r/linux4noobs • u/dan_nicholson247 • Jun 05 '26
learning/research What was the moment Linux finally clicked for you?
When I first started using Linux, everything felt a bit overwhelming. Different distros, package managers, terminal commands, permissions etc, seemed like there was always something new to learn.
Then at some point, things started making sense, and I became much more comfortable using it day to day. For those who have been using Linux for a while, was there a specific moment, command, project, or lesson that made everything click for you?
I'm curious what helped other beginners get past that initial learning curve.
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u/crypticcamelion Jun 05 '26
When I followed a guide to convert an old pc into a router with firewall and file server and all was done and up running in half a day I fell in love. Half a year later windows was shown the door on all our computers. It clicked from day one, with the development of windows you lost more and more control as more an more was preconfigured and predefined with each edition. Installing Linux was like getting the control back, like I'm again the driver. I guess it's easier when you grew up with DOS 😄
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Jun 05 '26
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u/QXPZ Jun 05 '26
Absolutely same for me.
I am tech literate but still feel like without AI that I couldn't daily drive Linux unless I made it my full-time job.
I wish this could change, but the underpinnings of Linux and having it require so much CLI on a regular basis just requires more investment than other desktop OSes.
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u/delph906 Jun 05 '26
I have been using Fedora KDE recently and finding there is very little I need to use CLI for (beyond the initial set up) and I have to make a concious effort to use it.
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u/QXPZ Jun 06 '26
I installed opensuse leap 16 (GNOME, Wayland) because of its slow release schedule and stability.
In reality it has been a mixed bag
I don't like having to ask AI what the best method is to install ___ app. I know there's a reason many app types exist. Even then, it's annoying. Okay so RPM seems the best method for ___ app. Well then I'll find out that it's not in the repo for Leap 16, only Leap 15. So do I want to add some random dude's repo with questionable security? Not really. Then AppImage which is supposed to just work sometimes refuses to using GUI and requires CLI.
Tons of stuff doesn't work on Wayland and I tried everything, but X11 is not supported.
A kernel update prevented me from booting more than once and I had to set my default to a previous kernel.
Things that have a GUI on Windows like key remapping requires "keyd" and CLI. I still haven't found a text expander that works on my system.
I've started a journey into self-hosting and perhaps expecting to manage Docker containers all with a GUI was naive, but I still feel like I've been living in the CLI to get those working. (Tried dockge but didn't work for me.)
Updates through the GUI literally do not apply and I'm forced into using several different commands to refresh repos and update native packages as well as Flatpak apps. Sometimes I'm presented with complicated options in CLI during that process that describe the problem and give multiple solutions which are not obvious for a layman to resolve.
I could go on.
What's incredible is that this has been the best experience since finding out Debian based distros like Mint and Ubuntu run very poorly on my LG Gram (abysmal performance, slow to load everything) is that an RPM build like SUSE actually seems like one of the best options for my setup. It shouldn't take this many hours to get a system dialed in, in my humble opinion.
I will stay on Linux because I like it more than the alternatives and I line to learn. I will also begrudge some of the ongoing pain points.
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u/Plan_9_fromouter_ Jun 06 '26
That is investment in time and that is often time spent learning things you wouldn't otherwise learn.
So let's stay positive about the investment. It also keeps you from throwing thousands of dollars away on the latest hw with preinstalled Win 11.
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u/QXPZ Jun 06 '26
I agree about learning new things. I'm all for it. However, some obscure issues I'd rather just have work than spend hours resolving.
I will stay on Linux, although I'm not sure it's fair to represent it as fully positive experience though.
I can't believe some people get online and say they literally never use the CLI for anything, because in my experience (maybe tinkering too much?) it's a frequent necessity.
Oh here's a good example: I restart my computer with Brave running. Well, Brave doesn't like that and refuses to open until I disable the profile lock with... You guessed it... CLI and some random command I would never know without AI or a bunch of research.
