My first experience with Linux was during my first year at the University (Physics department), in 2007, where we used some version of [Red Hat](https://www.redhat.com/en) with [KDE 3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Desktop_Environment_3) and [Emacs](https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/) as the text editor for a C course. 

The first time I tried to install Ubuntu was in 2008, using [Wubi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wubi_(software)) (remember it?) to install [Hardy Heron](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardyHeron/RC) alongside Windows XP. I had some font problems and various other issues that I don't remember with it and I managed to break my installation many times trying to fix them, but Wubi made it really easy to reinstall without the fear of losing my Windows data. I was delighted playing with Compiz and the various effects it offered!

Then Unity came and I tried to get familiar with it but, influenced by the mostly critical reviews I was reading about it online (I was young and naive and hadn't yet realized that everyone has an opinion about everything, with the less-knowledgeable also being the loudest - see [Dunning-Kruger effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect)), I started searching for something else. I distro-hopped for a few years and tried out most of the major distributions and a lot of minor ones, going almost always back to Ubuntu or an Ubuntu derivative.

Finally, I decided to stick with Ubuntu, mainly due to the community support it offers. I now use Ubuntu 20.04 and it works great for me!

Having been helped very much by the Ubuntu community and especially Ask Ubuntu all these years, and having acquired some experience in Linux, I decided to try to also give something back to the community, so for the last couple of years I try to be an active member of Ask Ubuntu and help as much as I can.

And at this point I think it is a good opportunity to specifically thank [Eliah Kagan](https://askubuntu.com/users/22949/eliah-kagan), [Kulfy](https://askubuntu.com/users/816190/kulfy), [Karel](https://askubuntu.com/users/94914/karel) and [Zanna](https://askubuntu.com/users/527764/zanna) (the order of the names is random) for their work and for helping me become a more useful (I hope) member here, with conversations about various site matters and advice!