How did you get started in linux?

[MikeTbob]

These are all awesome stories, and I am glad you all decided to share your stories with everyone. I know there are several posts that really make a statement about the problems with Windows Vista and that makes me think we will soon have a lot more Linux users with more awesome stories!

[Bemk]

I'm sorry to have unchained a whole off topic thread here, so I think it is a bit better to move this conversation to the windows 7 thread. That way this thread can be used for why people came to Linux stories again.

[techieMoe]

I'm sorry to have unchained a whole off topic thread here, so I think it is a bit better to move this conversation to the windows 7 thread. That way this thread can be used for why people came to Linux stories again.

Good idea. I've moved the off-topic posts to that thread.

[elija]

Copied this bit back...

I'd been Li-Curious for quite a while before I plucked up the courage to experiment a little. I flirted with many different partners, among others there was Mandrake, Fedora Core and Open Suse from whom I caught a nasty disease when my hard drive was completely trashed.

After many years of dating different distros and gaining a reputation as a slut (a distro-slut) I seemed to settle down with Linux Mint. I still dated other distros though a whole CD rack of them. Ain't I naughty?

I have recently broken up with Linux Mint due to philosophical differences when to my amazement I found I had principles! and am now living with Xubuntu (9.04)

[techieMoe]

Whoops. Sorry, elija, that was relevant.

[elija]

No worries techieMoe - nothing a quick copy and paste can't handle

[Rubberman]

I got started with Linux about 5 years ago when I installed Gentoo on my old Dell XPS-R450, a 450Mhz PII with 384MB ram. It took me about a week to get it running reliably with an X desktop. Then I put Simply Mepis about 4 years ago on my Dell 8400 workstation, dual booting with XP. Next, I put Freespire on my Dell D600 laptop about 3 years ago, on its own disc. When I wanted to switch between that and XP, I'd swap out the drive, which with the two screws removed from the laptop that held the drive in, was a simple matter of pulling out the drive with its bezel, and sliding the other in. I actually preferred to do that than dual-boot the system. No concerns about one OS munging about with the other's space.

At the time I installed Freespire in my laptop, I started programming linux systems professionally in my position as a software engineer, developing risk analysis software for the options trading industry in Chicago. We were using several different distributions, including Fedora, though they have since switched to CentOS. Finally, a year and a half ago, I went independent as a consulting software engineer. I needed a really good development workstation and a new laptop. I decided that the workstation would run Linux and only run Windows in a VM, so I had my local white-box builder put together a custom workstation to my exact specifications - an Intel S5000XVN server/workstation motherboard, 8GB RAM, dual E5450 processors, a removable boot drive w/ extra disc and carrier, 4 internal 500GB sata drives, and an nVidia 8800GT video card. After some investigation, I decided to go with CentOS 5.1 (now 5.3) with Xen as a VMM. Unfortunately, the native nVidia drivers don't support Xen, so I switched to Sun's VirtualBox for VM support. I got a new Dell D630 laptop for travel, and because of client needs it had XP installed on it. I just recently got another disc, just like my old D600, and put Ubuntu 9.04 on that drive. So far, everything on it, including Bluetooth, works "out-of-the-box". The old laptop I removed Freespire from the Linux drive and put Ubuntu 8.10 on that, along with the Edubuntu packages and gave it to my grandson for his birthday year before last. Last I heard, he has given up on XP and is a happy clam with Ubuntu! Actually, what happened is that he spilled a soft drink on the keyboard and "let the smoke out"! Fortunately for him, he was able to disassemble the system, clean everything up, and found that only the XP drive was toast! But the Linux drive still would boot. Since he uses the system to design radio-controlled aircraft that he builds from spare parts, and also uses it to fly them under program control, he gives it a good workout. He thinks Linux is really cool stuff because he can figure out what it is doing "under the covers", which isn't so easy with Windoze.

