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Old 04-19-2014, 03:01 AM   #316
kevinbenko
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Registered: Jun 2005
Location: Fargo, North Dakota
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A Job


After having experience in my university using a UNIX computer, I got a job about 3 years after my degree (in Pure Mathematics) working in a start-up that was all about Linux, this was before there were Linux certifications. I wrote technical content for instructor-led training manuals for "NSC Systems Group" that was renamed to "ed Learning Systems" and was subsequently bought by "Sun Microsystems". Ever since I got my job at NSC, I have been all about Linux and open source.
 
Old 04-20-2014, 01:09 AM   #317
ziphem
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My first experience, and when I became a complete convert

I've played around with Linux, in particular Redhat, back in around 1998-1999 I think; I even paid monthly for a Virtual Dedicated Server around that time (I think it was around then?) that ran Linux. I probably shouldn't admit that, since I should know so much more considering how long I've been using it!

But the full-time switch from Windows came during the last months of 2008. I was in a nice little countryhouse, unemployed, and desperately looking for work - and many of the jobs had listed deadlines that were fast approaching. I began to sign into the application platform to apply, when all of a sudden my Windows' Wifi connection stopped working. Completely disconnected. At first I thought it was my router, but after rebooting everything, and then being able to connect on another machine, I realized it was this new Windows Vista OS. No matter what I did, I could not get this network connection working again. You can imagine that feeling of desperation!

Luckily, I had Fedora installed as a dual boot (and a shared FAT32 drive that had my resume and cover letters!). I logged out of Windows, and booted into Fedora. Sure, I had kept Redhat/Fedora around and used it once in a while, but I really used to infrequently enough that I wasn't very comfortable making that switch - particular right when I had to apply for all of these jobs!

That day was the last day that I used Windows as my primary OS; and since then, I have used Linux almost exclusively. I've installed Ubuntu on a server, Linux Mint on two machines, and Debian. Maybe because it was my first full-time Linux OS, maybe because it saved my butt, or maybe because I've just gotten the most familiar with it, I've used only Fedora as my primary OS. Sure, I've had my issues (mostly cause by my own tinkering), but what a silver lining it has been. Aside from the productivity and utility, it's been a boatload of fun - tweaking it, breaking it, fixing it (ok, maybe those two aren't the most fun - though in honesty, I have enjoyed that challenge). But just as much as all of that, the interactions have been wonderful - not just the technical help, but the sense of community.

And I did end up being offered, and accepting, one of those jobs that I applied for that week.

Last edited by ziphem; 04-20-2014 at 01:49 AM.
 
Old 04-20-2014, 08:15 AM   #318
kevinbenko
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Registered: Jun 2005
Location: Fargo, North Dakota
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Actually, it was EMACS that persuaded me that open-source and Linux ruled. Since I had been using EMACS in my universities mainframe, I just LOVED the hell of EMACS!
 
Old 04-20-2014, 09:24 AM   #319
Eldarby
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Registered: May 2011
Distribution: Arch
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Lightbulb My Story of Growth and Maturity

Back in the late 1990s I tried a few distros... for like a week, and then went running back to Windows with my tail between my legs . I believe the distros I tried were Red Hat, Mandrake and Slackware.

Then October 2004 happened, and a friend of mine from my local 2600 chapter handed me an Ubuntu disc, since she had like 50 of them. I was hooked almost immediately. Finally, it felt like I'd found a distro I could use to comfortably transition away from Windows one step at a time. Before you know it, I was only booting into my Windows partition to play games, and even then only for the games I couldn't find Linux ports for and couldn't run through Wine.

Eventually I felt like Ubuntu just wasn't satisfying my appetite to learn more and more, so at some point I switched to Gentoo. Wow, was that ever a learning experience! I managed to handle things fairly well, considering, and I gained very valuable insight into much of how Linux works under the hood. Never ran back to Ubuntu, not even once.

Of course, I ended up reaching the point where I was sick of waiting for hours for everything to compile every time I upgraded, so I wanted to go back to a binary distro, yet still feel like I'm being challenged to force me to keep sharp and focused on learning. I gave Slackware another shot and enjoyed it quite thoroughly, until getting pissed off with the inconsistency of SlackBuilds, though I'll be the first to admit that's not really Slackware's fault. I also tried a couple of its derivatives, Zenwalk and Salix OS, in the hopes it would make for an easier user experience for my family who shares my computer, but ended up going back to Slackware due to greater community support and because I found it easier to administrate.