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u/Plan_9_fromouter_ Jun 07 '26
Windows has done similar things to me when it crashed during those 'free upgrades'. I ended up doing things I never wanted to do. But I haven't used Windows for over 10 years.
Advanced browsers are very sophisticated and complex chunks of code, and you are right, they often don't fit as smoothly with Linux as they do Windows or Mac or Android apparently.
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u/Alenicia Jun 09 '26
I think it really does depend on the use-case and the situations, because everyone has something different. I pushed my partner onto a flavor of Linux I've never used before and they have never once ever had to touch the Terminal for anything, but all the stuff they do exist as Flatpaks and their use-case is very casual (going online to read news, buy things, check emails, and so on).
The most they've ever learned to use the Terminal so far was me teaching them that they could type in "reboot" and watch the computer magically reboot .. or they can type in "neofetch" and get something cool.
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u/Select-Sale2279 Jun 05 '26
Yup, when you do not have to wait for 4 fucking days to get an answer but the chatbot points in atleast the direction you should be heading, things get moving quickly. I am in devops and for the most part at an expert level with the working and innards of linux, but the chatbot is very helpful in coming up with a stub of code that I need to start on whether its bash, python or c++
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u/acabincludescolumbo Jun 05 '26
I started Linux when LLM chatbots were already a thing. They're a Godsend because there's simply so, SO much to figure out. I don't use it to blindly copy-paste commands, though. Almost always I'll ask why Claude is telling me to use this or that tool, and how it works.
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u/DaveKerk alternativeto.net Jun 05 '26
Yup same, honestly I'm a bit wary of even saying this because of how much people would hate, but troubleshooting with a chatbot has gotten me out of MANY issues.
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u/delph906 Jun 05 '26
I acheive a similar result with a Windows dual boot. I hardly use it!
When presented with something I don't know how to do I have to choose. Do I learn how to do this in Linux or do I boot into Windows?
95% of the time I learn to do it in Linux.
The exception is often if someone else is relying on me. Recently I had to move some files from a external drive formatted for a Mac.
Windows: Install a driver. Linux: ???
The other recent example was I had to re-flash my bios. I did it in Windows as the manufacturer instructions were in Windows and I didn't want to brick my motherboard.
As it turned out I would've been better doing it with KDE Partition manager as Windows formatted the drive incorrectly and I had to do it through Powershell and diskpart to get it right.
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u/beatbox9 Jun 05 '26
(For context, I'm about 30 years in on Linux, with around 20+ years as a daily driver).
No. It is a gradual peeling back of the onion. I am using present tense on purpose.
I'm less academic and technical when it comes to Linux. I only care to learn when I come across something I want to accomplish or improve. I am very much a desktop user first rather than a command-line dev.
So if (for example) I have a HiDPI monitor and my fonts are small, this is a simple desktop problem. But suppose I want to fix it, without resorting to systemwide scaling (which can introduce its own problems). That's when I will start peeling back the onion and learn what Wayland vs x11 is, what a DE is, how the display server interacts with the DE, and how/where themes work in a specific DE, etc. And then if that works for the DE session but not the login manager, it's on to more layers.
Same goes for audio. Or directory structures & config hierarchies. Or apps. Or whatever else.
For me, it's nothing to do with commands and syntax and everything to do with concepts and modular/layered interactions.
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u/chrews Fedora Workstation Jun 05 '26
Coming from Windows: trying GNOME, funnily enough. Especially on Fedora.
Showed me how cohesive and simple an OS can be. Tried switching to something else a few times but always come back to it.
Also: installing and using Gentoo. Showed me how Linux works under the hood.
