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For the past 3 months I've been running OpenSUSE Tumbleweed on my laptop.
This all started because I started having some mixed feelings on Void running on my laptop.
Is Systemd-free really for me? (2023-03-24)
Trying a Systemd Distro Again (2023-04-14)
There were a few major instability issues that were really starting to get to me, it turns out my Thinkpad T14sG3(AMD) had some major issues on Linux. Of course I kinda jumped to the conclusion that this was a Void issue which fanned the flames of wanting to distro-hop. Only to have the same exact crashing issue, albeit at a (perceived) lower rate, before being fixed after a few kernel updates.
It took a while to get OpenSUSE feeling comfortable, being a little tricky to get codecs and stuff like that, but after a week or so I had squashed every bug and got it to be usable.
I then proceeded to take a few month break from using computers.
Ok that's an overstatement, as much as I wish it were true. I still used my computer daily, but solely my laptop, and I stopped fiddling with it, I tried to run updates when I remembered to, but my daily life had changed. My days were taken up by my garden, my (now) girlfriend, and work; I all but stopped being really interested in Linux or programming or anything to do with computers at all really. Sure I occasionally would sit down on my desktop to do something that benefits from the larger screen and two monitors, each time laughing at how many notable changes I had made with my browser setup and other software choices since I had last regularly used it, but never more than a few minutes.
But then the new Minecraft update came out. I was hoping to play on my desktop, still running a probably 6 month old install of void, which hadn't been updated in at least a month and a half. I was thinking I might need to do a whole new fresh install because it had been so long without updating that I would run into issues, but after everything finished downloading, I restarted and everything was pretty much working! Except for some reason all my pip-installed python packages, which were only a few so after a reinstall of those it was up and running again. My friend group set up a server and we all played for a few days, until they kinda lost interest, but I still played for at least a couple hours in the morning before work for the past couple weeks. I really love Minecraft, there is no other game that just sucks me in like that and I can't get enough of it. That is of course a problem sometimes though, and with the server being shut down now, I must find something to fill that void in my schedule.
I was so certain that the buggy mess I remember Void being was going to break with that update, but alas it still is running fine. The days of mandatory bi-weekly updates for a rolling release may in some ways be past us. Linux, even a semi-fringe distro in Void, is far more sturdy than it was in the days of yore.
I can't remember which video it was for the life of me but from the YouTube channel "Technology Connections" there was an episode where he was talking about some computer problem he was having and, to nip the objectors in the bud, he added something to the line of "And before you tell me, I know this isn't a problem on Linux, but I like doing work on my computer, not working on my computer". For the past few months I've been doing a lot more of the prior without doing much at all of the latter. Sure I still did things in a Linux-y way, using the terminal and stuff like that, but I used my computer without making many changes to config-files, permissions, or anything of the sort.
I think of the first time I installed Ubuntu, just playing around with the new Unity interface and all this foreign-to-me software, before I really started tweaking things.
I just have come to the conclusion that so many come to, and frankly I have come to before but forgot: the distro you use really doesn't matter. Linux is usable either way. OpenSUSE and Void couldn't be more different than each other yet both have given me great experiences using them, with little maintenance over the past couple months.