My first real experience towards Linux was with Debian Sarge in 2005. Before that I had been mainly a Windows user – with a substantial desire to tweak things myself. Debian Sarge seemed to provide a nice way of doing many things but in reality it proved a bit too difficult. My 2005 self constantly struggled to get drivers and hardware working with Debian Sarge – and in the end the constant trouble led me to switch my operation system to Ubuntu. Overall, Ubuntu was good for me back in the days. I really loved Gnome 2 and the good old Nautilus file-manager, which was easy and customizable. It was probably around 2007 that I tried Debian again – this time it was Etch that got into my then current laptop. Debian Etch was a lot nicer experience for me than Debian Sarge had been. This time around I got everything running and things just worked. The problem that I encountered this time was with the software: Debian Stable was just too old for my needs. The software ran of course but it did not have feature x or y – and this was again something that drove me away from Debian. Continue reading →