I no longer use Slackware on my desktop, but I do plan on going back to it once I build a server. I really liked its conservative approach to package upgrades and how it has a full set of almost everything you'd ever need right out of the box, complete with redundant packages to satisfy many people's software preferences.

Today, I run Arch. I feel like it combines everything I loved about Gentoo and Slackware, while throwing away all the parts I got frustrated with from both. For my desktop, I don't see myself leaving Arch any time soon, but I'm always willing to try something new.

This October will mark the 10th anniversary of my commitment to Linux. I should throw a party or something.

Last edited by Eldarby; 04-20-2014 at 09:28 AM. Reason: Paragraph Spacing
 
Old 04-20-2014, 07:14 PM   #320
carolwoowoo
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Registered: Feb 2014
Location: Chesterfield, Derbyshire, England
Distribution: Mint 17 Mate
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How I got involved with Linux

Hi Jeremy! I've only been using Linux since February this year, but I've known about it for years. With the withdrawal of support for Windows XP, and the rapid disintegration of it no matter how many times it's re-installed, I started looking at Linux. I spent a few weeks downloading and reading everything, trying to decide where to start. I started with Wary Puppy because I thought a 7 or 8 year old HP would be one of those 'old' ones Barry talks about! Then I tried Linux Lite which is okay, PCLinuxOS which is too much like Vista or something for my liking and then I put my first choice, Mint 16, on the laptop. I actually downloaded that in December or January but all I got was a black screen on the desktop machine so I thought it's the 'old HP' thing. A couple of weeks ago, I got a Linux book from my local library and read one sentence - "Black screen when installing? Try hitting F6 to get the compatibilty mode." I did and Mint 16 is wonderful!
Carolwoowoo

Last edited by carolwoowoo; 04-20-2014 at 07:17 PM.
 
Old 04-20-2014, 11:01 PM   #321
maples
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Registered: Oct 2013
Location: IN, USA
Distribution: Arch, Debian Jessie
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Last summer, a family friend gave me an old computer. Dell Dimension 2400, 1GB RAM, Intel Celeron CPU. She had to yank the hdd, and that was the first time I'd ever messed with a computer without an OS. A friend sent me a link to a Lubuntu ISO, and I thought it was amazing. It never really "worked right" (the master volume in alsamixer does nothing, the control I need to use is the "Headphone" one), but it worked good enough that I could use it from the LiveCD. I played around with it, and I think I did some of my homework on it (saved to a flashdrive and printed from my win7 laptop) Then my dad found an empty hdd at his work, and also acquired a WinXP Pro install CD. Since it had an XP sticker, I installed it, but it had even worse compatibility issues (no Ethernet, no video other than 640x480, and no sound). Also, it was SLOW. I installed all of the drivers (downloaded thru win7 laptop), but that didn't help. I finally decided to install Lubuntu on it. It ran faster than it did from the CD, but it still wasn't what I had hoped for. I came to the conclusion that the old Celeron couldn't really handle a GUI. That was when I really got into Linux. Today, it runs Ubuntu Server with Apache and SSH (I use WinSCP to backup my stuff to it), but I have a bunch of blank partitions for another day of tinkering.

Then I acquired an Eee PC (I'm writing on it now) and installed Lubuntu. I liked it, but then I tried Arch in a VM on my trusty win7 laptop (What did Canonical do to LXDE??), and installed Arch on the Eee later that week. A few days after that, my win7 laptop became a win7/Arch laptop (Again, with the real version of LXDE). I've found myself running more and more in the CLI except for some things like Libreoffice and Firefox that can't run in the CLI.

Hopefully, I'll gather the courage to dual-boot my win8 laptop (UEFI...) soon. However, I think I'll wait until it actually works, first. I've called Dell 3 times so far, and will call them again soon. That thing has had 2 hard drives and 3 motherboards in it, you would think that one of them would work by now. IDK what Dell will do to my warranty if I dual boot it, so I need to make them fix all the problems before I install a better OS.

Last edited by maples; 04-20-2014 at 11:02 PM.
 
Old 04-21-2014, 05:59 AM   #322
mlcboy01
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Registered: Jul 2007
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It's been fun!

I first encountered Linux back when I was installing BSD Unix for the creation of a bastion host as a firewall for the business. I had heard about Linux on the web (back in the 90's!) and downloaded Mandrake, or RedHat; the first version of Linux I attempted to install on a really old workstation was one of these distros (version 4.1) Since then I've been an avid proponent, and actually have a laptop that sits in my work room that acts as a router and firewall for my home network. I love it because, unlike the "M" word, it has not required a reboot in over 400 days!
 
