What I told my dad would never happen (not using Linux From Scratch or Gentoo - like how can he use Windows and like just get things done instead of digging deep and solving problems all the time?) did happen.
I now use Debian derived but more up-to-date and easy to use for mainstream people distros (like shudder Ubuntu) and they're relegated to server and TV duty and I hope nothing breaks when I upgrade from LTS to LTS version coz "I don't have time for this!" and I play a few games here and there on my Windows laptop.
But I think it's important to have gone through the "rabbit hole" in the middle. All the digging and understanding I did I still do all the time at work. I just no longer spend the other half of my life on it. I spend it digging into other things.
I think the ??? --> Gentoo --> Something Stable pipeline is a defining characteristic of 90s/00s nerds.
I _think_ the first Linux distro I ever installed was Slackware, but ashamedly, I can't remember. In my defense, I would've been about 10 years old at the time. I played around with a ton of others (I'm fairly certain I tried Debian Woody), but settled on Gentoo, because of course. Forget just tying up the phone line for dial-up, I tied up both of the family computers with distcc.
After a career break wherein I did relatively little with computers for a decade, I got back into Linux and quickly realized I did not care about -funroll-loops. I've been running Debian non-stop since Jessie, on everything from repurposed laptops, to ancient tower servers, to slightly-less-ancient racks.
> But I think it's important to have gone through the "rabbit hole" in the middle.
This right here. There is an endless stream of "how do I learn Linux?" questions on Reddit, and the answers are always some variation of "read this book," "take this course," etc. Perhaps there is value there, but I learned it by trying to do stuff. Like getting an HP PSC 2610 to talk to hplip and CUPS over LAN. Or getting a Chaintech AV-710's (an obscure sound card that happened to use an excellent DAC for 2-channel output) to work under ALSA. Doing these kinds of things forced you to read man pages, forums, newsgroups, etc. And when you succeeded, you could write up a HOWTO, and the three other people in the world who also needed this particular combination would give thanks.
Same here.
Life happened.
What I told my dad would never happen (not using Linux From Scratch or Gentoo - like how can he use Windows and like just get things done instead of digging deep and solving problems all the time?) did happen.
I now use Debian derived but more up-to-date and easy to use for mainstream people distros (like shudder Ubuntu) and they're relegated to server and TV duty and I hope nothing breaks when I upgrade from LTS to LTS version coz "I don't have time for this!" and I play a few games here and there on my Windows laptop.
But I think it's important to have gone through the "rabbit hole" in the middle. All the digging and understanding I did I still do all the time at work. I just no longer spend the other half of my life on it. I spend it digging into other things.