My Linux Journey So Far

So hi! I have been using Linux for more than a year now, and I have learned a lot. I just wanted to share my experience with everyone.

The Rough Start: Virtualization & Kali

It all started because my old laptop was struggling to keep up with Windows. I was too nervous to dual-boot at first because my sisters and I shared the laptop, and “nuking” the drive by accident was not an option.

I began by running Kali Linux inside VMware. Looking back, this was a mistake. Kali is not built for daily driving, and running it virtually on a low-end system meant it was competing with Windows for resources. It was slow and clunky, but it served its purpose: it forced me to get comfortable with the CLI and basic Linux commands.

Finding Home in Fedora

After two months, I finally gained the courage to dual-boot. I chose Fedora because I wanted something stable, beginner-friendly, and up to date without the “bleeding edge” risks of a rolling release.

The experience was amazing. I started with GNOME and loved how fast and smooth it was.

Jump to Hyprland

Things started to change when I came to know about ricing and Hyprland, a modern and lightweight Wayland compositor. I soon switched to a tiling window manager, Hyprland, and initially used the end-4 dotfiles.

Using a tiling window manager at first was a bit difficult. But soon, I started relying more on my keyboard than my mouse, switching from editors like VS Code to (Neo)Vim and relying heavily on keyboard shortcuts. Eventually, I felt limited by pre-made configs and decided to write my own dotfiles from scratch.

I Use Arch, By the Way

After ten months of Fedora being my daily driver, a college friend told me to try Arch. I had always been intimidated by the “Arch is hard” stereotype, but after living in the terminal for months, I felt ready. I started reading the Arch Wiki and soon installed it on bare metal (after a bit of bullying, ahem), triple booting Windows, Fedora, and Arch.