Old 04-21-2014, 05:39 PM   #323
cheesus
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Location: Munich, Germany
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Having used or worked in about any *ix Plattform out there, Solaris, Sys IV, HPUX, AIX, Sinix, IRIX, even some Bull OS (anybody remember the Name?) using the free variant was a natural choice...
The difference between free AS in beer and AS in Freedom only did later dwell in me...
 
Old 04-22-2014, 03:04 PM   #324
LinuxRulz
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Registered: Apr 2014
Location: Grand Rapids, MI
Distribution: Linux Mint 16 & Windows 7
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I first got involved with Linux when I heard some IT guys on my industry software website talking about BSD and other *nix variations. They were saying that if I REALLY wanted to learn about computers and software that Linux was the "root" of computer knowledge, and that Windows was a bastardized version of true computing. I bought a "Linux for Dummies" book that included a bootable DVD with Knoppix on it, and the rest is history.

It does take a bit more work to install some software, but I love the flexibility, capability of the software for it, and also the expertise of the people involved in it. You can't get all of those elements out of a Windows environment without paying through the nose for it.

Last edited by LinuxRulz; 04-22-2014 at 03:07 PM.
 
Old 04-23-2014, 10:26 AM   #325
bookewyrmm
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Registered: Mar 2002
Location: Va, USA
Distribution: SLACKWARE!! and various others as they pique my interest
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I was looking for a better alternative to windows '95/98 and happened across a boxed edition of Mandrake Linux (5.0 or 6.0) in Best Buy for about 25-30 dollars. So I bought it and installed it on my brand new PII 350/ 512Mb/ 6Gb PC as a dual boot and never looked back
 
Old 04-24-2014, 08:26 AM   #326
arodlinux
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Registered: Apr 2008
Distribution: Slackware64 14.2
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My first encounter with Linux was with Suse 9.x. My brother found this "program" (as he called) and send me an email telling me about it. I checked out and read the detailed instructions on how to do a network installation. Everything went good and 60 minutes later I had a brand new operating system. Since then Suse/OpenSuse is been my distro of choice.
 
Old 04-24-2014, 08:31 AM   #327
corp769
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Registered: Apr 2005
Location: /dev/null
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Started when I was a little kid, I have always been fascinated by electronics and computers. I became a full-time linux user when I was around 15-16, and haven't stopped using it since! (Going on 28 now) So much power, so much control over everything, versus a piece of sh.... Err, windows. The open source part came naturally when I discovered linux for the first time, and the rest is history.
 
Old 04-24-2014, 11:53 AM   #328
pmackinney
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Registered: Jan 2014
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>I was turned off by Microsoft

Yes, a lot of early adopters were hoping Linux would kill Microsoft. Instead it killed Sun. (Not that their management was blameless.) ;-)
 
Old 04-25-2014, 08:32 PM   #329
gatorbmoose
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Registered: Aug 2012
Posts: 2

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Being an ole Salty Dog in the Navy during the early 80's I got exposed to Unix and ,of course; we know where Linux came from. I always liked the idea of a collaboration or sharing if you will of data and great minds. I still have a lot to learn about configuring all aspects of the kernel but I do kinda enjoy it.
 
Old 04-26-2014, 05:14 PM   #330
TuxRul3s
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Registered: Nov 2012
Location: Canada
Distribution: LinuxMint 15 Cinnamon
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Talking Great stuff!

Just to let you know I am a complete newbie wrt Linux. When I was between jobs, I took some computer courses and the instructor was an ardent linux/open source devotee. He often regaled us with stories of Linus Torvalds and his work. Unfortunately, most of the course dealt with the Evil Empire. Later on I wanted to run Linux on a computer but never had a spare box to rework or knew enough to dual boot. Eventually I inherited my son's old laptop and installed Ubuntu. It was fun, but I found it somewhat clunky - not the experience that I expected. After hearing about LinuxMint, I wanted to try that but the old laptop finally gave up the ghost. I finally picked up an Acer Aspire and after 2wks of grappling with Windows 8/8.1, I installed LinuxMint 15 Olivia (Cinnamon). I love it, no ifs ands or buts. Okay, so it sometimes hangs up on shut down, but that's a minor thing. Next project - a Linux desktop, maybe with Debian or LinuxMint/Debian.

I have been lurking on this site and learned a fair amount. Thanks for all your help, past and future.
 
  


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