What was your first project using Linux?
 

Hello!
I´m a junior web dev that fell in love with backend development and everything server related. I´m trying to slowly get into Linux, play around with the software and learn a lot.

I would like to love your first project using Linux, so maybe I can draw inspiration from people who have been in the field for a long time.

Thanks in advance,
Santiago.

First Linux related project. It was the late 1990s, and we had a steel mill office that ran mostly windows for desktops and office network. The production network ran OpenVMS, AIX, and a remote mainframe. I was not running anything on that mainframe, yet. Every machine that needed to print had to have a direct connected printer.

Can you ping the IP address of that host? There was a central printing office that housed many printers that all worked very well, for Windows. I had just discovered Red Hat Linux version 4.2 (This was before the RHEL/Fedora split). The print engine on it was pre-cups LPRNG/LPD. I set up a couple of old retired desktop machines as Linux server and used them as print servers. They could talk HPs PCL to the printers, having accepted PS2 jobs from the servers and doing the translation automagically. Suddenly we could do more printing, and retire old printers without impacting operations.

Net cost was a bit of my time. Net operational savings on printers and printer support contracts several thousand per year.

Good thing I did that project when I did, it will not work the same way with CUPS.


Second Linux Project had more backend web stuffage. I polled Oracle data form the OpenVMS servers and AIX machines to extract a prediction about how many steel coils would come off the line in the next shift and present a prediction web page and (optionally) report that would print down at the mill.

The same data was available form the mainframe, but it lived 800 miles away and when the network went down (rarely) it was nasty. About $8000/hour for a minimum of one shift. My web report was far less detailed, just what the crew needed to know to assure they had the right number of rail cars called up for loading that shift to save that $8000.

I staged the data in a mysql database (back when it was community owned) and pulled the data into my own hand-crafted template system to generate static pages that could load fast over slow network. Everything hand coded.

Neither of those were requested, but issues that came up or that the Windows network guys complained about wishing they could solve. So I solved them. (BEST kind of projects: no pressure, no deadlines! No one had to know what I was doing until it was done.)

It was the mid-2000s. Someone in a training class I was teaching about card access control software--my training gig at the time--told me I could self-host my little website from home with Linux. So I decided to check out this Linux thing.

The first thing I did was boot to a Live CD of Knoppix, which at the time defaulted to KDE. I liked what I saw.

In April, someone gave me an old computer (one of the original Pentiums) and I installed Linux on it--Slackware 10.1. It was so easy to install that I installed it three times that first day! I didn't have any particular reason for choosing Slackware and I forget how I came to stumble on it, but I was used to DOS installers and found it quite easy to install. I didn't--still don't--understand fdisk, but cfdisk is very similar to the old DOS partitioner.

On August 27, 2005, I brought my website live from my guestroom. (My ISP at the time did not block port 80 and did not specifically forbid self-hosting; they forbade "hosting services," and I was not a "hosting service"--at least, that is what I told myself and was prepared to tell them if they ever noticed me. (I was such small potatoes, though, that they never noticed me.)

Six months later, I put Slackware on my primary machine, a Dell laptop, and I've never looked back.

Thanks to both of you for your answers.
I was hoping to get some answers from (no offense...) some of the old-timers.
Keep up the good work. I love the way you keep this forum alive and well.
Cheers.

Age is relative. The first production release of linux i.e. 1.0 was in 1994 so I consider 1990s as being really old. I started playing with linux around 1996. Not sure exact year but my first web project was searching a database just for fun. I mostly used linux early on processing specialized data.

My first install of Linux was mid to late '90s, I went full time Linux in 1999, & have never regretted it.

My first reason was to try to learn to code in C, because I couldn't afford to buy software for MSWindows.

However, I soon found out that it was a much better system than MS, so started to learn how to use it.

Next, I tried creating a file server, & was amazed that I got one working!

But I mainly just use it as my desktop system for day to day tasks, for which it is perfect. :)

Using linux for 16 years started with openSUSE 10.1

openSUSE (GNOME) the only one of the four linux systems which connected me online to internet without needing do/learn anything... that came later ;-)


As it just worked openSUSE remains my main OS, self tries other linux systems from time to time...

Self soon kept two linux versions on each hard drive, so IF things crash out when am busy online a quick reboot to other OS is a few minutes so can keep working, then later resolve whichever rare problem occurred...



RECOMMMEND: Do USE terminal, commands rarely change it quickly teaches how to upgrade, install/uninstall even fix occasional problems :-)






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