Episode: 1381
Title: HPR1381: How We Found Linux
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1381/hpr1381.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 00:33:32

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Oh!
Hello, welcome to HPR. This is K. Wisher from on the IRC channel. My real name is Kevin Wisher
and tonight I am joined by an online acquaintance. We've never met in person. His name is honky
Magoo and that's his handle in IRC also. How are you doing this evening? Great. How are you?
Doing good. We've been talking about Dylan S for a few months now and we finally got around
to getting our stuff together and recording an episode on how we both found and discovered
Linux and kind of a history of our venture down the Geek Highway, so to speak, and how we discovered
computers and so we thought we'd put together an HPR episode tonight and give something for
our listeners for the HPR community to ponder and listen to. I guess I'll get started.
My first very first exposure to any type of computer was back in 1982. I was a sophomore in high
school and we had a lab of Tandy TRS-TRS-80s that they offered a class in. So I took that class and
I thought after taking that class, I thought, how are these things ever going to be useful in life?
But you had to program everything you wanted it to do. I could not understand the basic programming
language or into this day. I can barely understand any type of programming. I can pack my weight
around a little bit with some HTML and CSS. That's about all I can really do. But after,
you know, what about you, honky? When was your very first exposure to a computer of any type?
Mine was much later. It was probably about like 92 when I had a, it was an IBM XT.
It was, I forget what the actual name of it was, but it was one of the original portable computers.
It was this giant, like, massive suitcase size computer that sat down. The keyboard would
actually go and lift up and attach to where the monitor is supposed to be. It was little
black and orange monochrome monitor. And it was, like I said, it was supposed to be portable,
but, you know, this thing was, it was huge. It was monstrous. Yeah, it ran DOS 5. I think my first,
I originally was kicking around with a 300-bod modem. It was just an old, old clunker.
What time period was this? I was probably using that about 92. I was like around 12 years old,
I think. So it was actually a hammy down for my father. My father used to use that. And then once he
upgraded, I kind of, I kind of got that from him. I believe I've seen pictures of that same unit
you're speaking of. And like you say, it was not, like you say, it was supposed to be a portable
computer, but it was a very large unit. And I don't, like, I didn't have a real tiny, tiny
monochrome screen on it. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was tiny little, look, the tiny little screen.
It was a big old case. I mean, it's bigger than most desktops are right now. And like I said,
it had like a little handle on it at the very end of it. So it was almost like a suitcase,
but it was just massive. And, you know, you say it just ran dals only. I'm assuming. And what kind
of applications and stuff did you do on this? I can't remember doing a whole lot. My biggest
thing was, like I said, I had the 300-bod modem back then. My father originally went on to
use it to go on to like, prodigy. And he gave up on that. And when I got it, I started using it to
go on to local bolt onboard systems. A friend of mine had introduced me to BBSs. And there was a
couple of them around. And yeah, I would go on to there and go on to their, I mostly just tried
to look for a different types of files, pictures of stuff, weird little text files. Like I had found
the, I'm not sure if it was actually the anarchist cookbook or I would just call the anarchist cookbook,
but I found that and had all sorts of weird documents in it about how to make the different types
of boxes. You know, they had, oh, I want to say the like the red box, the black box, different
ways you can mess with the phone company. I was too young to actually figure out how to use
any of that stuff, but it was all interesting stuff to read and look at. They had kind of like forums
where you can post messages and stuff like that. It wasn't anything close to like, yeah, it was
kind of like forum. Post conversations and stuff, I'd use that applications. Good Lord, very basic
text editors that were actually just able to do text files. I want to say I was able to do some
very early games on it, but I can't recall, you know, I actually still have the box. I probably
should have before we started this, busted it open and actually tried to see if I can get it started,
but I was afraid of starting up fire because the thing hasn't been touched in ages. There's probably
just like all sorts of dust in there. That'd be interesting to see if it did actually boot up and run.
Right. Mike, okay, I've since you mentioned the first, you know, your first actual PC,
and I was my first exposure was a tandy. I don't even know if you want to consider that a personal
computer, but it wasn't even, you know, it wasn't, this was before the IBM clone phase came out.
