182 Days Later: The Linux Experience (former windows user)

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Hey everybody, it's Z here from the Z Bites YouTube channel. It's not 6:00 a.m. as you can see. If you don't know, I usually make my videos at 6:00 a.m.

[00:00:06]because going to have to study later on, but today I have nothing to do. So, and I already did fast fetch as you can see.

[00:00:12]I also kind of want to change my asy art cuz uh I've been using a cat for my asy art for a few months. Do you guys have any ideas on what I should change it to?

[00:00:19]Let me know in the comments. So, I've been milking the Linux penguin for about 6 months now. I think if you go to my channel, you can see a pattern on the video thumbnails. Um I keep on using penguins. If I put a penguin on my thumbnails, like it's just a lot more clickable. I mean, this is peak, bro.

[00:00:34]This thumbnail right here on my channel, I have 34 videos. 20 plus have a penguin on them. Anyways, yeah, in today's video, I'm going to be like doing a video about my 6 months of using Linux.

[00:00:44]I can't believe it's been 6 months. In 6 months, I uploaded 34 videos and we got 13.2K subscribers. Thank you guys so much. Oh, and shout out to my channel members for for letting me scam you. I'm on track to becoming the world's greatest scammer. So, I've prepared this for you guys, which is on my notes app.

[00:01:02]If you're wondering what my notes app is, it is log sec. So, I'm going to be explaining what I did on my first month.

[00:01:08]And I have a video here that I uploaded on my first month. This is like the second video I uploaded. First video was uh exactly 6 months ago by the time I'm recording this video, but it got taken down. I'm going to be uh showing you guys mistakes I did and the lessons I learned and also some other subs I'll talk about later. All right, let's just get started. This video is just literally me uh installing Arch Linux and realizing that it's not really that easy and it's not a good idea to start an Arch. So here I was dish hopping like crazy. I installed Arch and then I installed Hyperland which kind of final boss. You're like a noob. You started Linux and uh it didn't end well cuz I didn't really have that much time. I installed Fedora and then I ended up with Pop OS which is uh Yeah. So mistakes. All right. So mistake one that I did was I I distro hopped way too much. Discropping isn't too bad. If you do it too much, then yeah, it's really freaking bad. The first OS that I installed wasn't Arch Linux like on this video. It was actually Zoran OS. This is how my first Zoran OS desktop looked like. I installed Zoran OS for like few hours, not even a day. I uninstalled it.

[00:02:11]I installed some other DRO. I forgot what it is, but I think it's Garuda Linux or something. And I used that for a few weeks. Then that's when I made this video. I dropped to three other freaking dros in 4 minutes. So yeah, dro hopping can be good. like if you want to experience Linux dros, but you should learn dros one at a time. That's just my opinion. Let's go to the second mistake that I did. Installing Arch Hyperland. I think I already mentioned this. If you're a beginner, drop your freaking ego and stick with like KDE Plasma or Linux Mint. Installing Arch with Hyperland isn't going to help you. It's going to cause you freaking pain and you're likely going to quit Linux. I almost quit Linux because of hardship hyperland. I was like, damn, this [ __ ] is so hard. I'm not going to do this ever again cuz how hard it was for beginners who don't know anything. I'm using hyperland right now as you can see if you got used to it. It's actually not that hard. Um because hyperland you can figure it through conffig hyperland and then hyperland.config.

[00:03:05]You know this can be very confusing for the beginners. But for me it's easy because I've been used to it. But if you're just starting out like me here don't okay? Drop your freaking ego and don't install Arch with Hyperland.

[00:03:16]Number three. This is a mistake that is kind of overlooked sometimes. It is not reading docs. Yes, I used to use Chad GPT and not read docs. Chad GPT is freaking uh crap when it comes to advice on Linux. So, lessons I learned is DRO hopping too much is bad. Not reading docs will set you up for failure. If you didn't read that, you you'll probably end up using YouTube or AI and you'll probably not end up having an understanding on how to do things. I think we're about done on month one here. Let's just move on to month two. I was still dro hopping this drop to Linux Mint here. I was using Arch Hyperland on my main laptop which at the time was my 2015 MacBook. This is how my setup used to look like. One of the mistakes that I did was I was using AI for a lot of stuff back then. I didn't really understand too much, you know. I mean, it's expected. It was my second month. I um used AI for rising. I copied my entire config and I just told chat GBT or cloud code to customize it and make it. And it's really bad. Yeah, because uh if you just use AI and vibe rice, you're not going to learn anything. Just like in coding, you know, if you vibe code, you're not going to learn freaking [ __ ] Yeah. And I was using AI in general, like for terminal commands cuz uh I was too lazy to memorize them. So, I was using AI. But if I just memorize them, it would have been a lot quicker.

[00:04:33]So, using AI isn't that bad. Like, you can just use it to learn stuff. But 90% of people just use it to vibe stuff, you know? They don't really learn anything from it. So, if you use AI, I want you to like actually read what the AI is explaining they're going to do. You know, maybe try implementing it yourself, not backing up my dot files.

[00:04:50]So, yeah, I didn't really back up my DOT files. When my system breaks, that shit's gone, bro. Uploading it on GitHub or just zipping it and putting it on a USB drive. You can do it in all sorts of ways. All right, so for the last mistake, the third mistake is not learning the terminal. I was using a lot of GUI stuff. terminal is actually a lot faster than you know your traditional file manager because on the terminal I can just do cp mv ls cat it's a lot faster than your traditional file manager seriously so lessons I learned the terminal is useful not scary one is AI can help but may make you stupid when I was using AI I asked AI to explain it in depth if I didn't do that probably still be using AI till today to just do basic stuff on Linux like installing Google Chrome anyways I think that was the second month. Let's just move on to the third month. Here I actually started to uh use Linux on literally all of my devices. All right, mistake one is I I was sacrificing performance for looks.

