Splitting hairs that seems. In many cases (on various fields) hobbyists turn out to be the ‘real’ pros… just saying.
To give you an example, just ask our 
@Kresimir about a Cembalo. 
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If a computer is nothing more than a tool to get the job done, then you are a user. And I am seriously not a pro, there are real "pro"s in this forum who make a living from Linux or are long-time users.
My first contact with a computer was when I was about 3-4 years old, must have been 85-86 or something, and that was when my older brother got a Commodore 64 one christmas. He later got an Amiga 500 and a year later or so we got a PC.
When I stopped wanting to be an astronaut, fireman and similar jobs that most kids want when they are young I’ve known that I would work with computers.
So, school was directed with that in mind. After finishing the mandatory school (here in Sweden) at age 19 I went to the US for a year and studied at college. Here I took my first serious programming class (C++) and realized that I would be a programmer.
I go back to Sweden and do my 3 years in university.
After that follows 16 years as a professional programmer.
The last 10 or so years I’ve been leading edge at most jobs I’ve been at. I adopted git and later made sure that it was the default VCS at my job.
WSL came out and I was all over that.
The last 1,5 years I’ve gone all the way into Linux and I dualboot Windows/Linux but have not entered Windows for those 1,5 years.
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Software engineer (Node.js, Angular, AWS, MongoDB 85%, MySQL 15%) with 3 years of experience, but was always a tech hobbyist since the 2000s, and a video gamer. Primarily used Windows throughout the late 90s and 2000s, started using Mac (Hackintosh) from 2013 onwards. Then after Apple Silicon was announced, I knew my hackintosh was going to die out quickly, and Mac hardware is way too pricey for a powerful 2nd machine (can’t let go of Windows due to gaming, as much as I hate the OS 
). So I decided to move to Linux full time, since Windows was absolutely a no go as a daily OS, and all the code we write primarily runs on Linux anyway. Dual booting EndeavourOS and Windows 11, loving EOS way more than I expected.
Developer here. Started with Linux in 1995 with Slackware and 0.99 kernel. I have gone through a lot of distributions over the years. It’s been fun.
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Among the big five traditional distributions, Slackware was the only one that was left out of my life, even though it is practically almost the same age as Debian.
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My progression for long use were
Slackware->Debian->Red Hat->Suse->Gentoo->Ubuntu->Arch->Fedora->EndevorourOS
Honorable mention to Yellow Dog for keeping an iMac alive after a lightening strike fried the network card. With linux I could add a USB wifi dongle and keep it running for several more years.
I did a few months running FreeBSD as well.
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I am a retired software designer/implementor, having spent some 30 years working with variants of UNIX and Linux. For much of that time I could rely on system administrators to configure systems for me, but I spent some time configuring machines and networks. Linux administration has been changing pretty steadily, so it has been hard to keep up, but I have recently installled and configured EndeavourOS on a couple of home systems, dual-booting them with Windows. I used it as an excuse to become familiar with administration of the latest services, desktops, and themes available.
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My progress during long use was as follows:
Red Hat, Suse, Debian (for most of the time), Linux Mint, Manjaro, Antergos, EndeavorOS.
Meanwhile, I administered Windows workstations in a Novell network for a long time.
Does Yellow Dog mean this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Dog_Linux or something else?
It is all hobby to me. I have never done any IT for work.
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What is the difference between a software designer and a programmer?
Nowhere near it. I’m a math PhD student, Linux is just a hobby.
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I have 12 yrs DT support, 12 with proprietary software support, Windows frustrated me with the typical 6-12 month rebuild needs then turned to Mac. Never took it upon myself to dive into the guts of the Mac Unix it was more of end user discovery.
Finding how restrictive Apple was making the OS after Steve’s passing was discouraging, though there are parts of Mac that leads miles ahead of Window…Win V11 trying to be a Mac again just like Vista did - when will they learn? Oh, i forgot Windows planned they’ll incorporate Unix components at the code level…ha ha.
