Jump to content

Where? When? Why Linux?


Chalito

Recommended Posts

I was just wondering where everyone first had their own personal experiance with Linux. Any story that you may have on where or when you first used it,

My own personal story is this:

I was always a windows person. I'm only 18 so I really haven't been around to long lol. I mean my family never really had much money so when we got a PC it had windows 98 on it (Gateway was uber pwnage back then). So fastforward 10 or so years and I find myself getting tired of Windows and all that Mr.Gates has to offer. So a buddy of mine was telling me that we should go to Defcon 14 when I get outta Highschool. So I said why not. Hacking,geeks, and Las Vegas, it's going to be the best 3 days EVAR!!!

I had already known about Linux for some time but never really given it a chance. I had always herd the rumors about how hard it was to install and that. So it's August 2006 and I find myself in Las Vegas, Nevada at Defcon 14 (it's was awesome btw :D ). And my friend who is a systems Admin is calling me a noob cause all I use is Windows. He showed my his laptop running Fedora 5. I was like "It looks a little plain doesn't it?" He told me that I was going to be the only one there using Windows, I was like "Yeah, w/e windows pwns". When I got down there i was freaking blown away that everyone and there mothers had a laptop with some form of Linux. Even the ipods were running a Linux distro.

The next morning I woke up for another day of Defcon and when I turned my Notebook on I freaked when I saw an Ubuntu splash screen. I was so mad at my friends that I woke his ass up with a splash of ice water. But he had backed up all my stuf just incase i wanted to put windows back on. From that point on I forced myslef to use Linux and I hav been a happy camper ever since. While at Defcon i picked up alot of cool apps to get and cool ways to configure and customize Linux to fit me.

Well thats my story, I hope to comeback soon and read all of your stories. I'm actually interested to see where you guys learned your stuff and how it all happens. :P

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I first heard about Linux back in high school. There was one computer in our lab that had some version of Linux on it but I was too stupid to try it and figure it out. Fast forward a year or two and I started getting into Open Source and trying all kinds of distros. Mostly, I'm a Debian/Ubuntu fanboy, but I wouldn't mind branching out and trying Gentoo. Now I listen to podcasts about Linux, visit forums, etc. I ran Linux as my main desktop for about 6 months but I couldn't stay away from all the games on Windows. So now I dual boot. I think I'll still dual boot for awhile and play games but I'm certainly not getting Vista. After hearing about the price and all the crap they're putting into it, it sounds terrible.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It was back in highschool when my IT 2 teacher showed it to the class. He started telling us about how customizable and powerfull it. The first distro I used seriously was Knoppix, after that I moved onto ubuntu, Fedora, Red Hat. I still run Windows as my main OS but thats mainly for the games.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My first install was Red Hat 8 on a Pentium 200.

RH8 is kinda old, but trust me, it was still REALLY slow.

I was gonna read the install instructions on the cd first, but i was like, nah, this shit is easy. Guess what, i did it no problems, and i had no idea wtf a unix was. So anybody complains that installing Linux is too hard, go read some documentation for 5 minutes and you'll be miles ahead of where i was when i did it the first time.

The thing i really liked about it was that it was designed in a very intuitive and logical way, for me anyway. This may not be the case for all however since i think i have a mind that is much more technically and analytically oriented than most people, but i'm sure that would be the case for many here

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was just wondering where everyone first had their own personal experiance with Linux. Any story that you may have on where or when you first used it,

I ended up going to linux because windows ended up dieing on me and i didnt have a copy of the windows installation cd to fix it, so i just got a copy of a computer magazine that came with a linux distro (dragon linux) installed it and never looked back.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

wow, i like the stories that i'm reading. I think it's cool how you guys got to use Linux. And i think it's even better how ya'll still using it, i mean i still use windows to play some games but for the most part i'm going to be using Linux. Tux ftw.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If I tried linux, it was for mplayer. With windows, I had to install several codecs, use several players. All divx didn't work well.

With mplayer, I was able to watch all the movies without a problem.

It took some time to get insterested with other things than watching videos and I had to keep one machine on windows because of a usb modem unable to work on linux (Let's say my knowledge wasn't sufficient to make it work). I had to try gentoo to really fall in love with this O/S. After two months, I finally divorced with windows and bought a router/modem. :twisted: .

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I had been running SunOS/Solaris for a number of years and I was working part-time as coder while I was at university. One of my colleagues at work (an American), brought up Slackware and the whole Linux thing and as I had a PC as well as my Sun box in my student accommodation, I stuck what was then the current version of Slackware on it, which was Slackware 1.2 .

