is the Verge’s weekend editor. He has over 18 years of experience, including 10 years as managing editor at Engadget.
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It’s a complete coincidence that I installed Linux around the same time as my colleagues Nathan Edwards and Stevie Bonifield. A few months ago, I decided to breathe new life into a 2019 Dell XPS 15 that had been collecting dust for a couple of years.
Despite its (at the time) high-end Core i7 CPU and 32GB of RAM, Windows was frustratingly slow on it. The fan was constantly at full throttle even when the machine was idle, and it regularly failed to install updates. So in early 2024, I gave up and switched to an M1 MacBook Pro.
But I wanted to give my oldest child something to practice typing on. Plus, I’d been trying to find a suitable distraction-free writing solution. (Spoiler: this laptop was not the solution I was looking for.) So I installed Ubuntu. Again.
See, before the MacBook and before the Dell XPS, I was a Linux user. I first installed Ubuntu in 2006 on a ThinkPad X40. And it remained my primary OS across three different laptops and 13 years.
My Ubuntu desktop in 2007.
Despite some... let’s call them quirks (Wi-Fi didn’t work out of the box on that X40), I was happy with Linux for a long time. I dual-booted Windows out of necessity, and often had a work-issued MacBook on hand. But those were for testing apps or specific tasks, like editing video. 99 percent of my life was spent in Ubuntu.
That is, until about 2017. As I got older, tinkering with my laptop changed from a hobby to something that got in the way of me pursuing my other hobbies. I had rediscovered my love of making music, and, try as it might, Ubuntu Studio just wasn’t cutting it. I was spending more time in Ableton Live, which meant more time in Windows, until in 2019, I bought the aforementioned XPS and switched over completely.
A lot has changed in the 20 years since I first installed Linux, and even in the seven years since I last used it. It’s now arguably the best platform for PC gaming. There are genuinely great photo-editing apps, such as Darktable, which was introduced in 2009. And there are even viable, commercial options for making music in Bitwig and Reaper, all of which have improved dramatically since 2019.
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