Distro hoped, and hoped, and hoped till a work mate told me about Manjaro. More advanced than Elementrary, yet has a lot of ready to go bits if willing to learn a little. I get the distro to a place of happy and I try to get past… My biggest hang up with EndeavourOS, SMB/File sharing and making VM apps like Virtualbox or VMware work without having to break and rebuild.
I discovered EOS when a dev supporter announce the reason for his leaving for Endeavour. This was when an software update came down and broke file sharing to and from my other OSes. I was miffed, so I blew away and installed EOS. Fast, spunk…I was in love…but file sharing within my home is important - I could never get it to work and frankly there wasn’t good clear direction I could find to help me through.
EOS is the closest I came to liking Gnome Linux, still KDE I’d my choice (yes Mac is Gnome, I know). EOS Gnome worked well on repurposing a 2008 iMac, again KDE had balance I want in an OS. On the Mac, try making file share work & VMs to function as expected/wanted (no, Boxes kept hanging the machine). On one reinstall instance the Mac stopped rebooting EOS, the full wipe (after 4/5th rebuild) nicked something and the Mac bios didn’t like the boot loader. Put macOS El Capitan back on, at least I can run plex from it again. The hope was to get Portainer operating on EOS.
Back to Manjaro using another PC. They changed something when it last broke file sharing - BUT, Manjaro runs better than before despite it slight bloat, file share took a little more effort to get working…I see where it changed from before - rolling release is not always the happiest I’ve learned, but then again look at windows. Arch is still much much better in this way. Virtualbox works better on Manjaro than I found before…almost “out of the box” with the repro package they have. Just need newer hardware for VMbox to keep up as I dip a toe back into EOS in a VM. Until them hardware, Manjaro will be the Linux runner for now. Really like EOS, but until some of need / wants are either “there” or I’ve grown more skilled in Linux…today is the now.
- EOS requires some advance skills comparatively, it’s obvious it’ll need to be installed somewhere to make the growth.
Happen.
Then we both have mathematics in common, as well as liking Linux. 
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Steve Jobs once said that we have such an advantage as long as we are so closed. By the way, macOS is also Unix-based, as we know. I agree with you that the current macOS is much better than Windows, of course the privacy is at least as much included as in Windows, but using the terminal is also an option, similar to Linux. This is exactly why I chose it after using Linux for a long time. Today’s Linux desktops often give the impression of macOS, and now Windows 11 is heading that way too.
yep
How exactly? GNOME has a similar layout compared to macOS but KDE Plasma only implements some features found in macOS (touchpad gestures, different styles of overview…) but doesn’t try to be similar to it. Other DEs are not even related.
I was mostly thinking of Gnome, with the Dash to Dock extension, for example, it reminds you of the macOS dock.
I started in the mid 90’s, when you had to install Red Hat with 1.44" floppy disks, behind a server with 4 (yeah, four) modems, so only four users could be connected at the same time in my town 
Around the same time, the IRC WARS were raging (it took some time to discover you needed systems in place to protect channels from takeovers and users from being nuked). Ah, good times.
At work they come to me for whatever IT issue, be it rerouting new email accounts, managing the hosting services, cloud systems or dealing with any kind of software we possibly use.
However, I consider myself an advanced noob with the (not) remarkable skill of RFM (reading the F manual).
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I am not just close to IT but in it (worked in the field for 35 years).
At work I have never used Linux - it has been Microsoft all the way except for one project which used AIX.
At home, my first Linux was Mandrake Linux bought as a boxed set of 4 CDs in about 1998 - as I recall it cost £40. It didn’t work and that put me off Linux for a long time - in the interim I used MacOS then up to Windows 7.
Then, after Windows failed to boot one day and the OS - or anything else - was unrecoverable, I said “what next?”, switched to Ubuntu, then LMDE, then EOS.
Note: that second link is incredible - it is the Mandrake Linux site, not updated for 24 years but still there 
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