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My Linux Story: (Good for newbies)
So many people have thought about what it would be like to get away from M$ and join the open source revolution. So, I've decided to lay out my story here, on digital paper, for all the curious to see.
So how does it begin? Usually, with the Blue Screen of Death, followed by the Three Finger Salute. You get fed up. When was the last time you purchased a copy of Windows? Never? Why even bother paying for it? People get sick of being told what to do, and there comes a time when you break free, or at least have the notion to break free. But what's involved? Time. Patience.
For me, it started in college at a geek meet, where some guy was running his RedHat 7.1 machine with a voodoo 3, and it was absolutely running circles around my Windows box in Quake. It was like an epiphany. Here I am suffering all because I didnt know any better than not to. So the next step for me was a Mandrake 7.something install on a dual boot system. I tinkered with it, changed some things, and generally really didnt understand how anything worked. I wrote down all the different bash commands that I needed, customized a few things here and there but never really got a feel for it. So eventually it got uninstalled and I didnt touch linux for a few months.
The next step was when I got my hands on another computer that had no real purpose at the time. By this time the latest and greatest release was RedHat 7.3 so thats where I headed. But this time I swore I would give it an honest effort. The machine was almost soley a console install; I only used X for checking email and surfing and such. The real purpose of this machine was to run an Urban Terror server (Quake 3 mod). This just goes to show you that you don't need a lot of experience in linux to run a server =).
My next endeavor was a RedHat 9 dekstop machine where I got into it a little deeper and started to configure X the way I want it, install drivers, configure configure configure... I turned into a command line junkie and started getting a feel for system security: things like what needs to be running and what should never be running. Eventually this install bit the dust due to lack of storage space, and I moved on.
But where do you go from here?
By this time I had realized how much i didnt like the idea of RPMs and how much better it is to compile everything by hand. So my next distro was Gentoo Linux 1.4 rc1. This install was a NIGHTMARE and nearly turned me off to the whole idea. It was then that I realized the reason it wasnt working is because I was not setting it up correctly. The great thing about Gentoo was that it really gave me an understanding of what everything does, where it goes, and how it works. It was a great learning experiece. (Also, changing all my root permissions around was a not-so-great experience)
Now I am a system administrator and I am part of an administration team that runs a network of Linux and BSD servers. My desktop is Gentoo Linux 2004.1 using the 2.6 kernel, and the latest versions of X and Gnome. I now have the ability to do EVERYTHING on my linux machine that I could on Windows, including connecting to a Microsoft Exchange sever (using Ximian Evolution and Ximian Connector), play windows games using WineX (even direct3d games like Diablo II), running servers, sharing files, and anything else I've ever needed a windows machine to do.
So, YES! It is possible to completely make this transformation, depending on your needs as a user. If anyone who read this has any questions about how I installed gentoo, feel free to ask.
- Justin
(HexaDevil)
PS. I wrote this post on a Mac =)
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