Faded_Mantis

Dad installed Mandrake (somewhere around version on an old Pentium II back around 2002-2003. All I did was play the tux games on it (tux bomber and that nowboarding one ftw!)

Since then I've tried Gnoppix (version 3 I think), Knoppix (Version 4 I think), Xandros 3.02oce and Ubuntu.

I'm still just a casual user, I know more about it than alot of people I know (knowing what sudo does already puts me ahead)...but I really know nothing about linux and haven't got any of the 'hard core' credentials of you lot :P

fingal

I remember a similar thread some time ago, but I thought I would contribute again.

I first heard of Linux while I was at university as a mature student, but didn't try it out because someone suggested it wasn't all that functional. In any case, I wasn't ready to risk losing Windows in case I couldn't complete my assignments using MS Office tools.

Following graduation, I found that my version of Windows 95 was collapsing like a wet wedding cake. The Internet was a fairly new concept to me, and I thought that viruses and online attacks were the exception rather than the rule. How wrong I was! I didn't even have a firewall; I was so green...

I was left with a problem. I need computer skills for my job, but I didn't have the resources to buy MS Office. At that time, like a lot of post-grads, I was quite poor and needed to make some cuts. Still curious about Linux, I bought a copy of a street paper called 'The Big Issue' (UK members will know all about it) and saw a review about a book called 'The Hacker Ethic' by Pekka Himanen, with a forward written by a certain Linus Torvalds.

The book made a lot of sense to me, because it appealed to my natural radicalism, and suggested that work should be done for joy, not just for pay. This idea is still following me around today... I like to play around with technology, and I like to explore new ideas. Linux partly fulfills that need.

I found a copy of Mandrake 9.? attached to a Linux mag. and tried to install it on my old box with no results at all; it simply wouldn't do it! Strangely, I knew it would work sooner or later so I decided to build my own computer. This was a challenge for me, as I had never attempted it before.

After a lot planning (too much in fact) I ordered hardware through the post and got building. Eventually I had a bootable box with no OS. Like most 'newbies', I tried a frightening array of Linux flavours including Slackware (actually I found this one dead easy to install), and most of the other mainstream distros. There were many trials and tribulations: the path to *nix Nirvana is rarely smooth, but persistence is always rewarded.

Today I'm back to using Mandriva (as it's now called). I might try others as I feel inclined, but I'm too busy doing other stuff right now.

I'm not 100% Windows-free because I have to use it at work, but I don't have it at home. If I've learned one thing it's, 'Don't be afraid to try new things. Make mistakes, but carry on and you'll get there in the end.'

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ammaro

for me i had one subject in collage called unix operating system.. it was introduction to unix..after collage i decided to delve into linux started with fedora and ending with debian..now im working as linux admin..and all our servers runing on debian

bigtomrodney

Just reading back over my own earlier post, I have since switched to Ubuntu and find it does the job even better. I'm lucky enough to have a machine decent enough to run VMs at a reasonable performance level so I am getting back to running more and more distros. Last night I tried openSolaris 2008.05 but I don't think I'll be switching anytime soon

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fky168

Firstly, I introduce myself to our community.I come from china and now I'm an embedded linux application software engineer in Xi'an software park.
I got started in 2001.When I was a freshman and selected Computer Application as my major.At that time I heared about Red Hat/Debian. Then I got a Table model machine and installed Debian by the reflection of one of my roommates and classmates in 2002.But I real got started in 03/06/2006, because since then I have being started to learnning Linux(ThizLinux7.0).
Nowadays I work on my computer with Fecdor7/8 and install Ubuntu8.4 on my own IBM T61 as studying.
I'm very eager to learn and communicate with everyone in our community!
My E-mail:fky168@163.com

javilin93

Hello fky168
Well I first heared about linux about 2 years ago when my older brother told me about this different and radical new operating system in which eveything was created by a community and not by a big company,so with me being more curious than curious george himself I downloaded a copy of Xandros and gave it a try(I gave a up about a week later because it was too hard I was only 12).
About a year later my computer got stuffed with viruses,and adware(everything in the Notorn encyclopedia of Viruses ).So that was the magical moment in which I remembered about the radical OS,I downloaded a copy of ubuntu and got it working.Now every computer on my house runs linux,there is now way I'm goin back to windows