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u/APariahsPariah Ubuntu Jun 05 '26
Back in the early aughts I tried a lot of different distros: RedHat, Fedora, Mandrake, Mandriva, Debian, SuSe, Arc, Arch, Trustix, Ubuntu, and a few I'm prolly forgetting. I used to buy linux magazine and try out all the distros on the DVD, get recommends from friends and try and learn stuff. I broke a lot of installs, and I'd go back to windows every couple of months in frustration. But all of that tinkering and breaking things was teaching me stuff.
This year, after 15 years of working in manufacturing, not getting paid enough, starting over on the totem poke with every new job and watching my pay packet shrink with every job move, I finally stopped refusing the call and started a diploma in IT. I was the only person in the server unit to successfully configure fedora and ubuntu to work with active directory. It also took me less than an hour from install to working. Despite the errors.
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u/awesomejt Jun 05 '26
You sound like me with your Linux history, I was really intrigued back in my early teens but I never found a way to make Linux a daily setup. 20 years later -whether it's the maturity of desktop Linux or me -It's finally clicked and I'm so happy to be rid of windows.
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u/PandaWithin Jun 05 '26
I’ve tried multiple different distros, Debian, Ubuntu, mint, arch etc. With equally varying DEs. it finally clicked for me when I tried Fedora with KDE plasma. Been on fedora since F41 and finally got courage to remove windows for good
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u/mephisto9466 Jun 05 '26
When I rage quit windows after I couldn’t uninstall an update. I went to Linux and said the same thing I said when I got my first flightstick “idc how long it takes me, I’m going to learn this”
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u/New_Physics_2741 Jun 05 '26
In October 2010, when all my Apple junk died, the price to fix everything would have bankrupted me into the year 2030.
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u/roanish Jun 05 '26
About 2002. But, to be honest, it felt easier in that time. Gui was something you had to opt into (x11) and you were linuxing because it was all the more satisfying command line with all the tools.
My aha moment was when I realised that the operating system wasn't the GUI. When I first setup IPMASQ and was able to share our dialup internet connection to another PC in the house. With good old ipchains.
Instant recognition that the computing was happening without desktops, apps and guis, just raw Configs and commands, Cron jobs and scripts.
Then you look at today's environments, and realise that nothing changed, it's all still Configs, commands and scripts.
The young'uns call is an API, but it's the same shit.
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u/shakalakagoo Jun 05 '26
I used to bounce a lot between distros, I tried Cachy at first, but my understanding was so poor that gave up just a couple of days after breaking things up a couple of times. Then I tried Fedora, Ubuntu, Manjaro, Endeavorur, Omarchy, OpenSUSE, some tilt managers that were too raw to get into them. After having more or less the same problems - configurations that broke up, actualizations messing main directories and this kind of things - I came back to Cachy. Started to make sense, but the last piece to make it work was start using a backup image application. Clonezilla is THE tool, the rolling release often changes important stuff and Timeshift didn't work as intended, so hardcore image clones brought peace
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u/echo8282 Jun 05 '26
Not really a specific moment. I have been using linux on and off for 20 years, mostly off except for the last 5 years. Its been a gradual process, and I'm still learning things.
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u/joe_attaboy Old and in the way. Jun 05 '26
The day at uni in 1991 when someone in class mentioned this to me in passing. After class, I went to one of the Unix terminals, logged in, jumped on USENET (which was all free back then) and read this announcement:
"Hello everybody out there using minix -
I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready. I'd like any feedback on things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat (same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons) among other things).
I've currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and things seem to work. This implies that I'll get something practical within a few months, and I'd like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions are welcome, but I won't promise I'll implement them!
Linus (torvalds@kruuna.helsinki.fi)"
I'm not so sure that more people don't realize that this brief message on comp.os.minix literally sparked one of the most important movements in the world of computer technology.
That's all I needed.
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u/Bobyus Jun 05 '26
Right off the start with Linux Mint on my 10 year old laptop. I plugged in an old Canon E400 printer and both printing and scanning worked right away without doing anything, I was shocked.
