how It all got started

[tuxxman]

I guess i would like to hear how everyone's linux life got started......
mine began somthing like this:
I used to be a complete noob.....that said...i had to get help with using M$ Word and such.
Well one day my dad found an old project from when he was in highschool, it was a game writtedn in BASIC. It was quite long, and he explained how each part worked and pretty much taught my BASIC over the next couple months. He hooked me up with a really crappy P2, and unlocked BASIC and let me play with it. One day i went over to my friend's house, and he wasnt there. My friend's dad was the only one there and he was working, so he showed me his office. His "office" is a fairly big room with all kinds of music hardware and servers and monitors everywhere...it looks pretty sweet. Anyway i was baffled by all this stuff, and asked what it all was. He told me it was, apart from the music hardware, all run by Linux. He gave me a set of Fedora Core 1 CD's and sent me on my way. I remember getting home and rushing to install those CDs on my old P2. I did, and the resolution was really low, so i googled and found linuxforums.org and linuxquestions.org. I soon found #linuxforums, and have been registered for 23 weeks 6 days. I found the answer to that problem, and began exploring the wonderful world of Linux. I was using a variety of linux distros for a long time, i started with FC1, moved to debian, to suse, back to debian, and...as of 2 nights ago, i have moved to gentoo. I am, by far, the most computer literate person at my school of 2000+ kids, and more literate than most teachers (all but the all-seeing admin). I have recently become very interested in learning how to write programs. I know how to write fairly simple shell scripts, but thats about it.. I rented a Java book from the local library 2 days ago as a matter of fact.

There...thats my story... i got kinda bored so i wrote it. Oh and by the way...my dad showed me that program about 6 months ago, and i am 14 years old.
-tuxxman

[a12ctic]

a few years ago, i started a cs server, it ran winblows me and it wasnt the most... stable machine, so i started looking for an alternative, i started out with rh 9, i soon got my server up and it was very stable, i was upset though because at the time there wernt any mods that i could install, and i soon swiched back to windows. A couple of months after this, i discovered a distro named... oh i duno, i soon installed it on my main box and installed steam through wine. Not to the knowlage that my ati 9000 pro wouldnt work (well) with linux i was very dissapointed and swiched back to windows 2000 pro. Well today i duel boot my favorite distro (debian) and windows xp with a macish style, i have also goten a new computer, but still find emulation ****** (just not worth the time). i currently have 4 boxes purly running linux in my house and 1 duel booting (my gaming computer).

[Javasnob]

I started using computers when I was 9 or so...it was a Windows 95 machine from HP, and all I could do at first was play Minesweeper. After I got into gaming, I started to develop a working knowledge of how to actually manage a computer, and my senior year in high school, I took a class in C++. Since then, I've learned Java, Python, and Perl, and after I quit World of Warcraft this summer, I decided to wipe my harddrive and go full Linux (I had Linux on another box). Still going strong!

[genesus]

I started using computers when I was 9 or so...

I wish I had started using computers when I was nine or so..., but that was virtually impossible...take a look

[AlexK]

I started using computers around the age of 5, waaaay back in the late 80's. My dad once took me to his work place and they had just gotten a new top of the line IBM computer from what i remember it had like a 30 Mhz processor and tens of megs of ram (cost some big $$$$, like US$ 50k).

That machine was meant to be used for hardcore simulations and tests of satellites. What most of the people were doing when my dad's back was turned was playing test drive on that machine. Needless to say, I beat them at test drive on my 1st go and have been hooked to computers ever since.

Got my 1st computer at 11, it came with MS Dos and 1st game i loaded up was test drive. Around 15, I began experimenting with linux (RH 7) was disappointed when hardly any of my hardware worked properly. but about 2 years ago, i tried mandrake and everything worked like a charm and since then i have been dual booting.

and that folks, is my story.

[Roxoff]

My intro to computers goes back a long way too. 1983 to be precise - we (i.e. the family) had got a Sinclair ZX Spectrum for christmas, and by March I was an expert at writing ZX basic and had started writing machine code/assembly language programs. I moved on to Forth (which still confuses the hell out of me today...), but my main desire was to play games - hey, I was still a kid after all. In 1987 I'd moved on to an Atari ST, where I'd also moved up to one of the newer basics, and I was poking my way around the system using C.

In 1992 I went on a software course learning C, and had my first exposure to 286 PCs, and in 1993 I started work for a small software house writing windows code and I started to learn C++, which was an eye opener.

In 1995 they had their first server installed (running Redhat Linux 5, I believe) and I was drafted in to help admin the system, and so my journey into *nix began. I learned quite a bit from that - I strongly recommend being dropped in at the deep end for learning how to be a solid sysadmin.

[bigtomrodney]

Well my first actual computers I ever worked on were Apple IIs I think at school...used to have tha game where you learn to program by controlling the turtle. Was pretty good. A few years later my friend got an Amstrad CPC464 and I loved it. I was into programming it with Basic and a few years leter I got a Commodore 64. I used a lot of the basic I had previuosly learned but had to learn differences to it (another historic example of how Microsoft use something standard in a nonstandard way - Yes Microsoft wrote the OS on the C64). It was a few yeears before I got back into current PC tech. I got a PI 200MHz MMx with 16MB Ram. It was amazing to all that saw it and I loved Win95.

I decided to get a laptop in about 2002/2003 (Can't remember now). I had been following linux and Open Source articles on a corporate portal that had articles from /. and reports from Forrester and Gartner and the like. I was dying to get my hands on it and as soon as my laptop arrived I got RH9, Mandrake 8 and SusE 7 and proceeded to dual boot with each until I settled on Mandrake.I've been a convert since then. At first I took it easy with just 8GB of my 60. I gradually gave more to disk space to linux as I used it more, and after not booting to linux in almost 6 months of heavy usage I figured I'd go the whole hog. One distro on the full disk of my laptop, SuSE 9.3. Happy as I've ever been with an OS. If only I had Messenger with WebCam support and could get Steam to accept my key without looking for the CD drive...

[Roxoff]

... I was into programming it with Basic and a few years leter I got a Commodore 64. I used a lot of the basic I had previuosly learned but had to learn differences to it (another historic example of how Microsoft use something standard in a nonstandard way - Yes Microsoft wrote the OS on the C64). ...

I didn't know that. A mate of mine had a C64, and I could never write anything successful on in from BASIC. It always struck me that to do anything useful, you had to peek and poke everything or put special characters in the print statment do do stuff. Now I dislike MS even more...

[onlinebacon]

I started when I was like 3, with these PC genius floppy discs on out pre p1 pcs ( i am talking back in the 90s, early 90's), and have been pretty good ever since, better than the IT admins at my skl :P gonna help 'em install fc4 on their servers :P

[cayalee]

i started when i was about 8/9 when my dad bought a bbc acorn pc, it had a floppy disc drive for discs that actually were floppy
it was a dos system and i used it to play games like paperboy and moon lander etc
after that we had a 386 486 p133 350 450 750 950 1.2 1.4 and im on a 2.4 now. spent a long time soaking up MS but made the move after being introduced to linux by a frined at school about 2 years ago. mandrake didnt understand my internal adsl modem so it didnt get used much, but then moved into a router based network and tried suse9.1. loved it and now i dual boot (note the spelling people! it is dual as in 'more than one, but less than three', not duel as in fighting ) with windows for games, and linux for useful stuff. also bought an apple g3 to experience another OS. bring on the days were linux is game frinedly and ATI release something good