It all started with openSUSE somewhere back in the 2000s. It was a great operating system that let me do anything I would have done and more with any of the available alternatives. I was thrilled at the freedom it gave me to install different packages, and also felt safe with it. I was in love with the window manager I used it with for the first time, KDE; I was excited about how it allowed me to customize the desktop to whatever I wanted. Back then I was a teen, so I had plenty of time to experiment with it. Later I had the chance to try Elive with the window manger Enlightenment. However, this combination had lots of things that needed to be worked on, solved and debugged by the user, and while this was very time consuming and frustrating at times, it let me learn many things about the internal structure and functioning of GNU/Linux and Bash.
After a while, I decided to try a friendlier and easy to use distribution and ended up installing Ubuntu on my computer. At that time, I still didn’t have a laptop, and I needed to install programs that would let me solve Math and Science problems for school and university projects. Also, I was an iPod user and needed an easy way to transfer music. Ubuntu was a good companion for a while, but then I decided to switch to Debian, alternating window managers between Gnome and XFCE. By then I already had a laptop with a limited RAM of 1 GB that was enough for my needs.
One of the perks of GNU/Linux is having so many options to chose from, so after a long time using several Debian versions, I switched to another small project based on Gentoo called Sabayon which no longer bears that name. But after a brief use I finally ended up going back to my origins and installed openSUSE with KDE. I can’t be happier with it: it is a powerful system that is compatible with many types of software and hardware such as printers, illustration tablets, book readers, etc. It is a big project, which makes me feel relaxed about its proper functioning and rolling updates, and it also challenges me to use it in advanced ways. Also, I have recently gotten involved with the openSUSE community, which I am hoping will let me contribute in many ways to the Open Source project.
This is a general idea of my personal experience with GNU/Linux. I still have lots of distributions to try, and Fedora and Gentoo are on my immediate list. I have a vast experience using Windows and Mac at work, but GNU/Linux is the operating system I use every day and the one I love and endorse. I do believe that the present and future of computing is Open Source, and I am an absolute supporter of it.