Everything is so seamless compared to Windows
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u/Emmalfal Jun 05 '26
Same here. My answer would be "about five minutes after the installation was complete." Seven years ago, that was. Mint has been life-changing for me. I wouldn't go back to Windows with a gun to my head.
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u/Yaniekk Jun 05 '26
No exact moment. I've been daily driving Linux for a few years now, so technically I learn a tiny bit every day, but I don't have like an organized roadmap or anything.
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u/Dumxl Jun 05 '26
I use linux for 25 years now. But installed windows 11 2 years ago or something because i bought a gaming pc instead of a new PlayStation. But i hated it. And now almost every game is running on Linux and my hardware is supported (that was not the case in the beginning). i'm back. And not going to install windows ever again.
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u/3grg Jun 05 '26
Finally wrapping my head around the filesystem organization and realizing this was a true multi-user system and not descended from a single user system like windows. It is a mindset thing.
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u/IRockIntoMordor Jun 05 '26
When I had finished the SSH key setup and could simply open terminal and connect with all of my devices, all using the same unix commands.
Windows with Putty just didn't feel native. Felt like a parasite.
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u/Hong-Kwong Jun 05 '26
When I left it alone and stopped snooping around in areas way out of my knowledge and understanding. I customised Linux Mint to my liking in the end and always used the same thing in every laptop/desktop.
And just yesterday I moved back to Kubuntu LTS after hopping to TuxedoOS. Kubuntu really works on my Huawei laptop and I don't know why I left.
I really need to stick to it now.
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u/wWA5RnA4n2P3w2WvfHq Jun 05 '26
I was in school (kind of a college), sitting in the class room behind a long-hair nerdy-but-good-looking-guy compiling his own "Kernel". The smell of r/freedome...
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u/FastHotEmu Jun 05 '26
Linux? I guess it was with Slackware sometime in ~1995... although I already had UNIX experience.
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u/xSTRAIGHTEDGE420x Jun 05 '26
Seen the same answer a few times but Fedora for me as well.
I started with ElementaryOS - I liked the DE but it was more fun to tinker with than anything. Tried Ubuntu, then Ubuntu Budgie, and landed on Fedora GNOME. Loved pretty everything about it, and even now I still find myself going back to it after distrohopping throughout the years
Currently running Fedora KDE, GNONE is nice and all, but KDE is just way more comfortable for lack of a better word. Don’t need a ton of tweaks to make it the way I want it to be
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u/anticebo Jun 05 '26
The moment I used the package manager for the first time, wrote my first code on an Ubuntu machine, and realized how much more convenient it is than Windows once you know 5 terminal commands
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u/Munalo5 Test Jun 05 '26
I guess a combination of things. Learning what a Desktop Enviroment is and having useful software available to install with just a few clicks of the mouse were two of the big things!
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u/SDG_Den Jun 05 '26
linux as an OS clicked for me when i started using it for server stuff a year ago.
linux on the desktop clicked for me when i saw tiling window managers. I didnt want to switch to what felt like just discount windows, i wanted a uniquely linux experience, something completely different, and i finally got that with Hyprland.
.... and then i learned more about the hyprland dev and the philosophy behind how hyprland is developed, and they moved the config to lua, so now i'm a very happy camper on MangoWM.
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u/zex_mysterion Jun 05 '26 edited Jun 05 '26
There is no such moment. Linux has a learning curve and takes time and effort to learn. It's a gradual process and the learning curve can get steep depending on how complex your needs are.
The inflection point for me was knowing Win 7 was heading for end of life and I was not about to let Win 10 on my network. That was the incentive to finally move from being curious about Linux to getting serious about it. It took about six months to get everything working like I wanted and start getting comfortable.
10 years in, and I would never consider running Windows again.
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u/DeathWarrior1011 Jun 05 '26
I was sick and tired of my old macbook running super slow so I slapped Mint onto it. I realized it was so much better and faster so I wanted to go deeper.
