# Why am I here? 

It all started by installing Linux to my laptop.

One day I was pissed that my Asus TUF A15 has become so laggy. I was just moving my cursor around on my desktop without running any application on my desktop. At first I thought I wasn't taking care of my laptop well enough. Perhaps I've installed something that was hogging my resources in the background, or perhaps there was something wrong with my hardware. Before any deep dive examining my device, I decided to firstly try the good ol' "restarting my device method,"

```
* Lock
* Sleep
* Update and shut down
* Update and restart
```

The typical Windows update giving you no choice but to update. No big deal. I'll just press Alt + F4 to skip update once again.

```
There was neither shut down nor restart option.
```

Although this was not the first time that Windows has forced an update to my device, something broke me at that moment. "Why can't I choose when to update my device whenever I want? And why are Windows updates getting worse and worse?" I thought. Then I remembered watching some Linux Mint installation tutorials for beginners. Maybe I should try it out.

The next day I prepared a live USB, partitioned my SSD for dual-booting, and installed Mint Cinnamon to my new partition. I was quite surprise the whole installation process was rather simple. Although getting Linux installed was easy, configure Linux to the way I like wasn't as straightforward as some of the Linux advocates were evangelizing. For starters, I had to manually setup the applets to make it somewhat resemble Windows layout. I also had to spend some time setting up autorandr so my laptop will automatically extent the desktop to the second monitor. Setting up input language wasn't that straightforward either. For some reason it just didn't let me switch input language using hotkeys on my first try. Til this day there were some settings that I haven't figure out how to set them right on Linux.

Nonetheless these small issues didn't hinder me from switching to Linux. In fact I deleted my Windows partition to make more room for Mint. I was also obsessed with installing Linux to whatever devices I could get my hands onto, from my old laptop to an old Chinese TV box that we used to watch pirated contents to my Nintendo Switch. I also started watching more Linux tutorials on YouTube and it started to recommend me that are not necessary directly related to Linux but were many of the Linux folks out there care about such as FOSS, online privacy and security, self-hosting.

After reading and watching contents about online privacy for a period of time and how corporations use different methods to track its users, either for monetary incentives or worse for civilian control, I asked myself "Is there an alternative to the "Internet" that most people are familiar with? Is there an online space where contents are not controlled by a hand few tech companies and not driven by algorithms? Perhaps something that resembles the "old Internet" (by old I mean early 2000s when I first started using the Internet)?

Then I found Gemini.

TL;DR: My Laptop sucks due to Windows updates so I installed Linux and fell into the FOSS/online privacy & security/self-hosting rabbit hole. Eventually discovered Gemini.