Hey everybody, it's Riddlebox skin and today I'd like to talk to you about why I guess
it's more like tell you about how I got started with Linux. My story goes back to
grade school actually. The first computer I ever played on was an Apple computer in grade
school. We mostly just used them to play Oregon Trail and we're in the world as Carmen
San Diego. That was pretty much all I did on a computer all the way up until high school.
My freshman year was 1994 and actually I had no interest in computers at all and I even
paid other kids to type my papers for me. I remember typing in the computer lab and using
word perfect, you know, I think everything being dust based at the time or you know,
we were mostly in the dust interface. I didn't really use the shell too much Windows 3.1 or
anything. And then in 1998 my senior year I had a teacher that told me if I wanted to do
something during study hall. She would give me a pass to go to the computer lab and
create some flyers for. So I reluctantly took that opportunity and went and started
to learn a little bit about Microsoft Office. I think it was 95 and I just kept playing
more and more with it and then that year we actually got our first computer in our house.
It was an old Packard Bill IBM clone. I think it came with Windows 95 on it and then I bought
Windows 98. The upgrade disk and upgraded it to 98 and started talking to people online.
We actually had a 288 connection modem connection dial up and I started reading a lot
about computers and I found IRC and my step sister who was also getting into computers
and IRC at the same time started talking to people about Linux and we both looked
into it and everything and she eventually faded away from it but I kept reading more
and more on it and really liked the idea of free software and everything.
Those days like I said before we had a 288 modem connection and I spent my evenings
talking on hash Linux help on free node and actually ended up talking to someone from the
Philippines and I was telling them that I would love to try Linux but couldn't download
it because of our modem connection it would just never happen. He asked for my address
and a couple weeks later I had received CD in the mail with Red Hat 6.0 on it.
I tried to install it a few times and had some problems getting it to work, getting
X to work, getting certain things to work and every time I would reinstall windows again
and then I would keep windows around long enough until I figured out what minor issue I had
with Linux and then I would reinstall Linux and kept just trying it eventually.
I was able to get everything working even the dial-up modem worked.
I was pretty excited I jumped online when and IRC is root because I had never read anything
telling me not to and write about that time a couple minutes after I pulled in or entered
into hash Linux help and announced that I had finally gotten everything working on my
Linux install. My computer quickly shut down and then I rebooted and checked everything
and got back online and popped into IRC and my Linux box shut down again.
I started looking into everything and found out that there were ports that I definitely
needed to disable in order to stop people from being able to get into my system.
After that I pretty much stuck with Red Hat. I went to Red Hat or went to Best Buy
store here in the United States and actually purchased Red Hat 6.2.
I think I paid $40 for the set which came with a sticker to put on your desk
and that sticker had all these command line utilities and a short explanation of the utilities
and that really helped me a lot actually still have this on my desk.
I looked at it quite a bit from there.
I had a lot of trying times because it was the RTFM times of Linux or any time you asked
a question you heard RTFM and that's it or really sharp answers.
I just didn't want to help you too much. It was a difficult time to learn it.
I eventually ran into RPM hell with Red Hat and moved on to Slackware which I ran
Slackware for a long, long time and then moved on to Libranet which was basically
Debian that had a lot of utilities and a control panel to make life easier for
you to administer it and sadly the main developer died and his son didn't
keep the project going. Then I just started, I had just started
digital hopping, I tried Mandrakes who's Red Hat, went back to Slackware.
I think I even tried Caldera or something like that.
I ran college Linux for a while, started to actually get into their community
and was working with them on a control panel like Libranet had.
That project just kind of fell apart.
After that I went to a bun too and I stayed on a bun too for quite a while
and recently switched back to Fedora and I had no problems with Fedora.
I actually liked it better than a bun too.
That's where I'm at right now. I just deal with Fedora and I'm happy.
That's pretty much the story of how I got into Linux and what I've been doing lately.
That's it. Thank you.
Please contribute to HDR and help put some shows together.
If you have any comments or anything, you can reach me at james.midendorf at gmail.com.
That's MITDN-DORFF. Thank you.
You have been listening to Hector Public Radio and Hector Public Radio does aren't it?
We are a community podcast network, the release of shows, every week they wanted to fly day.
Today's show, like all our shows, was contributed by an HPR listener like yourself.
If you ever consider recording a podcast, then visit our website to find out how easy it really is.
Hector Public Radio is founded by the Digital.com and the Information Computer Club.
HPR is funded by the binary revolution at bingreff.com.
Open Reff projects across the sponsored by linear pages.
From a shared hosting to custom-private clouds, go to lunar pages.com for all your hosting needs.
Onless otherwise, stasis, today's show is released on your creative comments.
Execution, share and like, be those old libraries.