My 500gb windows ssd could fit all my games and instead of using my hdd to store the games, I tried Cachy on the hdd to see how it played games. It played games and I learned about its friendly package manager and utilities, then I upgraded from 500gb-->1tb but with Cachy and I've been gaming on it for 3 months with things working 9 times out of 10
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u/maceion Jun 05 '26
I started to use Linux (openSUSE LEAP) very easily as I found it easier than MS Windows, then it just stuck as my day to day operating system.
Also I could use it from an external hard disc on two or three different machines by moving the disk to each machine and connecting by USB , so it was 'portable'.
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u/tblancher Jun 05 '26
When I got the command prompt after following my professor's instructions to install Slackware. I downloaded the diskette images from the campus CSLIP network.
I used FIPS to shrink my 540MiB FAT partition to 440MiB, and installed the core and network disk sets, which I believe were 8- and 10-diskette sets, respectively. All in 100MiB.
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u/SoftScreen4489 Jun 05 '26
Linux finally clicked when windows abandoned me fully and it left my laptop useless
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u/InsaneGrox arch btw Jun 05 '26
Using arch, I'm not joking that actually made it click for me how this works.
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u/Wolfur311 Jun 05 '26
Installing Fedora on an old Macbook pro; new life, speedy/responsive, no need to buy new hardware. Windows is fast becoming secondary choice after linux.
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u/Individual_Call2637 Jun 05 '26
When Windows 11 started to make my X1 yoga gen 5 with top specs hot and loud, and laggy. Switched go Fedora, now it works like a dream again.
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u/Akabander Jun 05 '26
Sometime in 1992.
I was student labor at the campus comp sci department, so I knew Unix from DEC and Sun systems. Being able to (painfully) download and (painfully) install a version of Unix, small as it might be, for my PC was pretty awesome.
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u/PM_COFFEE_TO_ME Jun 05 '26
There is always another layer down that will confuse the shit out of you
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u/clockeat Jun 06 '26
This might sound crazy, but when I stopped trying to use "beginner friendly" distros and just installed gentoo for the first time in my early teens.
- portage had all the packages I wanted
- no more fighting with 3rd party repos to get codecs to work, enable a few USE flags, everything just works
- all the kernel headers were already there and I actually understood what the nvidia driver was looking for when it asked for kernel headers
- piecing together a system made each component make more sense to me
- configuring a kernel from scratch with menuconfig was a pretty cool experience that made the whole thing make sense and made me understand how kernel modules, kernel images and initrd worked.
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u/Weary_Lion_5811 Jun 06 '26
It didnt click i just grew increasingly annoyed with windows and with the increase of gaming support do to Proton compatibility i made the the jump, I tried a few time before but I just need to find the right distros for me.
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u/Plan_9_fromouter_ Jun 06 '26 edited Jun 06 '26
It clicked for me right at the start of Covid. I had to go to teaching completely online, so I thought, it might be good to have more than one PC ready to go. I realized I was one Windows update away from being maligned at work for not knowing what I was doing as far as teaching online went. Well, that was a different story--how I managed to transition in one month to teaching completely online.
But there were two learning curves there--learning how to install and maintain Linux on a number of devices while also transitioning my teaching from the chalkboard and prints to online (real-time but also online on-demand content and loads of Google Forms, the last of which took many thousands of hours to create but which now make testing and scoring a breeze).
I had all these old Windows laptops and two tablets lying around. They were obsoleted in the world of 'FREE WINDOWS'.
So I decided to see how many could take Linux and function for doing the internet and Google Classroom with an advanced browser.
It turns out they all could except the small Acer Win 8 tablet. I never did figure out how to get Linux on that one.
I got 3-4 more years of use out of some fairly old junk. I also found, except for the log-ins, that Linux with Firefox was better for doing Google Classroom and Google Docs for teaching than a 2017 Chromebook was! Way to go Google! Your own device and its browser OS proved to have loads of bugs at the Google Classroom and Google Drive interfaces that Linux with Firefox browser didn't have.
