For most of my life, Mac was my preferred choice of computers. I got my first one in 2005 after graduating from high school. It was an old MacBook Pro before they switched to the unibody design. I bought it refurbished and it had screen issues, so it did not last long.
Rather than fixing it, I bought a new iMac in 2008. That computer lasted me a long time and as of this writing, it is still being used by my parents after the one they bought the same year had died.
When I went back to finish college in 2018, I decided it was time to retire that iMac and I got a new MacBook Pro. It is a great machine that I still have and use from time to time. It has the touch bar on the top of the keyboard which I thought was a gimmick, but I became a huge fan of after using it for a while.
I had to buy a Windows PC for a database class as I had to use Microsoft Access and that software was not available on a Mac. I bought the cheapest Dell I could find to get buy until I could get back to using my Mac full time.
I am aware that I can use virtual machines and I do but after I looked at the cost of a Windows license it was more cost effective to buy that PC and use that instead.
I eventually got around to using my Mac for personal use and the PC for college as I took more classes I needed proprietary software for classes that was also not available on Macs.
As I learned in college on my Cybersecurity path that it is extremely important to keep your software and everything up to date. I have always been good about that but did not really understand why.
Last summer when Microsoft announced Windows 11, I was certain my cheap Dell would not be able to run the new OS as it did not even come close to the minimum system requirements needed for the new OS.
I had seen on a YouTube video suggesting that instead of upgrading to Windows 11, switch to Linux. The distribution of Linux that was suggested in the video was Pop!_OS.
Pop!_OS is an excellent operating system. I can see why so many people decide to use it full time. I used it for around eight months, and it worked flawlessly.
I had no issues with it and hardware on my network at all. I was able to find drivers for my fingerprint scanner. I even found Howdy to use with scanning my face with the webcam and it was incredible easy to install. I chose not to use it long though as I found it to be very inconsistent. I did use the fingerprint scanner though.
Recently I wanted to try another desktop environment besides Gnome, so I installed KDE Neon. It is a beautiful operating system but I had issues with finding drivers that worked with my Wi-Fi and Bluetooth card.
I understand that Linux is for people that want to tinker and learn about their operating system, but I was unable to use my computer that way without being able to use the network. So, I stayed with KDE and installed Manjaro.
I have a variety of virtual machines on my desktop PC that I use for testing and playing around with different distributions that I may want to use in the future.
So far, my experience with Manjaro has been great. I was able to use my Bluetooth devices and Wi-Fi right after installing. I was not forced to spend time searching for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth drivers as I was with KDE Neon.
Nothing against KDE Neon, it is a great looking operating system as well. I have used it in a virtual machine, and I decided to try that one first because it is optimized to use less resources than some of the other variations of KDE.
Here we are today. About four days after a fresh install of Manjaro KDE. I will use it for a while until I want to move on and try something else.