[User Survey] Non-Windows Experience

TheDcoder

Hi everyone,

I would like to sample what kind of Non-Windows operating systems you are familiar with, I could use this data to prioritize support for those specific platforms and features.

So please share what Non-Windows platforms you have used and the features you like etc. in this thread 😃

I am going to start by sharing my own experience. I started with Windows but developed interest in Linux around 2014, I first started with Ubuntu but it was a disaster, I screwed up my boot loader after installation and promptly nuked the partition table while trying to recover the boot loader for Windows 😅

After that I meddled with Fedora and use it for quite a bit while dual-booting, and I finally made the switch sometime around 2018 and used it as my primary operating system. Recently around a year ago I started developing an interest to try out other distributions because Fedora had some shortcomings, mainly the speed of its package manager, which is written in Python and was very slow...

So I looked around and found Arch Linux to be a good candidate, after trying it out in a VM I feel in love with it as I could do almost anything I want since it was a "DIY" operating system, the package manager is also very fast (because it's written in C) and flexible, so it was a perfect solution for me! I have been using it ever since with only the software I want 😊

I love how you can isolate and tweak things in Linux, with a little bit of creativity and knowledge you could pretty much accomplish anything. Arch Linux has a wiki which is very useful to get complete technical knowledge of the system, and it has helped me understand many things which I was previously unsure of when using Fedora or even Windows.

seadoggie

Similarly, I attempted a dual booting on my primary system a while back and ended up wiping my computer instead. My next experience with Linux was through school where we used a CLI for an unknown (by me) version of Linux (I wrote my first virus and actually crashed the entire lab). At one point, I may have installed Ubuntu on a family laptop that was trash to see if it would run better... it didn't, it was still trash.

Next, I joined the RaspberryPi Zero hype and bought one of them when it came out. I retained a lot of my knowledge from that college class and set it up, but never did too much with it. I did set it up headless when there wasn't too much info out on that.

Finally, I got a RaspPi 3 for Christmas and have attempted a few projects on that. My issue has been trying to write Python since the syntax boggles my mind a bit. I did manage to have it control the heat/cooling system in my old apartment, though it scared the heck out of me when there was a burning smell (if you don't heat for a while, heaters can smell terrible), so that was the end of that project.

TheDcoder

seadoggie I wrote my first virus and actually crashed the entire lab

That's some cool stuff!

seadoggie My issue has been trying to write Python since the syntax boggles my mind a bit.

Indeed, it takes a bit of getting used to. I recommend going through the "Tutorial" chapter in the official help documentation, it does a good job of explaining how python works.

seadoggie ...it scared the heck out of me when there was a burning smell

Glad you didn't risk it...

Thanks for sharing your experience 🙂

seadoggie

TheDcoder That's some cool stuff!

Well... it was one of the simplest viruses, but I thought it was super interesting that it worked. We were told that there really was a single main computer that we all executed commands on through PuTTy in a round-robin style. The most basic virus I could think up would eat up all of the resources of the system. Since commands were executed round-robin style though, it had to get past giving away control. My first attempt was a bash script that repeatedly executed itself. I think an antivirus caught me and it didn't work. Next I tried 3 scripts: 1 called 2 and 3, while 2 and 3 called 1 again. I only ever ran this once and it shut down class for the rest of the day. The system had to be restarted, but they never mentioned who or what caused the system meltdown... all I know is that I ran the script and it immediately stopped responding.

TheDcoder

seadoggie It is still cool though, a classic fork bomb with improvisation to fool the AV 😀