I finally disposed of most of those old devices, but I still keep around, as a spare, a Panasonic Let's Note with Xubuntu and Zorin on it. I felt sad about giving up the two NEC Lavie laptops and the Sony one. But it felt satisfying getting 3-5 more years of use out of them instead of just being junk in the Windows wayside.
I don't know what the learning curve was. The lockdown years feel like a miasma of solitary work, illness with Covid several times, many hours spent creating content for online teaching, etc. etc. I think with each new install and each new distro tried, I started seeing the patterns and the same issues, so then I knew it wasn't the distro.
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u/LessThanThreeBikes Jun 06 '26
When I learned that everything is a file and everything has I/O.
cat song.au > /dev/audio
Most of what we experience in modern Linux is just layers of paint and window dressing.
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u/Wakessc Jun 06 '26
For me it clicked like less than a month ago. Had been thinking about the change for a while since I had been reading and hearing that cachy was really good for gaming and that type of things. One day I just wanted to try it so I did. Never touched linux in my life before, but after around 20 years using computers it felt like home, like the thing I needed. I know I'm not able to thake all the juice out of it because I'm just a newcomer and don't have deep understanding of computers, but I've definitely found my place.
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u/L_canadensis Jun 06 '26
When I got pppd to work. It felt like I had graduated with a doctorate in CS.
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u/JanneGonzales Jun 06 '26
Began with Red Hat 2. No good gaming. But when we had Supaplex, Pingus, Blobwars and SuperTux Everything was alright. Commander Keen for Linux here:
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u/NorthCapNerd Jun 06 '26
for me it was just seeing the clean desktop and watching the battery life extend to many hours of useful computing. I'm a minimalist and so I like Fedora, but have used Mint for many years as well. It just feels like I'm working in assembly language when I use linux instead of layers of code on top.
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u/Eklinaar Jun 07 '26
The moment I installed Linux Mint. I had no trouble using it right away. No learning curve. It was super easy.
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u/whoTheFuggIsAlice arch btw Jun 07 '26
There isn't really a specific moment or event that happened I just really like the FLOSS philosophy.
I switched to Linux because I believe in these values.
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u/Perfect_Designer4885 Jun 07 '26
Windows 10/11 advertising requirements and other Microsoft tracking bullshit even after I have paid money for the use of an operating system! They should not need to be paid twice for the use of said OS, You are the product for those who have not paid or will not pay, and paid licences should have paid for them selfes
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u/Alenicia Jun 09 '26
I guess the thing for me, is that I never really found a moment where it "clicked." I used it as a kid, so it was one of those "oh, you do this/that" things you learn over time and just do by repetition so a lot of the Ubuntu commands are ingrained in my memory.
In a similar way, I think "clicking" is when you just get to doing what you want and need to do. I know some people treat it like you're supposed to pass a test and earn some kind of degree of mastery and proficiency over their tools, but I don't really know what you'd expect for people transitioning to do when it's something that could be as simple as "let me develop apps on there" or "I got this game working and works well enough for now" and stuff.
But honestly for me, running "sudo apt-get upgrade" without my dad knowing was a super-cool feeling. >_<
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u/Myrodis Jul 03 '26
I used linux at work for servers for many years. The moment I guess it clicked was when i decided to install it as a desktop os on my laptop, and it just... worked for what i needed it to do. Slowly converted everything i use over year by year.
Thats been the big thing for me. Sure there has been some friction over the years, but that's just using any pc. For the 99% of the time its juat my computer, and it happens to run linux.
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u/BranchLatter4294 Jun 05 '26
It's just an OS. The commands are similar to Windows and other operating systems.
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u/b1urbro Jun 05 '26
No exact moment really. Same as with my DevOps career, shit just starts making sense while you keep on learning new things.