A Decade of Ubuntu

It's crazy to think that Ubuntu has now been out for ten years.

I remember ordering my first set of free Ubuntu CD's which was something Canonical did until April, 2011 allowing people to try Ubuntu for free. Without this service, I probably would've not tried out Ubuntu until much later on when I wouldn't have to spare a precious CD-R in order to burn the image.

I'll never forget being so amazed that the entire operating system could run off the CD itself without having to install anything and was so entirely different from using Windows. How could most my devices and peripherals work without an hour or two of installing drivers? Kernel? apt-get? I was petrified installing it alongside Windows and remember just biting the bullet and pressing enter on so many dialogs which at the time I had no idea what they did.

I remember my first attempts at Ubuntu installs eventally getting completely botched after messing with X and the display settings. Not knowing how to do anything at the command line much less edit a file with simple nano, I definitely just blew everything away and reinstalled a dozen times after a dozen (to the dozenth) mistakes. Frustration and necessity fueling Google searches across the Ubuntu forums. Really, I was just trying to understand how to fix my issues which mainly consisted of wanting to make my desktop environment as tacky as possible with jiggly windows, genie window entrances, and conflagrating exit animations.

Now I know Ubuntu is an essential platform to not just fiddling and tinkering, but also getting things done. Knowing my way around the commandline and basic job handling allowed me to parallelize my machine learning homework. Being familiar with Ubuntu's apt-get makes Debian also familiar on the Raspberry Pi and allowed me to create a ~$25 Apple time machine. so everything I need is double if not triple backed up somewhere. And finally, all the little projects I want to make come to life will likely all be possible thanks to Ubuntu (and yes, I realize Greater Linux Ecosystem).

It won't be till next year that I'll be able to say I've been using Linux for a decade, but I'm definitely proud to be able to say so.