I really wish that I was born early so I’ve could witness the early years of Linux. What was it like being there when a kernel was released that would power multiple OSes and, best of all, for free?
I want know about everything: software, hardware, games, early community, etc.
Linux was getting pretty nice by 2004. In 1996 it was a LOT rougher.
I basically left Windows in 2006 and never looked back. I did some cross platform work in Qt where I’d develop in either iOS or Linux and then hand the product over to the test team to compile in Windows - worked beautifully. Sure, there were things that worked in one OS that wouldn’t work in one or both of the alternatives, but when I figured out the problem it was 90%+ me “getting away with” bad practice on my development machine that once cleaned up ran everywhere just fine.
These days the Browser is 99% of the OS that means anything to anybody.