[_fw]

I’ll never forget the day my laptop Wi-Fi worked on Linux. I was a teenager and it was my first machine and I’d been dying to Ubuntu to break free from the grasp of Windows 7.

Wi-Fi was a dealbreaker because it was a laptop and it was my only machine. I remember one day booting in the latest live CD that Canonical had sent (way back when you could get them delivered by post), switch on my laptop and seeing those SSIDs appear.

It honestly felt like magic, and I’ll never forget it. Something as mundane as working WiFi drivers on a basic spec Vaio quite literally changed my life, by allowing me to run Linux natively with a web connection. That opened many doors to me later in life.

Forever grateful for that work.

[tapoxi]

I started somewhere around Red Hat Linux 7.2 and I remember in high school I had to have some shell scripts lying around to load the driver, bring up the interface, force DHCP renewal. I couldn't really play any games (outside of Battle for Wesnoth) and Flash's iffy Linux support always caused problems browsing the web. People didn't even care about supporting Mozilla browsers until Firefox shipped.

I started using Linux full time again a year ago (Bazzite) after ~15 years away and I'm astonished how much stuff just works now. I can just use Chrome and every website works. My entire Steam library works. I installed this as an experiment but the experience is so damn good these days I haven't had the need or desire to break glass and install Windows.

[s0l1dsnak3123]

I came here to pretty much write the same comment. I also had my first Linux experiences via Ubuntu's CDs via post scheme. I grew up on a farm with poor network connectivity, so for a few releases in a row, I would apply to have them sent. I started using Linux at about 14 years old. By the time I was 17, I'd been offered an undergrad level job at an award winning software development agency. I don't think that would've happened if I hadn't become very interested in Linux at such a formative moment in my life.

Before I managed to get WiFi working (I had lots of trial and error with ndiswrapper), my very first triumph was getting a USB-powered "winmodem" to work with Damn Small Linux (which I got for free in a magazine). One of the websites I used seems to still be online: http://www.linmodems.org

While I am so thankful that compatibility and ease of use has dramatically improved since those heady days, I honestly think I wouldn't have gotten the career I have without that struggle and the curiosity FOSS provided that drove me to push through and learn something.

[_fw]

Great story.

And ndiswrapper… I haven’t read that word in SO long!

[ckrailo]

I spent a whole weekend on my Vaio trying Linux distros for the first time, same dealbreaker as you, until I discovered that same magic feeling on first Ubuntu boot as well. Super cool to hear such a similar journey.

[znpy]

> I remember one day booting in the latest live CD that Canonical had sent (way back when you could get them delivered by post), switch on my laptop and seeing those SSIDs appear.

Ah, those are fond memories. I had a similar experience with my first laptop when i was 13 or 14... Suddenly the new Ubuntu release (6.06? 6.10?) shipped with better drivers (nv?) and my display was correctly recognized as 1280x800 where as previously it was driven at 1024x764.

Felt like magic :)

Oh, to be young again...

[CoolCold]

unrelated here, but I'm yet to get used to meet "I was a teenager" and "Windows 7" in a single sentence.

[kennysoona]

Windows 7 was objectively the best Windows, and Ubuntu is considered by many to be one of the worst distros. Why were you so desperate to flee Windows 7?

[yjftsjthsd-h]

> and Ubuntu is considered by many to be one of the worst distros

Today Ubuntu has a poor reputation in some of the userbase. Back then, it was much more universally liked.

[frantathefranta]

In my case (when I was 13-14 and messing with stuff) Ubuntu might as well have been the only distro I've ever heard of and my experience with Windows 7 was that it did not run as smooth and fast as Linux on my poverty spec laptop.

[trelane]

> Why were you so desperate to flee Windows 7?

Well, let's look at your statements:

> Windows 7 was objectively the best Windows, and Ubuntu is considered by many to be one of the worst distros.

You have two statements: one about the distribution of "goodness" as a function of Windows versions, and another about the distribution of "goodness" as a function of Linux distros.

So, logically, the question to answer if we want to get at your question is: how does the distribution of "goodness" compare across Linux and Windows?

Perhaps their answer might differ from yours. :)

[znpy]

The best windows is still a shitty operating system.

Linux was just snappier, quicker. Like, noticeably so.

And it was also way cooler. I don't use windows nowadays, but at the time the GNU/Linux desktop was lightyears ahead. Compiz, beryl and all the crazy 3d madness of the time were just cool. It was an exciting time to use GNU/Linux on the desktop, and Canonical was a visionary company.

Such times have not come back so far, it all looks so dull and dead right now when compared to those times.

[dsego]

Not sure what was so great about win 7. But maybe there is something I missed, because I also started using Ubuntu at that time and then MacOS. From a bystander perspective Win 7 just seemed like a vista plus. Ubuntu was a breath of fresh air at the time, it genuinely seemed like they were going to bring desktop linux to the masses... and it had compiz! But this was before canonical started taking a less practical approach and reinventing everything.

[p_ing]

Nothing will be better than NT4...

...who doesn't like rebooting when re-IP'ing an interface?!

Or maybe 2000...

...because the dropshadow cursor rocked!

(And Slackware on the Linux side)

There will never be a 'best' OS. They're all constantly improving in one way or another. Whether you appreciate the improvement or not, that's subjective.

[hnlmorg]

> objectively

I don’t think you understand what objectively means.

When it comes to things like this, it almost always boils down to personal preference. Which is subjective not objective.