Not-so-nubie Introduction
I just registered and thought I'd seend a brief intro, especially since after confirming my registration every page I view says I haven't posted anything yet and suggests posting an intro to this forum.
Anyway, I'm new to LinuxQuestions.org but not to Linux. I got my first tast of real computer systems in college. I worked as a volunteer operator in the computer center on a VAX 11/750 running VMS. In the computer center I also got some very brief hands-on experience with Unix on both SunSPARC and Honeywell Bull systems. After that DOS and Windoze just didn't excite me very much.
Then, I heard of Linux. When I started with Linux I had a 486 with a 100Mb hard drive running DOS/Windoze 3.x. I started out with Slackware Linux. I forget the exact version. I remember it was somewhere in the 1.x kernel days. Anyway, at that time connecting to an ISP via dial-up with Linux didn't work very well, if at all. With the limited size of my harddrive a dual-boot system was a bit of a challange. I think I did split the hard drive between DOS/Windoze and Linux for a while. But, I remember while trying to get dial-up networking working with Linux wiping out DOS/Windoze, installing Linux, tinkering for a while until found something else I needed to download to get it to work, wiping out Linux, reinstalling DOS/Windoze, downloading what I needed, and repeating the process over and over again. Ah, the memories.
At some point I switched from Slackware to Mandrake. My Slackware box had become quite unstable, mainly due to lack of experience on my part. I undoubtedly upgraded some packages without upgrading their dependencies. After getting fed up with Mandrake I gave Gentoo a try. I've also gone through a couple of Linux From Scratch builds. Now, I'm considering coming full circle and giving Slackware another try. It was "Slackware Linux Essentials" that pointed me to LinuxQuestions.org, saying it's the official sanctioned web forum for Slackware users. I'm sure I've seen LinuxQuestions.org before. I'm suprised I didn't register sooner.
Oh, in case anyone's wondering in real life I work as a mainframe operator in an IBM zOS shop. And, thanks to the Hercules mainframe emulator I even run some older versions of IBM mainframe OSes(the ones available to hobbyists) at home. Oh, how I wish IBM would offer hobbyist licenses similar to what's available for OpenVMS.
Kevin
|