[00:05:49]Yeah, my desktop looked great on my MacBook. But dude, my MacBook is 11 years old and I was using way too much blur effect. Sacrificing performance for look isn't the right move here because you should know what your laptop's limits are. If you have like a freaking beefy ass computer and you run blur effects with no problems, sure. But if you have like a really old laptop, you should be realistic here. I don't think you can probably use blur like this if you have a really old laptops. I mean, I don't have the best PC. I have a Ryzen 3 with a Vega 8, but I know my PC can handle blur like this, but my MacBook, it was overheating. This is really bad cuz if your laptop looks good, but it doesn't feel good to use, then you won't want to use it. All right, the second mistake that I did, I was installing way too many packages slashtools. I kid you not, I had six file manager. Right now, I'm using this file manager called Ranger. Ranger is like a BIM style terminal file manager. It's really good.

[00:06:45]Back then, I had file managers like Ranger, Yazy, Nemo, Dolphin, Gnome files or something. I had it installed on my Arch Hyperland. I cared way too much about aesthetics and how my desktop looks and how people think, you know, my desktop looks. Literally all I cared about was how good my desktop looked. I didn't care about how well my system performed. So, you should find a balance between looks and usability. Lesson I learned is Linux gives you freedom, including freedom to ruin a perfectly working setup. How I ruined my setups is over ricing it. I was mixing dot files over dot files and broke my setup. All right, month four. I don't actually have a picture. Yeah. Anyways, so on month four here, I started preferring reliability over features or looks. All right. I started using Fedora and KDE Plasma on my work laptop. I I bought a work laptop. I bought a Lenovo ThinkPad.

[00:07:35]I use uh I still use that laptop to this day. I use Fedora with KDE there because I much prefer simplicity before you know realizing that I prefer usability over features. I did a few mistakes. So the mistakes that I did first mistake perfectionism because like I was such a perfectionist. I I wouldn't stop ricing my Linux for like freaking days on end before I started, you know, feel comfortable using it. I remember I would get freaking anxious because uh blur looked a bit off. You see on Hyperline if you want to configure blur you configure this right. Right now I have size on eight passes on two. This looks good but back then I would tweak this for hours on end even daily just changing it up and chasing perfectionism. So the second mistake was optimizing performance. You never even freaking noticed. I was so obsessed with RAM usage. If my RAM usage wasn't below 1 GB on idle, I would get anxious and like, "Oh, I got to optimize this. I got to optimize that." I have a bunch of apps open. I literally have six workspaces open. My RAM usage is 4 GB.

[00:08:34]Really low, right? But back then when I had a lot of apps open and my RAM usage was like above 3 GB, I used to be like, "Dude, there's got to be something that I need to debloat." This doesn't even freaking matters unless your RAM usage is uh 90%. The third mistake is laring.

[00:08:48]I acted like I knew a lot more than I did this video. I was laring so hard.

[00:08:54]Yeah, basically from tier A to S was freaking laring. The lesson I learned here was the more control Linux gives you, the easier it becomes to break your own system. This is really related to the second point because I was optimizing Linux like crazy. All right, I was trying to save milliseconds on boot time and also was trying to squeeze the RAM usage, not realizing that it really freaking [ __ ] up my system. All right, month five, I knew what I liked.

[00:09:18]For me, Arch Linux with Hyperland felt like home. I've tried countless other desktops and uh also window managers.

[00:09:26]Hyperland and KD Plasma just feels like home for me. So, mistake number one, becoming too terminal obsessed. Yeah, I wasn't obsessed with customization or anything. I was actually obsessed with downloading too many freaking terminals because I refused to use GUI app. In the span of 30 days, I installed like what freaking dozens of terminals. Oh well, I'm using Kitty right now. I always come back to Kitty. I don't know why terminals are literally all the same.

[00:09:50]Seriously, they're all the same. If I like encountered a GUI app, I was disgusted and I was going to like jump off a cliff. Yeah, that was me. When I saw a GUI app, I had a bit of an ego.

[00:09:59]It's rebuilding your setup constantly.

[00:10:01]On one month, I actually changed setups three times. Yeah, I kid you not. It's cuz I was dro hopping for videos and I was going all in. I value my time a lot cuz I have a job, I have university, I have to study. Here I was using KD Plasma and then literally a few days later I installed PA OS and I rebuilt KD Plasma setup again and then over here I was uh I was using i3 window manager at the time I rebuilt this setup which is the Gruffbox setup and over here I installed KD Plasma and here I switched back to Hyperl. I was rebuilding my setup way too much. I think that was more than three, right? So, month five, I actually made Linux my entire freaking personality. Can't believe I have a girlfriend. Seriously, I lar I have a YouTube channel. I make Linux my entire freaking personality, but I still have a girlfriend and I still have friends as well. Really weird, right? Lesson that I learned. Nobody give a freick and everybody has their own opinion. All right, month six. Okay, there's this is where I'm at. I mostly don't give a [ __ ] about customization. I just want my system to work really. Well, I did some mistakes. Okay, the first one I wanted to be different because I wanted to be different and I didn't want to use like the common tool that people use. I wanted to be niche even though sometimes that can uh lead to you being redundant and wasting time.

[00:11:20]Yeah, I wanted to be different so bad I did that [ __ ] Constantly chasing the quote unquote perfect workflow. It's kind of hard to lose the perfectionism trait for me. I'm really a perfectionist. So that's it for the video guys. Hopefully you guys liked um me yapping and laring. Anyways, see you guys in the next