So, right now I am running 2 systems, both with Linux on them. In the almost 18 months I have been running CentOS on my desktop I have had very few problems, and this system gets hammered for software development, video processing, audio processing, running Linux, XP, and Solaris VM's along with other cruft like my business software, office tools, databases (Oracle, Postgres, MySQL), etc. Dual 24" monitors, so I can run a VM in a full screen and still have a screen for everything else. The only thing I think I'll add to the system any time soon might be another 8GB of RAM (fully buffered ECC), though I don't really hit the wall much, except when a buggy program decides to suck up all the RAM in the system...

The end result? There are only 2 programs that I use regularly that I have to run on XP: one is my software design and modeling package, Sparx Enterprise Architect (it's supposed to work under Wine, but so far there's no joy in Mudville), and the other is my Fidelity stock and options trading software which doesn't install under Wine at all. Hence the XP virtual machines. Everything else I now run (with occasional exceptions) on Linux. I have spent over 25 years developing software on CP/M, MS DOS/WIndows, QNX, many flavors of Unix (AIX, SunOS/Solaris, SystemV on NCR, HPUX on PARISC and Itanium systems, Tru64 Unix on Dec Alpha, BSD, and others), and now Linux. Of them all, I prefer QNX for realtime systems, and Linux for everything else.

So, my road to Linux has been a winding one, but I have to say that I am glad to have arrived here!

[Hal343]

I installed Redhat 5, I think. on a Thinkpad1412 in 2000. It worked good, so I installed Mandrake 7 on a desktop in 2002. In 2004 I installed SUSE 9.3 and used it for a couple of years till the motherboard died. I installed Ubuntu 5.04 when 6.06 came out and now run 8.04 on the desktop. I no longer have any Windows computers and don't miss them. I installed Linux Mint XFCE on my laptop because Ubuntu wireless didn't work. I think I'll switch to XFCE for most things because wicd is fantastic for wireless. I will be trying Slackware, Arch and Crunchbang in the near future, and if I have enough time, I may try LFS.

[Jollie_kitten]

My boyfriend "converted" me

[ubuntu-pc-geek]

a couple of years ago now i was doing my it practitioner course this was only because i have shed loads of skills in computers but it always best to have a qualification to back you up!

this course was everything from software to hardware, basic and advanced which bored me day after day because i had learnt all of this in my spare time! anyways my tutor mike was on one of the computers but was using an OS which was not windows or mac? i was intrigued! it turns out it was PC Linux OS so i asked him about it and he gave me a copy anxious to get my teeth into it because anyone who knows me will tell you i am addicted to pc's and i am always wanting to learn more! hell i built my own pc when i was 10 and created and had my own website in the first year of secondary school!

so i got home popped it into my sony dvd/cd-rw drive(IDE) booted from it and tested it, it was nice! very smooth and easy to use but at the time? not many features? also i had recently bought a laptop hard drive and an 2.5 usb enclosure case for it and as windows xp is not able to install on to it, i decided to install PC LINUX OS ow dear! half way through it frose! no worry's i though and booted my windows disc to try and re partition it after the third! attempt it worked but when i booted into windows and connected it. it would not format!
i tried everything and gradually the drive began to fail! click click! i managed to save half of it (40GB) with casper but eventually it just died i was furious i couldn't believe Linux killed my hard drive
it happened to ubuntu once to

ubuntudemon DOT wordpress DOT com/2007/10/28/laptop-hardrive-killer-bug-how-to-discover-whether-you-are-affected/

this was insane and kills your hard drive!

so i tried nimble x and damn small Linux for a while, i had also heard about ubuntu and this bug being there to so i left using Linux for good! although i thought?

no matter a year later i finally had waited so long hoping this bug had been fixed? and got my hands on ubuntu and installed it to my main internal hard drive(dual boot with windows) tested it for a few years! it got better and better and so did my experience and view and opinion of Linux and this year i made the switch permanently from windows to ubuntu so the only OS i have on my pc now is ubuntu, and i am extremely pleased with it big thumbs up! to mark shuttleworth!