this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2025
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Linux
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Ubuntu was really good when I was a kid. when I went to school like 10 years ago I had to have a windows computer for a while to run my school's proprietary virtual clinical lab software and I was too busy studying and going to irl clinicals to worry about getting a dual boot running. I tried to go back once a few semesters in but it seemed really bloated compared to the Ubuntu I grew up with and I did mint for a bit but that computer kicked the bucket iirc and I didn't have the time to set up another dual boot. Hubs is thinking we're gonna have to switch soon and I've honestly been ready for a bit and think I'll probably try mint again, but distrowatch says a lot of people are super into cachy so I was considering that. Will Probably still try mint first.
Ubuntu has started going off the deep end. They've been heading in that direction for a while, but they recently (I guess like 5 years-ish ago) hit this corporatey, money-grabbing, mentality that's so completely opposite of what made Linux great.
The feel I get about it is 10 years ago, tutorials were written using Ubuntu because it was an easy distro to use and was a great platform for beginners, so people used that as their platform to teach. Now it feels like tutorials are written using Ubuntu because they're being sponsored to. A lot of how-tos I come accros have the same vibe as watching a video animation tutorial that uses adobe and oh gosh, it's also sponsored by adobe. Or a networking tutorial sponsored by Cisco. I've actually started just looking to see if another distro is acknowledged before I actually see what they have to say.
There's a very different feel if you're trying to set something up and a website has "if you're in this family of linux, here's what you do, or if you're in this one, do this" versus "so you want to set up x in linux? Here's how you do it in Ubuntu". It's as if no other distro exists.
Anyway, ignoring that rant. Linux is super stable these days, you can take pretty much any distro and you'll be fine. I tend to gravitate toward the base distros, like fedora, opensuse, and Debian over Rocky, mint, etc. I haven't come across one in the past five years that gave me any trouble, except when it came to updated nvidia drivers and wayland. In which case some distros were behind a month or two on getting those updated.
On the flip side, I use Ubuntu and I'm very happy with it. I didn't like Gnome so I realised I could easily switch to KDE Plasma. It's still miles better than Windows. Although I did have issues once installing Selenium, turns out it didn't play well with snap packages which I didn't know were there (I was using apt-get install)
Yeah, I switched to Ubuntu in 2008, and it was great for years, but lately it’s just been so awful.
When I was a kid (15-ish years ago) my laptop's hard drive crashed. The repair place told my dad that something broke and it's not compatible with Windows so they installed Ubuntu. Barely noticed the difference.
My advice would be to just give up on the dual boot (unless you still need it, and even then, maybe keep Windows on a different machine maybe?).
I think the best way to go is full Linux immersion.