So my actual first exposure to an IBM clone was like in 1990. I'd seen one. I graduated high school,
went into an apprenticeship program in the plastic injection trade and there was some,
the first place I worked, I served my apprenticeship. I had this CAD station and it was called a Gerber
and it was, it was like, had a 15 inch or maybe 14 inch from Monochrome Green display and
this two big huge units, a set underneath the desk and it was, you know, the one I was at the hard
drive and it was only like a 40 megabyte drive. It was like in a cabinet, like a three by three,
but two foot tall and just loud fan running on it and it was just, you know, one guy that
did the CAD work and used it to program our CNC machinery. So, and I didn't ever got to touch it.
I just, that's the first, you know, real computer. I got to see that was doing some neat looking
graphics. But it like say it was a Monochrome Green screen, so you, but you got to see the
how they made the blueprints on, you know, doing CAD work. So in 1992 was my,
my, it was when I seen my first, you know, IBM clone machine at the shop I worked at,
that was running AutoCAD on a, and it was a pretty big monitor at that time. It was like a,
like a 17 inch, you know, old, you know, it wasn't the, you know, the big hefty monitors,
what the heck am I thinking of? Not the LCDs, but the CRT. CRT, yes, what can I think of that?
I've been away from them so long. I forget what they're updating myself. That's probably a good
thing. And then it also, this system was kind of unique because they had a second monitor setting
beside it. It was a, like a, like a little 13 inch Monochrome monitor that you type, when you
typed in, using it as an AutoCAD station, you could free up screen space because AutoCAD kind of
had a command prompt area where you typed in your commands to initiate drawing lines and stuff
like that, where they used, they had this little 13 inch Monochrome display off to the side,
and where you, where you did all your inputting of your text commands for AutoCAD. So I was
going to need, so that's what really got me fascinated and wanted to get my first PC. And,
so I bought a 486 DX33, it was the very first computer I had. One megabyte, one megabyte's a
RAM, 120 megabyte hard drive. It was running DOS 5 with Windows 3.1, and I bought that, like I say,
to teach myself AutoCAD. And from there, you know, I just did various updates to the computer,
and I ended up, like I said, I purchased this computer already prebuilt, and after that I started
building my own computers. And, you know, I ran through the various flavors of Windows, went from
3.1 to 95 to 98, and T4 even ran at home for a while because I was doing CAD work, and it kind of
required the higher end version of Windows, and then moved on up to Windows 2000, and then XP.
Real quick, just to bring it back now, I just wanted to say one thing before I kind of moved up
to where you're at. I kind of had exposure to a weird early computer. It was a little Texas,
you know, once again, I should have did a quick little search of what the exact name of it was,
but it was this little Texas instrument machine that it played like Atari Games and hooked up
to the television, but it was basically a computer, and you could run my father had bought a little
book on how to program and basic, or just kind of some example codes and basic, and he had written
a couple of games on there on the little TI machine, and he used to use, this thing took cassette tapes,
like just regular cassette tapes, and that's how it stored all of its data. And I just thought
that was interesting as hell, but I also took those books, and later on on my XT, I was able to
just take just copy over some of the programming and basic, and ran some of those little programs.
I mean, they were just tiny little games, like, I don't know, things like guessing number,
something that just kind of you type some text out to it, and it gives you like an automated
response back type of a deal. Then later on, I had finally graduated up to my, I want to say,
you would sit back in the round 92, was a 92, 92, that you said you've finally got a 486?