vigol

Around the 1990,-- a Eight Yeas Old Child -- I heard about PC! For several years, I've playing with MS
From GW-Basic to C#, DOS 5 ~ XP, BBS ~ IE7, CSV ~ MS SQL, But without much success.
I don't know why.
Around the June 2007 : I find myself in perl / php / mysql. Encounter many difficulty in installation and finding src/exe, and many more. No guides, and as a whole I hate GUI, and related process.
I used to coding in C/C++ without IDE, I dislike somthings like C# / VB / MS SQL. and ....
What should I do, hey ; there's UN*X, It's good to start from there, But what about Licence?!
Let taste something Like that. ????....???? BSD / Solaris ? I love both name. That's true. I get in love with there names. That's sound great : SoLaaariiiiiis, Bee ES Dee. well, I'd try those, ... many problem raised. In fact I didn't know : How should I install it, configure it, use it, Slice? / ? Where's the partiotion. It was a Hell... In one of the warm days of summer, one of my best friends said : Linux is a dummy system, It's for dumbs, It will go to trashes. Bad stye? Bad Idea ? But It made me HOT. I found openSUSE 10.2 and Fedora 6 from shop, I Installed both... NTFS : OK, MP3 : OK, Dialup : OK (Of cource all of them in OpenSUSE 11.2). and now...

rokytnji

Forced into it when SP2 update locked up my hardrive mechanically so even bios wouldn't see it. No Windows XP disk. Didn't want to invalidate ol ladys Windows boxes by boot legging her installed Windows. To cheap to fork out the bucks. Didn't have more than a few months of computer time. Blissfully bought a 100 gig hardrive and it was off to the races with Linux. Borked more installs, wiped partitions, broke working installs by experimenting, finally grubbed up Windows 2000 pro disk to run motorcycle software after I found out TTS software don't support Linux. Run the Windows on the least powerful Laptop, 500 mhz , 128 mb, 6 gig HD, and settled on Ubuntu for the Desktop PC and NimbleX on the 900 mhz, 256 mb ram, 100 gig Laptop. Also run Ubuntu on a Toughbook. Learned about everything I know so far about Linux from the bros on this forum. Welcome to ride 1 of my spare Harleys anytime with me here in the desert.

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Bemk

In the autumn holidays we always go to the Tukhut(a mountain hut in the Belgian Ardennes) and there I met a Linux guru(to me he was). He told me about GNU/Linux and that's now a year ago. I downloaded as a birthday present to my self Ubuntu 7.04, that had just come out.

Looking at he ages in previous posts, (I've read the whole thread, I know I'm mad) 10, 12, 13, DAMN I'M LATE! I am 15 now and this year Ubuntu provides a birthday present again, but this time it comes out on the exact same date as my birthday(30-10, DD-MM). Ubuntu 8.10. Then I'm turning 16.

I used it until early December(one month worth of experience), because I had a difficult start, but about 6-7 months ago Windows only produced blue screens on boot and my licence had ran out, so I couldn't place a new setup. My dad thought I had done strange things with it because it crashed, but it was just Windows being crappy, with it's updates, but he wouldn't purchase me a new licence.

So I went back to using GNU/Linux. This man from the Tukhut told me about the freedom coming with GNU/Linux, and I wanted to experience it. I started learning about the CLI. That wasn't easy. I was completely alone in using GNU/Linux in my environment. I had to go to the system managers to ask whether an application I had written for geology could be installed on one of those pc's and that could be done.

I brought 2 windows notebooks to school and used the teachers pc to let my class play the game I wrote. (VB.net) Then I returned to the system managers to tell them that the application could be un-installed, but when I looked on the screen of a pc in the back of the room, I saw the same GUI as I had.

The system manager I was working with to present the game, is a GNU/Linux user too.

Now he asks me to manage all sorts of Linux things. I'm in the system managers office now every Thursday and Friday, and when an hour is skipped because the teacher isn't there.

In a month or 3 I became really into this Free* software world. And now I'm learning about Linux on a blistering speed, mainly because I am trying to work on Web-Linux.
*Look in the GPL for the words definition.

