My Life with Linux/Ubuntu

1. My first contact with Linux was around 2003/04. My son bought a PC and that came with Linux installed. He asked for my help, so I soon realized it was a CLI and not MSDOS, so I installed Window XP Home for him. That was better suited for him and my grandchildren.
2. In 2005 I bought a PC Magazine and it had a CD with Ubuntu 5.04. At that time I had a spare Pentium II with two 2GB SCSI disks. One disk was too small for Ubuntu, so I had to use LVM or its predecessor to get it installed. It all worked and I was impressed. But I lost that PC and that ended my first Ubuntu adventure.
3. In 2008 I bought a new laptop a 2-core Athlon on 1.8GHz and a slow 160GB HDD (40MB/s). It came with Windows Vista, but that was very very slow. I remembered Ubuntu and started dual booting Vista and Ubuntu 8.04. To do right to Vista, after a new 320GB HDD (80MB/s) and 2 service packs, Vista became quite usable.
4. I retired 1-1-11 and moved completely to Ubuntu 10.04 and I moved Windows XP to a Virtualbox Virtual Machine and that did run on an off-lease Pentium 4 HT (3.0GHz); 2GB DDR (400MHz) and a typical 250GB IDE HDD. I started to distro hop with VMs, I remember 4x OpenSUSE, Xubuntu and Lubuntu.
5. I still run my first love Ubuntu, now version 21.10 with OpenZFS and over time I collected ~70 VMs, so I have all Windows versions from 1.04 (1985) to 11 (2021) and all Ubuntu LTS versions, the first Ubuntu 4.10. my first one 5.04, 21.10 on the bare metal and 5 versions of the future 22.04 in a VM. Of course I also still have OpenSUSE, Xubuntu and Lubuntu from 2012. I tried a lot of other distros and thus I have VMs with Fedora; Manjaro; Garuda Linux; Zorin etc etc.

I moved all my “work” to VMs and now my main VMs are:

• Xubuntu 20.04 LTS for all communication apps, the only VM with open ports;
• Ubuntu 16.04 ESM with Unity encrypted by Virtualbox and exclusively used for banking and PayPal with the newest Firefox and LibreOffice snaps. I intend to use it till 2026.
• Ubuntu Studio 20.04 LTS for the multimedia stuff. However for playing the wma copies of my old CDs and LPs, I often use Windows XP with WoW and TrueBass effects.
• Ubuntu 20.04 LTS for trying out apps and for other experiments.
• Windows 10 Pro.

To prepare for the future I run the next stuff in VMs, note that two VMs run with nested virtualization:

• Ubuntu 22.04 on OpenZFS with Virtualbox to test my new Host.
• Ubuntu Mate 22.04 with QEMU/KVM to compare both virtualization solutions, on functionality and ease of use.
• Xubuntu 22.04 to test its use for the communication apps, half of the time I use 22.04 instead of 20.04 for the real work.
• Ubuntu Studio 22.04 to look whether I’m prepared to move to KDE instead of XFCE. I might stay with 20.04 and XFCE.
• Ubuntu Budgie 22.04
• Windows 11 Pro, to check out the effect of current HW limitations in a VM.

When my Skyrim characters become powerful and rich, I get bored and start again with a new character. I build a desk and it works, but if I rebuild it my life will be better (surely?). If I buy a screen / amplifier / keyboard / … there is a better one sitting ready to buy, only a “want click have” away. I am never satisfied. And I end up with a heap of hardware, bits of wood and I run out of save space in steam.

With Linux when I apply this same pattern it is called distro hopping. The only cost is time and I can always go back if it doesn’t work out. I love being able to do what I do best and that is changing my mind. I am an expert in changing my mind.

Simply enjoyed Jill’s joviality and the general enthusiasm of you guys.

Thanks!

A distro hopper who, for some reason, always goes back to MX KDE.
An easy way out for a permanent, Linux newbie i guess.