Yes, that was my very first computer, but I'm not exactly sure whether I had a 486 or a 386,
but it was one of the earlier desktop machines that I had used for I had gotten Windows 3.1 on,
and still back in the earlier days, it was pretty much just, it was just kind of the same idea
of what I was doing before of, you know, the regular personal computing stuff, but with this,
I think I was able to get more, I think I was able to run more things like a MiPRO and Lotus Notes
and Lotus 123. Actually, I don't think I used any of the spreadsheet programs. I just used
MiPRO for the most part for word processing, and then some smaller, earlier games, the things that
will run on, on Windows 3.1. I know I was addicted to, oh, Lordy, the SimCity, I was addicted to
SimCity for the longest time. You mentioned that you were on Bolton boards. That was part of my
journey too. That was my first experience of doing anything with a modem. That was kind of
interesting. There was the small town I live in. There was actually a Bolton board service
at a guy ran, and it was a local number, and I think he actually charged, well, you could get
on for free, but you were limited about what files you couldn't get full access to all the file
archives and stuff on there, but I think if you paid $20 or $25, you got, you know, for a year,
you got full access. I can remember browsing, you know, looking for all these little programs and
text files and stuff like the same thing you described. It was quite the adventure back then to
actually, you know, connect to another computer, and this was pre-internet. I mean, there was no,
I mean, I kind of can't remember when the internet actually first went big, but this is
pre-internet. You know, this is just dialing it directly into a guy's computer at his house,
getting on his Bolton board service. Yeah, I know there are things like a prodigy available,
and then, you know, prodigy went out, and there was a lot of other things like MSN and AOL,
but those were a little bit further down the line. The earlier Bolton board systems that I was on,
I didn't, I was lucky that nobody really wanted to charge you for anything until later on,
when the internet became more available than I, there was a couple of guys who would charge you for,
well, you were able to go on to the internet or connect to the internet, though I didn't have a
web browser, so that looked like hell, but you were able to get on to the internet,
and but it was only for a limited amount of time, and when it came to file sharing and stuff,
we were able to pretty much download whatever you wanted to, but there was always the rule of,
you have to upload to be able to download something. It was kind of like a weird credit program,
and so I was talking about that anarchist cookbook text file thing. I think I uploaded that thing
more times that I can count to as many places as I can, and as many times as I can. I don't know
what it is, there's that one thing, I don't know if it was just because that one big file I had,
I figured that would probably give me some credit, or what, but I uploaded that thing a lot.
Yeah, I don't, I've heard of that file, but I don't think I ever actually actually viewed it.
It was old, old, like I said, it was back in the days where people were trying to screw around
with the phone company, and it was this, a lot of the stuff that was on there was back when,
I want to say back when before everything went more fiber optic with the phone lines,
and more when it was copper wires and stuff, and so a lot of that made a difference as to
how these boxes worked and everything, and there was a lot of other stupid things in there too,
but like I said, as a young juvenile, it was just fun to read, and actually got me in a trouble once,
too. I have a feeling of them on some sort of watch list, just because I printed them out,
and I had them in this little three-ring binder that I had with me, and I was flipping through when
I was in one of my classes back in high school, and then I accidentally left it in the class,
and the teacher found it, and thought it'd be a good idea to give it to the dean.
I got called to the dean's office, and I'm sitting there, he's like, do you know what any of this
stuff is? I go, uh, kind of, I know that most of it's out of date, though. It's kind of gave me a
weird look, and just kind of set me on my memory way. That's funny. My first, you mentioned
prodigy, I can remember using that service, and I think I think copy-server at one time was like
the first, I don't know if that was officially internet or not, or whether I was just their own
service. Do you ever remember CompuServe? Yeah, I think both CompuServe and prodigy were kind of
their own service at that time. I'm not sure whether the internet was around back then, but like I said,
a little bit later on after my father had quit doing prodigy, they were able to, I know some of
the local BBSs had little things where they can, where you could get on to the internet, but it was
just, like I said, it wasn't until later on, until there were more web browsers and stuff like that,
that it really was more prevalent. Yeah, I think that's that's jogging my memory a little bit.
I think CompuServe kind of had the same thing. You could, you could go connect to them, and then you
could do get certain features through the internet, so to speak, and but you had to go through,
you had to dial in their service first, and I can remember, you know, even trying AOL at one time,
and I think that was my very first experience with the actual internet was through AOL.
I'm sorry. Yes. But then, you know, then I think my next, my next internet experience was,
it was still using dial up, of course, was there was a then local mom and pop ISP
started springing up, and I finally got off the AOL and thought, man, this is hell, you know,
this even though it was still on dial up, you know, you weren't tied into AOL's, you know,
browser and all the crap that comes with it, so you was actually just, you know, using an email
client, using a browser, and that was, you know, kind of the, it was still the same way I'm using
the internet now, I mean, but it was just through, you know, a 14-4-bod modem.
Yep, and that was the same thing with me jumping ahead to probably about, for me, it was 96,
I'll be running Windows 95, and I had just, one of the first things I had done when I first
started working was, with like my first paycheck, I went down to the local, to the local, like you
said, mom and pop, type of internet service place, and signed up for it, and that was my first
real, real internet. I think I, I think as things progressed, I was able to actually, you know,
what was it? I think Netscape was the first browser I had ever used, and I think once, you know,
I was still able to get to some of the other places, but actually to be able to use the browser,
but like I said, I'd finally, with my first paycheck, basically got paid for my own internet,
and that was, that was, that opened up a whole new world.