Web-Linux is an attempt to simulate Linux in the web browser, using Java Script. This forces me to learn about all of the applications we have to replicate. On this moment it's just the one who started the project(Darkrose on Linuxforums.org) and me. If you want to take a look at it, on the moment this is written the URL still is: weblinux.ltmnet.com, but we're switching to www.weblinux-live.org.

Linux is just such a great learning experience, next to school. I'm learning an awful lot here.

I also see my school switching bit by bit to GNU/Linux server systems and possibly in the future also the old PC's to it.

I think it's just a great thing to see how other people first came into contact with GNU/Linux and how we're actually all kind of nerds, setting up, tweaking and writing the system. The system manager who's into the GNU/Linux spirit, recently called me a nerd, and I thanked him for it.

I know it's not part of the question to cover the future too, but I'm going to anyway.

Maybe I'll set up a GNU/Linux group at our school, when I've learned enough about GNU/Linux and it's applications. Just a bit promoting GNU/Linux a bit. A bit more to girls than to boys, because here in the Netherlands, there are not that many women active in the IT world. Some estimates are 5-10%. I'd like to prove that IT isn't just something for boys, but also for the ladies. (I'm a boy by the way) Maybe I'll try to set up some lectures in school about Internet safety and let GNU/Linux come to the foreground several times, or things like that.

I am going to try to get rid of the GUI any way. It's a bit to0 graphical for me, I like the basic CLI more. BACK TO BASICS!!!

Freston

I always was intrigued by but also a little scared of computers. Until my dads small business (we lived above my dads store) got its first 286. It had Lotus123, WP5.1, and I believe DOS5.x although we later upgraded to DOS6.x

Machines in those days had loads of troubles, and I became sort of the sysadmin for that one machine and the matrix printer attached to it. Good times. Later we got a 386 with Windows 3.11, and I failed to see the point. Mind you (heheh) the machine did not boot into Windows by default. MS Office was in it's infancy, and although WP5.1 was getting a little outdated I still preferred it.

We now had two computers in the house, an unknown richness in those days. Like having two televisions, it was frowned upon. Only the rich and spoiled people would waste money on two similar devices. But the 286 moved to my room and the 386 running Windows stayed in my dads office.

Times change. My 286 kept falling behind, specially when it came to gaming. W95 came out. I got a second hand 486. Long story short, it seemed inevitable that the GUI would take over the system. Everything became locked down behind the interface. And I lost interest.

I did flirt a little with Linux around the turn of the millennium. With success I installed SuSE and Red Hat (then still available for the consumer market). But without Internet, there was a lot that I couldn't do on those platforms. And my Winmodem refused to work.
Besides, I had skipped W95, but I ran W98 by then and I had accepted the way computers had evolved. I had lost interest. XP came by, and with my second laptop I got a copy of that. But also came broadband. And a DVD burner. I looked up SuSE again, Debian, Slackware (out of curiosity) and others. None could detect my wireless card, and most misread my graphics card leaving me with a black screen after install. I got SuSE op and running though in dual boot and even had wired internet on it. I played with it, but didn't work with it. It refused to work with my printer/scanner, didn't do wireless and due to it's unfamiliarity everything costed more time and effort.


Then disaster struck. Something had gone wrong. Maybe a virus, or whatever. The machine was left unbootable. The recovery DVD turned out to be unbootable. I was fed up. After hours and hours of trying in vein to get the machine up and running again, I inserted my Slackware DVD and repartitioned. I decided then and there never to run a Microsoft OS again.

I was thrilled to see the command line having such a prominent role in the Slackware OS. And although I am still not a wizard and probably never will be, I really enjoyed learning about my new OS in those days. I never got my wireless issue resolved on that machine due to some issue with the BIOS, so I bought a 12m cable. And I had to buy a new printer/scanner. But other than that, it seemed the only limit to what that machine could do was my own imagination.

Yeah, it is good to be free. I still feel liberated running *nix. My newest machine screams under Linux and does whatever I want (including wireless ), I have 15 windows open at any one time without ever running out of RAM or loosing track of what is going on where.

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