I have been a Linux user since 1999.
For a quarter of a century—with the brief exception of an iMac addition in 2009—Linux wasn’t just my operating system; it was my only operating system. As a web designer, I stayed within the “safe” lanes, sticking to the heavy hitters: Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, openSUSE Tumbleweed, and Manjaro. More recently, I explored CachyOS.
But if you’ve spent any time in the Linux community, you know about the “Distro Hop.” For years, I was a practitioner of this art. I would install a new distribution, feel the initial rush of speed and novelty, and then wait for the “last straw.”
The “last straw” is that specific, inexplicable moment where the illusion of stability breaks. It’s the once-a-month garbled screen upon shutdown. It’s the one “minor” glitch you tell yourself you can live with—until a bad update arrives and suddenly, the system is unusable. In those moments, I didn’t troubleshoot; I simply voted with my installation media and moved on.
The Hardware Betrayal
Eventually, I decided to solve the stability problem with hardware. I invested heavily in Dell rigs, lured by the reputation that Dell was “Linux-friendly.” For a while, it was a dream setup for my Vancouver-based web design company: a four-node system consisting of a Proxmox server, an MSI laptop, and two workstations handling graphics, audio, and billing.
But by 2024, the wheels began to fall off.
I encountered BIOS upgrades that felt like regressions. I remember the frustration of owning a Dell Inspiron 5680 (i7-8700, Nvidia 1070) that had once rendered Blender scenes in record time, only to suddenly find it utilizing a single thread. I searched the forums, I hunted for answers, but it seemed I was alone in this glitch.
I did what musicians do when a piece of gear fails mid-set: I improvised. I pulled the machine off my LAN and shifted my workflow into Virtual Machines on my other computers. It was a workable compromise, but it was a far cry from an ideal setup.
The Mac Experiment and the UX Gap
By mid-2025, I reached my limit. I sold off almost all my Dell hardware and invested in a Mac Studio. I wanted to return to the streamlined experience I had with my 2009 iMac. I picked up the Affinity Suite during Black Friday, and for a moment, it felt like the perfect transition.
Looking back, I had more luck than brains. I had no idea that the primary reason I would use this Mac wasn’t for web design, but for AI.
But as I integrated the Mac into my workflow, I hit a different wall: the User Experience. For all its raw power, I was stunned by how basic some macOS features felt. The lack of a proper multi-image preview, the clunky window activation that made copy-pasting code from LMStudio into VSCodium a tedious chore, and the awkward keyboard shortcuts left me longing for the efficiency of a well-tuned Linux environment.
The Final Search
I still had one Dell Precision PC—a machine that came with Ubuntu from the factory. But as I tried to bring it back into the fold, I found that the Linux landscape had shifted.
I tried my old favorites, but they felt… different. Not better, just different. I tried GhostBSD, and while it was stable, the lack of essential apps like OnionShare made it a non-starter. I entered a phase of “Testing Mode,” installing a new distribution every single day.
Ubuntu had become sluggish. Fedora suffered from dracut issues that prevented fresh installs from even booting. After 25 years and hundreds of installations, this was unacceptable.
I was at the edge of giving up. I had a powerful Mac that lacked the UX I needed, and a Dell rig that couldn’t find a home in the modern Linux ecosystem.
Then, I rediscovered MX Linux.
I had used MX in the past, but I had treated it as “just another Debian derivative.” I hadn’t bothered to look under the hood. This time, however, the context was different. I wasn’t looking for a novelty; I was looking for a sanctuary.
Continue to Part 2 of my MX Linux review to find out why this “simple” distro is now the heartbeat of two of my three computers.