),but saying that something is terrible just because it doesn’t work for you its a bit too much.I had a terrible experience with Manjaro,but it does work for a lot of people and even if I wont recommend it, there isn’t anything wrong with recommending it to a user that wants an arch base that just works if it doesn’t want to use the AUR,or touch anything from the defaults.

Besides that,I learned to love my PC after years of fighting against it because it didn’t do what I wanted to do and keep adding unnecessary stuff,and that’s the important part of all of this.