Happy retirement @rogerp! I’m also retired (since early 2018). I was also able to dabble with Xenix on a small Altos computer; most of my other early UNIX computer use was on NCR Tower workstations, which were UNIX System V based with some BSD utilities added in. Done a LOT since then, I have Endeavour OS as one of many multi-boot systems on my hardware today as a retiree. I can freely experiment; always have backup configurations; I HAVE toasted all distributions a few times, one or two were DELIBERATE when I had plans to reorganize, a few others were mistakes; that’s why I preach, BACK UP, back up, back up, test the backups, restore or just boot them; what a surprise it’d be if an important backup failed to work! Glad you’re here!
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KDE Plasma 
@hydn James, you have made me smile! Thank you!
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Nice to know you! I confess to spending a fair bit of time on DEC and OpenVMS. I loved the alpha! A Windows upgrade toasted one of my partitions (destroyed grub). I always used to physically unplug my Linux disk so that Windoze wouldn’t trash it, but that last time, when I forgot, was the last time I ever used Windoze and it was duly banished from my house. My wife uses Ubuntu but I will install endeavouros on her lap top soon. Great to know you too Brian!
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Thanks, I did try out a few other distros, but I think I’m good here now, the Tux flavor has everything I need and quite a bit more, I like KDE in general and thus far, I have only had a few minor issues, which gives me the occasional opportunity to learn a bit, yet hasn’t stopped me from getting done the things I need to do. I looked at Zorin but I didn’t like that they have a pay to play system, it kinda goes against what I enjoy most about the whole linux experience. Thanks for sharing about your experience.
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Glad to be back, no reason not to be here now and enjoying the freedom!
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Hello all!
My name is Benjamin, or Ben. I went out searching for a community that likes Linux and self-hosting and stumbled across this site, so I decided to sign up.
I’ve been working in IT for 11 years, started out as a support tech and have been a technical lead, devops, and am currently doing program management. I thoroughly enjoy gaming and I also enjoy self-hosting and trying to squeeze as much as I can out of older hardware.
I mostly use Debian on my “servers” (old PCs or custom-built by me PCs) but I have a couple running Ubuntu. I run a couple Raspberry Pis as well. My main PC is using Zorin. I enjoy playing MMOs and Minecraft, though any game with a good story is good enough for me!
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Hi @benowe1717 nice to meet you. Welcome! 
Please don’t hesitate to check out some of our popular topics. We would love to read your viewpoints:
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Hi @rogerp Thanks for representing the community; the shirt looks great on you! Love seeing it in action alongside your project there.
We continue to send a free T-shirt each month:
And you guys can check out the rest of our collection here:
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Greetings from Serbia 
Im Stefan Pejcic, starter as a WordPress user, then plugin developer and now 15 years later a SysAdmin. I work daily with Linux, co-founded OpenPanel and now I’m working on a CSF fork named: Sentinel.
Im here for self-hosting articles and ideas!
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@stefanpejcic OpenPanel looks outstanding. Feel free to add it to our Showcase category. Happy to have you join us here. 
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Greetings. I’m retired and enjoying life. Describe myself as a tech dinosaur and on a steep learning curve moving away from Microsoft to Linux mint
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Nice to you have you here @Ady
I’m a musician (prog rock keyboard player) that uses VST technology, with VST host software (GP) on Windows, for live shows, but am REALLY interested in Linux.
Just installed Fedora 42 KDE on a new AMD Ryzen 7 mini, and diggin’ it.
Having fun writing Bash scripts. So far, so good.
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Hi. My name is Jake. Am a Linux enthusiast and am trying to learn more in order to take a training to become a Linux Sys Admin.
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Welcome to the forums! @Zedboy
Hi @MrBeverage! Sounds like you’re the perfect Linux user if you are going straight to a “no-nonsense” distro! Have you considered Ubuntu Studio, which is a DAW-oriented distro?
I love the free zynaddsubfx synthesizer, very warm sound. I haven’t tried its forked version yoshimi synth yet, but it looks very similar.
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I’m not really a DAW user. I’m a live performance keyboard player with a band. To the best of my knowledge, there is no vst host system for Linux that does what Gig Performer can do. That is, the ability to map multiple vst instruments to my physical keyboard controller rig for real-time live performances. This includes the ability to instantly retrieve an unlimited amount of pre-configured synth patches, organ drawbar settings, pianos, melotron, clavinet, with keyboard mappings for each song in the setlist. I wish I was a good enough programmer to write one.
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The horrendously unreliable and laughable ChatGPT says this: “Ubuntu Studio supports VST plugins, which are software components used in digital audio workstations (DAWs) for music production. You can install VST plugins by downloading them and placing them in the appropriate directory, typically ~/.vst, and then using a plugin host like Carla to manage them.”
Linux has support for live performance music, e.g.: Linux Multi-Media Studio (LMMS) , a bit like FLStudio if you’ve ever come across that. Also mixing and mastering stuff see: this list.
Some of the above can interface with audio or a piano keyboard over USB. (Possibly even a midi socket.) So you can “play” any of these synths live.
Roger
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Hello all, I’m Paul from the UK. I’m a Linux newbie of about 5 weeks after 30+ years of being Windows user. I installed Linux Mint Cinnamon 22.1 and then upgraded to 22.2 on my main laptop and installed Voyager Linux 25.04 Ubuntu version on my desktop. I recently changed career and landed my first IT role on an IT Service Desk and would like to eventually progress to be a Linux Sys Admin.
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