My journey with desktop OS
Like the majority of people, my most used desktop Operating System until now is Windows (I had touch XP, 7, 8, 10, 11). I statarted in 2004 touching XP in my father’s computer when workstation computers gets famous. From 2004 to 2021 I mostly use Windows, and tested Ubuntu in virtualbox and in one of my laptops.
However, the big change comes in the middle of 2022, when I switch to Linux (version 6.0) on my main machine, looking for a more private, secure and open source system away from Windows. I had already used Ubuntu as a “Linux desktop” on one of my laptops, but I didn’t have it at the time.
So, when I decided to change my desktop OS to “Linux desktop”, I started “the hard way” by choosing Arch Linux, because once you boot your OS, you are right in front of the text terminal emulator, alone in the face of danger, with the blinker bar and the keyboard waiting to type commands. I remember watching many YouTube videos of the manual installation, reading the official installation guide on the Arch wiki, and testing different installations on Virtualbox on my Windows 10 machine.
But it was so hard for me that I didn’t dare until I discovered Arco Linux (by Erik Dübois), an Arch-based Linux distribution with a GUI installer, where you just click buttons and select options. It was also around this time that I started classifying Linux distributions, desktop environments and Linux software on my [Interneto project] (https://raindrop.io/Interneto/desktop-os-23695083). I stayed with Arco for a few months (in the middle I broke the system with archlinux-tweak-tool and had to reinstall), but I didn’t like the look so much and switched to XeroLinux. I stayed with preconfigured KDE on XeroLinux for a few months, and after “Dolphin” (KDE file manager) damaged one of my external hard drives, I ended up switching everything to Arch + “vanilla” KDE (default configuration). Then I stayed on Arch and learned more about the way Arch Linux works to finally create my own Arch based Linux distribution ArkSys in September 2023.
But after all that, I discovered that I didn’t need a GUI installer for a fresh install because I could use archinstall (a simple way to select options by throwing the terminal) and just import config files. But again, this method was not optimal for me and more extra configuration was needed, so I decided to move to an Arch-based system with a minimal KDE like EndeavourOS for future optimal installations.
My first year of Linux was mainly distro-hoping, which means switching between different distros looking for your “perfect Linux distro” mostly with dozens of OS installations on virtual machine and a few on real hardware (Arco - Xero - Arch). Then I stayed on Arch for almost two years and then reinstalled Arch with EndeavourOS, an easy and quick way to install a minimal Arch with KDE, actively maintained and with a large community.