Yep, that's, I don't know what we do today without the internet. So, how far did you get along,
you know, how, with, with, on your OS part, OS-wise, did you run, you know, what was the,
the last version of Windows that you are or still, you know, are or dead around?
I, I made it up to XP, it was around, let's say Vista was out, but I never used Vista, Vista was kind
of like, M-A to me. Both Vista and M-A just seemed like a, like, a hokey crap, so I just skipped
them. I thought XP ran fine for what I was doing at the time. Then back, let's see, I actually,
I got the release candidates for seven, and because, was it I fixed my mother-in-law's computer,
and there was something with fighting with the, the, trying to log in to validate Windows,
I just had screw it and wound up buying a family key for Windows seven. I don't mind Windows seven,
I just really, really, really prefer Linux, but I'll, you know, I'd rather put,
well, Windows seven on somebody's machine, then, like, Vista or XP, I mean, I've granted,
I'd rather put it to give them Linux, but they're not always going to take it.
Yeah, I know what you mean. Well, I guess that kind of, you know, I'm kind of the same way I got,
I ran all the way up to, I've been on about every version of, I've seen every version of Windows
and hadn't had it actually physically installed on a machine, you know, all the way up to seven,
I think the only version I never did run was Amy, I just, I just, I skipped that one.
So that's, that's a kind of how it's to tell you about when I first discovered Linux.
Um, this was roughly like in 2006, I'd started taking some college courses in 2005 and I think,
you know, like a year later, one of my classes was, and I was in the,
CIS, the computer information systems program and one of the classes I took had to
been like in my second semester was a micro operating system class. Okay, my first
fray into actually, you know, installing Linux at home was using this Fedora core four that came
in this textbook that I had from my college course and it was because I was having issues with
trying to set up a file server on Windows 98 and I couldn't get the file permissions, you know,
to, you couldn't lock down anything per user like you can in Linux. So that's why after I,
you know, actually we actually studied Linux and all its features and I finally just installed
Fedora core around, you know, off these disks of my textbook on this computer and learned how to
set up a Samba server. This was my very first fray in the Linux at all and it took me quite a few
times of wiping the, you know, doing a fresh install each time because I'd get frustrated because
I couldn't get some of the work and reading various tutorials online and I finally got it
working and that and once I did get it working I just felt a big, you know, boost and confidence
about what you could do with a PC and it was all free. That's what blew me away.
Yeah, I'd have to say that was very similar to my first experience when I came to Linux.
I was, as you were ago, I was going to back in, actually mine was a little bit more recent,
I think mine was back in about the late 2008, early 2009. I started taking some courses at the
local community college for the A-plus certification exam. It actually was a certificate program
through the college for to be a PC technician but some of the classes were geared towards
taking the A-plus certification. This is a side note, never took the A-plus certification.
But part of the class was dealing with operating systems. It was the class that one's geared
towards directly towards the A-plus was one class was geared towards hardware, the other one was
geared towards software and he started talking about the different types of operating systems,
the different flavors, windows and then talked about Linux. It even seemed new to him at the time
but he had found an operating system called FreeSpyer which I believe is a derivative of LinSpyer.
FreeSpyer was a, I want to say it was a Katie-based windows manager and it was fun and interesting
and something completely different and recently with the, with XP getting so just,
it drove me nuts because as we were discussing earlier about using all of those older operating
systems with windows. I don't know about you but I had, we had one version of DOS for the whole
entire family and friends. We had one version of windows 3.1 that we shared with just about
everybody. We had one version of 98, I mean whatever. We had one version that we pretty much used
for everybody's computer. Like all of a sudden you had to reinstall the operating system,
no big deal. You know where the, where the disk is. Dad's got the disk. He's down there. You'd go,
go stop by Dad's house. Pick up the disk for that. You know. And then XP came around and XP,
they got so tight and so hard when it comes to those keys that, you know, if you have to install it
and you have to make sure that everything's registered and stuff and that just became,
it just, it didn't seem right to me. For so many years I have been using operating systems
free. I mean it's the operating system. It's the base system that you're running all this stuff on.
It shouldn't be, you know, that so tight and bogged down. It's just the base system.
And they make it so, all of a sudden Windows Microsoft decided they were going to make it so
difficult just to be able to use the operating system. And this just blew me away. And I had just,
you know, this was like XP had been out for a little while. And you know, actually the XP had
been out for a while and we had already gotten into Vista. But it was just struggling with that
for the longest amount of time to find this free operating system, actually called free Spire.
