Someone close to me went into a scientific field and had this experience at their school. 100% Linux. They taught them how to use it for everything from the ground up; regular usage, and things specific to their discipline. I would have loved to have had the same foundational experience. My Linux knowledge grew together as a patchwork of experiences breaking and fixing things, reinstalling, hacking together solutions that should never have worked, etc.
I appreciate your comment about my experience. Perhaps I’m not giving myself enough credit for what I know. I kind of know these things in isolation since my IRL friends, bar one or two, aren’t very technical so I have no benchmarks to compare myself with.
I did a little bit of cloud stuff in a past job. It was a mix of billing and tech support, nothing requiring a ton of experience or certs, though a general knowledge of computers and public cloud computing was needed. A lot of people who worked there did not have it so I floated to the top pretty quick. I work hard, but I don’t need the stress of being in a dysfunctional org.
I have definitely played nice with MS in the past and gained valuable knowledge and skills doing it. The first tech job I worked in was kind of a talent farm in the most miserable way. It was about 30% billing support, 60% tech support, and 10% sitting in the bathroom on your phone wishing you could be unborn. Poor pay, high-school-like conditions, manipulative detached upper management, absolutely unattainable goals, but you would get a resume bullet point you could then use to get hired at a bigger tech company. I did really well here, got promoted a few times, simply because I was nice to colleagues and customers and empathized with the misery of dealing with our support. A lot of my friends followed each other one at a time to better companies and I followed suit landing a tech sales/support gig. Less interesting, but almost double the money. After a few years and one layoff, now I’m searching and not even determined to stay in tech, though that’s where my most marketable experience is now. On one hand, working in tech has made it harder to enjoy computers as a hobby and I hate that. On the other hand, the good benefits and median pay for my area made this last job a godsend during a very wild and chaotic few years of my life.
I agree with you about getting out of the capitalist ride. All I need is $15M so I can buy my own hot spring and retire in the mountains. :P On a less fanciful note and hopefully on a shorter timeline, I want to save enough that I can live off of the investment income or at least supplement 20hr/wk wages using the remaining time to pursue hobbies, volunteering, etc. Having that revenue stream as insurance against a situation where I cannot work anymore would be huge. Having a budget big enough to relocate to a different state if needed is already a luxury.
I find myself wondering what’s coming after the AI bubble bursts. Despite Azure being okayish, I see a rough time ahead for MS. I know it’s a small part of their business, but Windows is becoming increasingly toxic and I think they over-invested in AI. We’re undergoing some pretty big societal/cultural shifts at the moment. South Park parodied it in a recent episode where all the blue collar workers get fabulously rich because no one knows “how to do anything anymore”. What companies/industries are going to help build things back up when the tower collapses?
Having had 30 gigs, what do you think worked out best for you when it came to finding a new job?
I appreciate the tip about R&D and startups. I ride my bike a lot and sometimes when I go through office parks or light industrial I see boatloads of tech-ish companies that have no consumer name recognition or anything. Whether it’s R&D at a big cloud provider or something similar, the behind the scenes stuff is more likely to utilize Linux.
Oh, I’m a dummy, that joke went right over my head the first time!
I’m still looking for that ideal tie-in where I link it with something I care about. I don’t know if I want to stay in IT, but I have to do something and at least the skills will be transferable. The work from home aspect of IT has also been very good to me. I’ve outperformed at 40h/week support work while taking care of sick family members and working out of my… walk out basement.
At least I have some outdoor hobbies to bring balance to my cellar-dwelling tenancies.
It helps me to think about it like this:
The shittier the world’s circumstances, the brighter and longer a single good deed will shine.
Fenix 6 and I’ve never not been able to clean the little bit of dead skin that ends up in the screws with the tip of a pine needle or an unfolded paperclip.
I learned to tolerate 10 for my limited uses. Like you, my Windows PC jumped from 7 to 10. When 11 rolled around, the centered start menu was the first thing I noticed and it was an instant wtf moment.
64Gb of DDR4 w/ fancy RGB lights in July 2025 for ~$160. Can’t imagine paying the current prices.
I was told I was probably overdoing it putting 96GB in my PC a year or two ago. Be that true, but if this pricing doesn’t ease up by the time it becomes a server, my ZFS cache will love it!
Thank you for posting this. It’s interesting to see someone else who has walked similar paths, and not just see what you did, but read about how you felt about it and how you decided to do things and how you felt afterwards.
I also went from rooted Android (LG, Motorolla, OnePlus, etc. to GrapheneOS. (custom Windows Mobile Roms before that ~ not even Windows Phone, Windows Mobile…) I miss some of the customizability that custom Roms and root gave me, but surprisingly I don’t miss root that much.
I used root mainly to block ads and theme/modify visual elements. I still block ads, just network wide and not on an individual device level. I did use it for some other stuff and have tried a handful of the things on your list.
Similar to your root situation, something that caused me ongoing grief and difficulty is degoogling. Like you mention with freezing apps, I haven’t been able to fully cut out all the google stuff though over the course of the last year, I have gotten very close. I made a Lemmy post asking for help a while back and made significant progress with my remaining proprietary dependencies thanks to people’s kind suggestions. I hope to share with the community again the next time I redo an Android device.
Btw, I love the site: very Y2K; very small web.
I already finished my coffee too. :-/ Though I suppose I could throw on another pot while we wait.
So why don’t they use it to unfuck Windows 11… before I finish my coffee?
I had this happen before but not in recent times. Not sure if others have experienced the same.
For a while I had my bootloader on a single drive but I now have my Linux bootloader on /dev/sda and my windows on /dev/sdb and toggle it in the bios when I need to use Windows. I haven’t had Windows overwrite anything in a long time. Could be a coincidence though.
Not a mean question at all. I haven’t had more difficulty keeping a working system than I did on Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, etc. I get everything I need in Arch and the packages are always fresh off the grill. I also like the emphasis on text config files and a ground-up install. That helped me better understand my system and how it works.
No idea about performance. My performance recommendation is “don’t run Windows!” :)
I read this a while back and am already taking action to replace my Ring cams and doorbell with locally controlled Reolink cameras. I already have them set up and working on my desk, just need to finish the actual install. I am currently trying to figure out why I’m getting <12v on my doorbell circuit.
One of my objections is that it pushes proprietary operating systems without providing a neutral FOSS option. So in a sense, the tracking and profiling (per your Android or iOS phone) has to come along for the ride. It also opens the door to more and more invasive IDing both IRL and on the web as it will eventually be worked into a bunch of different things. Everything that’s optional now could become mandatory later. It’s like building a munitions factory but putting a “Mark’s Fruit Export & Wholesale” sign on the building. All you have to do is bust down a few walls and put a fresh coat of paint in things and the gig is up.
Doesn’t matter if it’s a D or an R because they all want this gross shit. Can I get at least one real American who believes in privacy and liberty please!
My undergrad was set up for Windows as the default assumption. Eventually I figured out you could visit the IT help desk and they would help you set up the VPN another way.