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My Linux Story

Posted 11-24-2010 at 08:29 AM by soppy

I guess I'm going to tell you my start with Linux and how I got here.

Well, it all started back in 2006. My step-dad brought home a laptop for me that someone had given him for me. It was a Toshiba something, and it had a Pentium 3 processor (833mhz) and about 256mb of RAM. By default, it still had Windows 2000 on it, while the desktop I had at the time had Windows XP. My friend had given me a SLaX Live CD, and I decided to give it a go. I really liked the way that it looked and how fast it was even for a live CD. I decided I wanted to install it, but when I tried to run the script, it kept telling me to install Slackware. So, I did! I installed Slackware 12.0 using all of the defaults because I had NOOOOO idea what I was doing, and surprisingly, it worked. I found myself looking at a terminal prompt after the first boot-up and I typed startx to come up to my KDE 3.5.8 ( or 9 ) desktop. Being familiar with it, I instantly knew where things were because of SLaX. But then, my wireless card wasn't detected, nor was sound set-up, nor could I mount anything by plugging them in. Luckily, I still had my desktop to look things up. It was here that I really started to get comfortable with Linux. I learned about all the different commands and how they worked. I learned about the kernel, the libraries, the modules, EVERYTHING. Once I had a system I was happy with (about 3 weeks after first boot), I decided to try other Distros. My next stop was Mepis. I uninstalled this IMMEDIATELY as it refused to boot-up 9/10 times after it was put onto the hard-drive. Next, came Ubuntu. Ubuntu I kept for about a day. I just didn't like how it held your hand through every little step. To me, that's not what Linux is about. Linux is about how you want your computer to be. But if you want your computer to do that for you, no discrimination from me. Next, I hoped over to Debian after seeing that Ubuntu was based off of that. I installed it, had it running for a day, but then just kept getting errors, seg faults, and other crashes from EVERYTHING. I then went to Fedora. Fedora is a great OS, and I had it installed for about 2 months, but something was still missing. It didn't hold my hand like Ubuntu did, but it never really let me off a certain path even if I tried to make it. I eventually went back to Slackware 12.0. Once 12.1 came out, I obviously upgraded and what not. It was here that I decided to help out a tad by using -current and submitting bug reports to Pat. I've done this all the way up to 13.1, and even installed Linux on a newer laptop in 2008 when I got it. Then, I tried Arch Linux. I never have seen a Distro like this. I loved Slackware's freedom of choice, but Arch takes it a step further. By not forcing the Distro to have certain applications installed, it allows for the cleanest Linux to date IMO. I've been using Arch for about 2 months now and I have no intentions of ever looking back.

I'm sorry if this is long and doesn't make sense at all, but it's all good.
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Comments

  1. Old Comment
    thanks for sharing... good to hear your story. I love hearing the path people take to not only using Linux but also finding the right distro for them.
    Posted 12-01-2010 at 11:32 AM by druonysus druonysus is offline
  2. Old Comment
    Great story. Always interesting to hear what distos people use and why with hundreds of them out there, why they choose one particular distro.
    Posted 12-01-2010 at 12:18 PM by ichase ichase is offline
  3. Old Comment
    Thanks guys! Glad you enjoyed it.
    Posted 12-12-2010 at 10:24 AM by soppy soppy is offline
 

  



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