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i think the first time i used linux was through a shell account a friend set up for me on his box about 8 or 9 years ago. now-a-days i run slackware on my 2 computers, one being my laptop, the other my server. i dont have a windows partition since i dont need windows for anything. i can use my ipod, digital camera, usb floppy drive (trash picked) external lcd monitor for laptop (trash picked), and usb memory stick with no problems. screw windows, its a hulking spyware ridden piece of trash full of government backdoors and its crippled by design.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I pissed about with linux a bit in the 90's then pretty much left it alone until ubuntu caught my attention in 2005. It seemed ok, but since photoshop didn't run on it and gimp wasn't as good I didn't really see a use for it until i needed a server OS. After loads of issues with it, I found freeBSD and realized it suited me more than linux. Now I just use suse for anything that needs linux, freeBSD for my server stuff (its really so much easiyer than linux) but until adobe ship linux products or another company takes the image manipulation crown and is cross platform I'll be sticking to windows for my main desktop OS.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My first personal experience with Linux? Ok...

Well, it was at a party in high school. I think I was 15 at the time. It was one of those, parents gone for the weekend kinda things. Some older kids showed up with beer too. I felt leet with my Coors Light. Somehow I found myself upstairs in a room where all the cool kids were passing around a joint. Thats where I saw her. Linux was sitting across from me, wearing her cute little KDE tank-top. I had always admired her in school but had no idea she was such a fun party-goer. My turn came around and I had to Puff-Puff-Give or look like a noob in front of Linux. That's when the night got really weird. We got high and started playing spin the bottle. OS/2 and Windows were banging on the door like little twirps, trying to get into the cool private party upstairs. What noobs. Well, like you'd guess my bottle landed on Linux, but instead of the make-out closet she took me to the guest bedroom. Was this it? Was I about to become a real nerd?

I don't really like to talk about my first time that much. I think it kinda scared me for life. In hindsight I think I was way too young and impressionable. All I remember from that night was screaming "No! No!" as I tried countless times to compile. Mind you this was back in 2.0.0, GCC was a little wonky, and this was way before she got whored out by SCO. After a kernel panic I gave up.

I think I spent the rest of the night making out with Windows CE on the couch downstairs. She's really short in person, which kinda worked out for me in the end.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Somewhere around 1990 I gave Linux a go as a potential alternative thing to get familiar with. I couldn't get X to support my VESA Trident card (so you get some idea of the era this was playing in) so I backed away and didn't touch it for, like 2 years. I was running a Cyrix 120 P150+ processor, or a 'boardcooker' as it was 'affectionately' called due to its high operating temperature. Windows 95 was proving decidedly unstable on this platform for some reason, so I figured I should try NT 4 which was just out. It was better, but would still die on me every so often. One time it died and took the data on my drive along with it, so I figured it was time for something else. I bought this really nice Infomagic box that contained 4 Slackware Linux CDs and a decent, printed manual (not a sheet of paper. An actual book). It scratched the surface just enough to get you something workable, and to pique your interest to go out and find out more on your own. This time around the X server supported my Diamond Stealth 64 Video 2001 and I ended up with a sufficiently usable system. My ISDN adapter, which was *SHEER HELL* to get going in Windows, took no effort at all to get going in Linux. I was hooked. Removed Windows completely and went all-Linux from that point on. I actually kept that Infomagic book around until this summer when I was cleaning out my storage box. It was a truly excellent resource. Short snippets on all the important programs you can run on it, a solid, brief yet thorough tutorial on vim, some info on configuring Sendmail... I know old people often bitch about 'the good old days' but if anything back in those days they knew how to make a decent manual, and weren't afraid to include one for you.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My first personal experience with Linux? Ok...

<snip>

I think I spent the rest of the night making out with Windows CE on the couch downstairs. She's really short in person, which kinda worked out for me in the end.

Did you just write that yourself or was that found elsewhere? I'm only asking because that was probably one of the best computer-human personifications I've ever read. Bravo

Link to comment
Share on other sites

aardwolf wrote:

I don't really like to talk about my first time that much. I think it kinda scared me for life. In hindsight I think I was way too young and impressionable. All I remember from that night was screaming "No! No!" as I tried countless times to compile

Ok, it's official Darren, you are my hero. That had me rolling. After i finished reading that I was like "Dam, good thing i didn't go to that party last week."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Darren I hope you didn't go all the way with that windows ce whore. She has AIDS, and i bunch of other fun viruses. If you haven't found out already lets just say she likes to put the trojans in YOU. if you dont want to get sick, stick with the cool kids.

Oh and by the way Linux says to tell you that she has matured alot and she misses you. Take it from someone who knows, Linux will give you a much better time than windows.Haven't you ever heard the saying "Once you go Linux you never lack?"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm still trying to get my list of linux apps up, so I was wondering if you gus would mind posting any of your favorite Linux apps, as many as you want, and if you could put a smal description of what it does. I'm just looking for anything to install on my laptop. I want to ass more functionality to my laptop. thnx. I'll put mine just to start

Ethereal (Network Sniffer :D )

Azureus (Bittorrent Client)

Opera (Just incase I get Tired of Firefox)

Xchat (IRC FTW)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...