lattrommi

Manjaro is supposedly named after Mount Kilimanjaro and being arch-based, it would be appropriate to have it up on the mountain near Arch but lower.

Perhaps a $path going up the mountain range could be added.

The $path could be called “The Way” so you could put Arch BTW.

A lush verdant field between where the Puppies frolic and the SUSE chameleons’ tree, where the people can harvest ripe Rasbianerries and fresh Mint.

To compare, I was born into a household of Luddites via poverty. When me and my siblings got to high school and homework assignments started to have typing requirements, the family solution was to purchase a used computer that was running windows 3.1 (this was in the late 90’s) which didn’t last long.

Despite my fascination with computers and again due to poverty, I was unable to obtain one for many years into adulthood. I learned about Linux sometime around 2004-5 and reading about people like Torvalds and Stallman and open source and the FSF seemed like a wonderful world of progress I had not experienced. I was given a computer that didn’t work and was convinced I could make it come to life thanks to the magic of Linux. It did not go well.

Thanks to my inexperience, I attempted to download Linux from my local library, where I had 1 hour of internet usage allowed per day. I don’t know what I downloaded but it was not Linux. I think it was a collection of man pages in text files. Needless to say, that was not my year of Linux.

I did not own a working computer until I built one myself, in 2009 at the age of 27. I ran windows, played lots of games, wasted a lot of my time and finally delved back into the Linux world by installing Mint alongside my Windows installation. That was in 2020. The next day, the COVID lockdowns were announced. Then my system wouldn’t boot into either Windows or Linux. The day after that, my internet was disconnected because Spectrum is one of the worst ISP companies ever. All I had was a usb with a Mint live system. I had also gotten my first smartphone the month prior and because Verizon is one of the worst phone companies ever, I was unable to tether my data plan, which was heavily throttled anyways and effectively useless. Learning Linux without internet access or having any friends interested in Linux or computers in general, is not something I would recommend to anyone.

September of 2021 I finally decided to ‘defenestrate fenestra’ or ‘throw windows out of the window’ and switched fully to Linux. My year of Linux I will say was 2024. That is the year I built a new computer, the third computer I’ve built and the third computer I’ve owned. The computer I’m using to type this out. I have not had to change distros or reinstall since then and being self taught in computers, having never held a job in IT, having a developmental disorder, being well below the poverty line my entire life and being someone who has attended college 5 times and dropped out 5 times due to either poverty or disability, it feels pretty good. I am still light years away in knowledge compared to many but it feels good to be able to know what my computer is doing and know that I did it myself.

I still will randomly ‘stat /’ just to see the birthday. “Birth: 2024-02-05 04:54:20.000000000 -0500”. I don’t know if the time showing all those zeros is normal and I don’t care. I’m a month away from my second year with this machine and I am very proud of it.

Why did I type this huge and personal story without being asked? The answer might be the same answer to your question of ‘why did I post this in Linux memes?’

Because someone out there might read it and it might be what they need to give them that courage to finally make the switch themselves. Seeing stories like these with people who feel comfortable using Linix despite the various problems which might accompany them.

Anyways, because this is Linuxmemes, I should mention that I use an Arch derivative, BTW.

I can draw a circle in GIMP too. Like 4 different ways.

Yes ladies, I’m single.

I still have the slide as default and use it a lot. I have it set to slide when I mousewheel on the desktop and keep my taskbar shorter so there’s always some desktop showing in the corners. When I get frustrated with something though, I hit my key to activate the cube and the animation of it pulling away from the normal view works as like a disconnect from whatever I’m doing. Virtually stepping back basically.

Without the cube, I found I would get frustrated and instead of working on something else I would keep going and ultimately make mistakes and end up more frustrated. If I tried switching with the slide or fade to another project, the irritation stayed with me and I’d mess those other projects up too. The cube, for me, just worked.

I did have some success using the overview, however it was a lot more overwhelming with the way it shows everything, while the cube limits it to what’s on each cube face, without showing minimized windows at all.

When I updated KDE and found that I had lost the cube desktop switcher effect I was fairly put off on Wayland and made a lot of effort to get the cube back in various ways which did not go well. Now that it’s on Wayland, albeit slightly different, I am content with staying on Wayland. I can’t thank the people who ported it enough. It may seem like a trivial graphic effect to some but that fraction of a second that it uses when switching desktops is something that helps my ADHD tremendously. If I’m getting frustrated with a project I can switch to something else and something about that visualization helps me keep everything organized mentally. I use 4 virtual desktops, each with it’s own project subject matter, one for each side of the cube, excluding the top and bottom.

This meme imagary is from the movie Seven Psychopaths. It’s a very good movie.

I can’t speak for Arch personally. It required more time than I had at the time to install it, as I wanted to do it the recommended way from the Archwiki but I also did not have reliable internet at the time. That was awhile ago, late 2020 I think. I started using Linux in spring of 2020.

I have been using the same installation of Manjaro KDE since

me@mycomputer ~]$ stat / | grep Birth
 Birth: 2024-02-05 04:54:20.000000000 -0500

which is also when I assembled this computer. The zeros at the end of ‘Birth’ look really improbable. They are accurate as far as I understand but I wouldn’t know how to check otherwise either.

My previous system I also was using Manjaro KDE. It had a few problems, I think it was mostly because of an nvidia graphics card. That and user error. It still works to this day. I haven’t reinstalled Manjaro or installed any OS on it since september of 2021. I also haven’t used it much since building this new system. This has nothing to do with the operating system, I just like to share it, the computer was in two tornados one day and the CPU was partially delidded from one and it still works fine.

I will add that I am a casual user, I don’t do some things that might invite trouble like torrenting. I also live alone and have very few friends and no known enemies, so overall I have a very boring threat model, that mentions cats more than most threat models do.

I also do not use the AUR and am on the stable repository. I also don’t use Timeshift, I use Vorta, which uses Borg, for my backup system, which only backs up my personal files which are in my home directory on a separate partition, if something happens to the system, I will reinstall. It hasn’t happened in over a year though.

For my very basic computer needs (mostly Firefox, GIMP, Blender, Zim and Kdenlive), it works fine. Cue Manjaro haters.