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(Image: [[https://fitnessvolt.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Biotin-and-Muscle-Growth.jpg.webp|https://fitnessvolt.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Biotin-and-Muscle-Growth.jpg.webp]])I did it. Leaving the Apple garden for Linux has been easier than anticipated. A new era of [[https://venturebeat.com/?s=personal%20freedom|personal freedom]] has finally started. The intro is of course misleading - making it look like I suddenly jumped into deep waters, when in reality I've been walking in and out of Linux since 1998 (who remembers Mandrake?). However, there is some truth in the concept of moving on. When you spent 24 years mostly living within one operating system, learning it from the inside out, dedicating time, investing money on hardware and software, you build an intricate network of habits, muscle memory, expectations. For me, that was Mac OS. I used version 7 and 8 at work between the mid Nineties and the year 2001, when I finally purchased my first Apple device. It came with both Mac OS 9 (called Classic) and Mac OS X, the first ever version. From that point on, I carved a professional life, and personal interests, around Apple's stack.



I really liked OS X, followed their keynotes, and purchased every upgrade. There was something satisfying in how everything worked well together. Then came the iPhone. 2007 is the year where they changed everything, and in hindsight, the moment where the magic - at least for people like me - began its descending curve. I've been slowly moving away from their walled garden over the last decade. After Steve Jobs died it's been an excruciating sequence of pathetic attempts at milking the same cow over and over, with no one remotely capable of inventing something new. At last Apple, with their insane policy of forced annual 'upgrades', became the spearhead of the odious planned obsolescence,  [[https://docs.brdocsdigitais.com/index.php/So_How_And_Why_Have_They_Survived_So_Long|Prime Boosts Pills]] made even more intolerable by their relentless patronising greenwash marketing. Following my principle of trying to reuse and recycle, rather than buying new, I managed to salvage two laptops from work: a Dell Latitude i7 (2020) and a MacBook Air i7 (2015). Up to that point, my daily ride had been a MacBook Pro i7 from 2015, which is the last computer I purchased new ten years ago here in Cambridge.



Following a cool idea by Kel, I turned that machine into an offline music production device: wiped, reinstalled the latest macOS it can support, added my music software, and that was it. No WiFi, no cloud, no wired connection, a perfect island to be used when I need it. After initially moving all my personal data to the macOS-powered MacBook Air, and deciding to use the Dell for my Linux experiments, it took me less than ten days to realise how conservative a move that was. If I wanted to completely migrate to a world that's outside the rule of multinational corporations, I had to take the plunge once and for all. What's to be afraid? I've been using a Ubuntu machine at work for a year, Bash is my second home. I just did it. Wiped the MacBook Air and installed Endeavour OS. It lasted 2 or 3 weeks, and it was great, because it allowed me to familiarise with the differences.



It's not enough to consider the things in common between Linux and macOS, because the aforementioned network of habits and muscle memory is the first thing to kick in and combat to maintain the status quo. Resistance to change and all that. What started as an experimentation - try different flavours - became a six weeks full-fledged distro-hopping. OS, Elementary, Mint, Debian 13 RC (Trixie), Endeavour again, Manjaro again, and finally Fedora, all on the Dell Latitude. As a lover of routine and stability, I was surprised at how the constant change, each time accompanied by restoring my backup via rsync, didn't affect me. On the contrary, it helped building confidence, learning the different package managers, how to use them properly and have a deeper knowledge of how to steer the Desktop Environment towards what I wanted. Another reason behind the hopping was a recurring irritation: each distribution had at least one or  [[https://wiki.anythingcanbehacked.com/index.php?title=Strength_Training:_Building_Shoulder_And_Back_Muscles|Prime Boosts Pills]] two problems at a deal-breaker level. GNOME, preferably the latest GNOME 48, because I really dislike all the other DEs.