Part 1. How it all started
I tried using Linux in 2016. At that time I worked as a support specialist at an Internet provider company in a small town and used an old and weak laptop with Windows 7. One day my colleague said: “You should try Linux on this... machine”. That day I learned that Windows wasn’t the only option.
I started my journey from Ubuntu. I remember how I typed sudo rm -rf / in the terminal for the first time and how I couldn’t understand why the system wouldn’t boot after that. When I installed Ubuntu again... and some more times after that. For the first two months of using Ubuntu, I killed the system maybe 5 or 6 times.
But one day I was able to install and configure a usable system. And my world changed! I felt like I was in some kind of an exclusive club of the elite. Inaccessible to ordinary people.
Part 2. Half a year of stability
I lived on Ubuntu for half a year but I couldn’t get used to the Unity shell (years of using Windows took their toll). And then I found Mint. It looked like Windows but it was actually Linux. An undercover Linux agent. After installing and configuring the system I also installed a Windows theme to troll my non-Linux friends.
And I felt that I had found MY system and my DE. It looked familiar but had so many possibilities. Especially the terminal. As soon as I started learning terminal commands I opened another new world. I couldn’t believe that you could do everything without a graphical file manager. The main Linux power is the knowledge that GUI is just an option and not a necessity. You can do anything in the terminal, even surf the Internet!
Part 3. Distro (and DE) Hopping
It had been a year since I first installed Linux. I felt like I was missing something. My system worked great, my old laptop was living its best life. I was even able to install and configure wine. This opened up the world of Linux gaming for me. But I wanted more. By that time I had already become completely accustomed to Linux and was ready to learn something more complex.
And I installed Arch. But not truly Arch. Actually, for the first time, I installed Manjaro Linux with KDE Plasma. And with Gnome after that. And with MATE after Gnome. And with XFCE after MATE. And... wrong, after XFCE I installed KDE again ;) Every time I crashed the system I installed a new DE. Sometimes, when I got tired of fighting bugs and system breakdowns, I installed Ubuntu with Gnome, lived with it for 2 or 3 months and tried installing Manjaro again.
And one day I told myself: “Enough! You must read Arch wiki and install Arch Linux”. After 4 or 5 tries I finally did it. My first Arch setup. I even wrote a handmade instruction for my future self (oh, it was so worth it). I killed my system in 2 hours. The next 2 months were pure madness. I installed and killed the system so many times that I couldn’t count.
But one day I just did it! I installed and configured a fully working Arch with KDE. And no, I chose KDE not because it looks like Windows, but because I really liked its customization options.
Part 4 (Final). Hard Way to Declarative Life
I lived on Arch Linux for several years. Sometimes I crashed the system and then restored it. Sometimes I changed KDE to Gnome and back. Over time I switched from ext4 to btrfs. I really loved Arch. This system allows you to do anything. Do you want to install a very suspicious package? Do it. Do you want to interrupt the update and crash the system? Alright, no questions asked. You want it? You do it!
One summer day in 2024 I saw a video about Nix and NixOS: reproducible, declarative, reliable. These words sounded like music to my ears. And I started learning more: tiling window manager, one config which is stored in a git repo and works on any machine... “I need it”, I thought. This was a trap. It took me three months to make my first usable setup. And after that I didn’t have a fully finished system. For the next 6 months I “lived in a house under construction”. Something was always missing, something was always broken, and something I just couldn’t set up. But I didn’t surrender, and continued building my config. I must say that my config isn’t 100% mine. At the beginning I used some repos and some open source modules. Some of these I fully rewrote for myself but still, I didn’t build it from scratch.
And finally I did it, my own NixOS config. Exactly mine. I made a fully modular config for desktops and for servers. It looked exactly like I had dreamed. This was a win! Now I’ve been living with this config for 1.5 years. I even survived two moves to another drive. System installation has never been so easy and quick. Recently, I set up my first prod server with NixOS. And it works perfectly!
After all these years of distro and DE hopping I’m absolutely sure that none of it was in vain. Only if you try something new can you find what suits you. Exactly for you. Linux is a big tech world. Maybe the biggest. So many distros and so many desktop environments. No one can decide for you what exactly you need. And no one can help you choose 100% accurately. And what I especially like about Linux is that there are no wrong choices. There is only what suits you because you chose it.
I chose NixOS, what about you?
And yes, thanks a lot to the Proton team for their work. Linux gaming has never been so great!
P.S. The public version of my NixOS config can be found here
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