This idea was blatantly stolen from sewn's blog because I'm in an exam period right now and need to post something new for my new year's resolution.
Anyways, this will be a list with a few surviving screenshots from my time with different distros
The Newbie Era
This one mainly consists of my first time being a new linux user, asking very stupid questions and making very stupid mistakes while experimenting and breaking things
Linux Mint (nov 2020, dec 2020)
Linux Mint has a place in my heart as the distro I started with, it's not perfect and I would likely be very frustrated using Cinnamon nowadays but the reason I love this OS so much is the vivid emotions I felt while using it and more importantly while installing it.
The anxiety of seeing the spinning Linux Mint branding as the live environment was booting up, the amazement I felt trying the live system out on my 8 year old Dell family computer and feeling it coming back to life as if it was born again and the pride I felt wiping out Windows 10 from it knowing that from now on I will be free to use my PC without the bloat and the constant nagging from Microsoft.
The usage period was a very fun time as well, though I remember hating the package manager that came bundled with Cinnamon and that driving me to start using the terminal for more and more tasks.
Manjaro (dec 2020, feb 2021)
Manjaro is a barely cobbled together mess of software that is so buggy that it's main goal of being a stable Arch Linux doesn't matter, the theme they use is always ugly as sin on all desktop environments and their program choices are bizarre at times. It felt like using Arch Linux with a layer of shit on it.
the only saving grace for this experience was XFCE, it's a really comfy desktop that manages to be feature rich but not too overwhelming like KDE Plasma or too snobbishly minimalist like GNOME 3 and tinkering with X.org compositors like picom on top of the XFCE desktop was very interesting for me then.
This being my first experience with a moderately "advanced" distro wasn't very promising and to this day, I don't get why anyone ever recommended Manjaro to new users.
The Tinkering Era
In my historiography of my Linux Journey the end of my newbie era was very explosive
My first shot at installing Archlinux was disturbed by my failure at flashing the USB correctly after I installed the system incorrectly, I wiped the USB drive prematurely and just like that, I locked myself out of my computer and procrastinated fixing it for a week or two.
After that frankly traumatising event for my newbie-self, I felt like I wasn't ready for Arch yet and opted for a distro based on it with the training wheels off and at the time Arco was the most popular choice but Unfortunately, you can't use it anymore as the maintainer stepped down from the project recently.
Arco Linux (mar 2021, may 2021)
The installation process was really cool with the GUI environment and custom Calimares installer that had options out the wazoo from preferred default applications to different kernel options. I had fun using this OS and I really loved it's acceptance and pride of being an arch fork and I didn't face many issues with it as it mostly stayed out of the way in that regard unlike Manjaro. Here, I had my first experience with the power of the AUR which had literally everything I wanted ready to install or compile in just a few minutes. My experience with Arco gave me the confidence to get over the setback I faced and finally install Arch without nuking my system.
ArchLinux (may 2021, jun 2021)
This time around, I installed Arch in my first try and it took ~30 minutes in total to get it installed and another hour to get my setup back up and I enjoyed using it for the most part but I hated that it wasn't the full minimalist experience I was promised. Arch used the utterly disgusting Systemd which felt like a big piece of hidden bloat inside a system that was trying to appear elitist. This was the reason for switching to ArtixLinux
Artix Linux (jul 2021, sep 2021)
Unlike Arch, Artix really was a perfect experience with all the software I ever want and runit as my init system. I finally felt like I was at home in my OS and that I finally stopped being a guest in the Linux world and became a native that was properly capable of administering my own system. When Linux becomes your home, it's like a quiet shed with a beautiful mountain view while using Windows feels like having a barely functioning apartment in the middle of a big city. But using Artix still felt a bit hacky as some packages had to be installed specifically from their repos and I was getting sick of the whole Arch culture. This eventually led me to by far the best experience I had on a Linux operating system
VoidLinux (sep 2021-jan 2023)
Yes, I used Void for a year and 4 months and it's by far my favourite and deserves a post of it's own. But for now, I'll say Void is better than the sum of it's main attractions and it's a great middle point between Linux and BSD
OpenBSD (jan-aug 2023)
I already made a post about my motivation for switching to OpenBSD and for the most part, I kept using my system like nothing changed, the smaller and more tight nit code base is really nice, the documentation is noticeably better and I definitely got more nerd street credit for using a BSD. The small port collection was kind of disappointing though. Great OS.
The Current Era
Fedora Linux (jul 2024, jun 2025)
I'm currently on fedora and it's such a nice operating system: stable, comfy and effortless to use. It's definetly refreshing to use a just werks solution for once but I think I'm done with that for the moment
Quick Stints
Ubuntu (mar 2021)
I used Ubuntu for two weeks mostly just to say I tried it since it's still very popular on the desktop for some reason and I found it to be a clunky ineffective choice in comparison to other just werks solutions like Mint and Fedora.
Debian (may 2021)
Debian has a decent user experience and every package under the sun in it's repos. It worked quite well on an old notebook I had lying around but I never found a reason to keep said notebook.
FreeBSD (mar 2022)
FreeBSD is a great operating system and the Linux compatebility definetly sweetens the deal and makes up for the small selection of ports problem that plagues other BSDs.
I used it on an old notebook and it worked pretty well but I don't feel comfortable reviewing it like other OSes.