Ever since I could use a computer, I used Windows. And for a good number of decades, that didn’t change. I went from Windows 95 all the way to 11, upgrading whenever I could and shunning other options. I’ve never owned a macOS device, and before 2025, I had only toyed with Linux once a decade ago and hated it.

Well, when Windows 10’s end-of-life date loomed, and the thought of having to either upgrade to Windows 11 or stick with a “dead” operating system came to mind, I chose the secret third option: moving to Linux. In the time between when I first installed Linux and today (a whole five months), I learned more about how operating systems work than in the years I’ve clocked in with Windows.

Moving to Linux taught me more about computers

Just getting started

When I first ventured into Linux, I used it as a dual-boot alongside Windows 10. This was pretty easy to do; I just partitioned off a segment with Windows’ tool and then installed Linux Mint on it. However, once I was on Linux Mint, I had to start learning things pretty quickly.

My introduction to Linux was all about using the terminal, handling AppImages, and exploring what it meant for an operating system to be open-source. I would eventually migrate from Linux Mint to Fedora, and doing so taught me the power of desktop environments, how to set up media codecs, and, strangely enough, the weird situation of trying to play an H265 video on Linux. Turns out that the Dragon media player can do it just fine, but browsers can’t, and it’s something to do with licensing.

This is also where I learned about the power of repositories and installing apps via the Terminal. Not to say that you can’t do the same with Windows (because you totally can), but I never really felt the need to do so when I could download a handy-dandy installer, double-click it, then click “Next” until everything was installed. Sure, it meant that I accidentally installed a weird browser toolbar every so often because I forgot to uncheck a box at one point, but it was easy.

Using a repository with Fedora took some getting used to, but once I had it down, I couldn’t stop using the terminal to download apps. It was fast, fun, and arguably one of the safer ways of going about the process.

Testing Arch Linux really taught me more about computers

It was very much a “throw me in the deep end” experience

Next on my list was installing Arch Linux the manual way. If you’re unsure as to what that entails, the Arch Linux manual installer is literally just a command line with a few tools built in. You have to type in what you want to do, and you have to start with the basics, such as connecting to the internet, setting up your user account, and setting your timezone, all via commands and file editing.

There are easier ways to do it; for instance, the installer itself comes with a GUI-based installer called archinstall. However, I really wanted to do it the hard way, with the idea that if it truly was too much for me to bear, I could just install EndeavourOS or something.

Well, after following the Arch Linux wiki and a YouTube video, I got it all working nicely and properly. Both the wiki and the tutorial I watched explained what I was doing and why, so I was never just blindly whacking in commands until I had an Arch Linux distro. The process taught me how to create a boot partition, the role of a home directory in Linux, and how to mount drives. And honestly, I could just sit down and read the Arch Linux wiki and learn a ton more if I wanted to, maybe on my next long flight.

Botching my dual-boot and having to rebuild it really taught me more about computers

I got a little ahead of myself

Unfortunately, after setting up Arch Linux, my confidence got ahead of me. I liked using Fedora and Arch Linux, but I had installed them on different devices. So, what if I modified my Fedora PC to also have Arch Linux as a dual-boot? I just set up Arch anyway, so surely it’s not that hard.

It was.

My first attempt at dual-booting *messed *up the Fedora partition, making ittotally unrecognisable, so I wiped everything and reinstalled Fedora. Then I thought things would go better if I dual-booted Fedora and openSUSE, but the bootloaders didn’t get along, and while I was trying to fix it, I did something that made the openSUSE bootloader vanish into thin air. I tried dual-booting Fedora and EndeavourOS, but broke everything again.

Fortunately, the process taught me about using the os-prober command, how bootloaders work, and what not to do when setting one up. I still haven’t given setting up a dual boot another try, but now that I found this excellent recovery app, I can restore my data if things go south next time.

Linux taught me a lot more than Windows did

Whether I was using an operating system or breaking it, Linux taught me a lot about how things work. Now, if I’m having issues with my PC, I’m far better equipped to figure out what exactly broke and how to fix it again.