It was just, it was so neat and so cool. And it was, I started playing around with it. And one
of the first things that struck me was to be able to take these classes at the community college,
I had to use Microsoft Office. But you know, Office type programs. And I didn't have Office,
I had, but I had downloaded Open Office. And, but with Open Office, the version I had downloaded
for Windows straight from the Open Office website, I wasn't able to open the newer version of Office
files, the DOCX files. But somehow, magically, the Open Office that came standard installed
automatically, which was another great thing, all these programs installed automatically
on the very first install was able to open DOCX, the X, the, oh, crap, the Excel,
X files, whatever. It was able to, Excel, that's X, I think. Yeah. I, it all was able to open it
just by default. So automatically, I was dual booting, which by the way, I had no, I, I can't,
I was thinking about this recently, I can't recall like, dual booting went, if I can remember
right, didn't seem like a new thing to me when I first started a free spire. But, but I can't
recall why or if I had ever dual booted beforehand. That one's going to bug me for a while. I don't
know whether I'd run like, for a while, I'd run like, I don't know, 95 and 98 at the same time,
or something, and ran at dual boots or what. But either way, I had, so I was dual booting for
the longest time between free spire and when it was XP. But after a while, it just, it got to a
point where I would just, I really wasn't going into XP for anything except for one program I was
using at the time, which was I was making DVD copies. Legally, there were DVD copies that DVDs
that I own. I was just making copies of them for my own archives. But that was about the, the only
reason I would ever go back into XP. And that's just because I wasn't able to, I never really, I
really didn't look too closely as to trying to find something exactly like that for, for free spire.
Because free spire was initially starting to get there. It kind of ran up until I want to say
version 2.08. And I want to say that, I don't quote me on that. I'll check it out later. And then
it just kind of stopped. And they were trying to put something together like a software center, not
on like the Ubuntu software center. And, but it was, it was kind of slow going and it was a kind of
shaky. But I think they had like, snap, or something like that also on there. So I was still able to,
to find software. And besides their little software center to be able to install. And it just,
like I said, it automatically had everything that I wanted right there on the first install.
And then this was the big kicker for me, talking about what in the class and stuff about how Linux is
and how it's all free open source and it's configurable. It kind of peaked my interest as to what
can I do with this thing. And I always and got a little bug in my head as to down on the bottom left
hand quarter, you know, the little KDE, KDE symbol is that K with the little gear. It had that
as it's a little start menu. I got a little bug in my head. I went like, I want to change that
into tux. Don't know where that came from. Just all of a sudden decided, I want to change that little
start icon and it's a tux. So I went searching around online, searching around it. And I found
where they keep, where it is that they keep the icons for that theme. So I went in there. And I
just renamed all the icons from the the start menu or whatever to just swap the names between
tux, the little tux icon and that little K gear. And all of a sudden I restarted the thing up
and down the bottom left hand corner, guess what? Tux. And as added bonus, the little
the little pointer when it does its little thinking, you know, hadn't only you get like the little
hourglass, whatever. It was tux. He was doing a little squash, a little squash and stretch,
little little tux kind of squash in the middle of the screen. I'm like, that is cool. I was never
able to do this something like this with windows before. So not only did I get everything pretty
much that I needed right on the first install, I can configure this thing to make it look like and
do whatever I wanted to do. That is just awesome. I agree. And, you know, and trying to, I'm not
I don't know if they can be done on windows and I don't really care, but I'm sure somebody can
tell you that it probably can be done on windows, but whether you can, it's as easy to do, you know,
on Linux as it is, I doubt it. You probably have to install a third-party application to do
something like that. I think you did. I think the teacher of that class was actually showing off
something where he had where he can configure stuff by some add-on thing that he bought or something
for Vista. And that just, in the fact that I could just do that just by digging around and
changing the name of some files, I thought just thought that was awesome. Speaking of Vista,
that brings me to my next point about, you know, how I, you know, the me-discovering Linux was
after, from the time I bought my first computer already pre-built and then doing upgrades and
various custom builds myself between that time and whatever year, you know, whatever year Vista
was available in store-bought in PCs. I didn't, I don't know why I decided I was just going to buy
a store-bought in PC instead of building my own at this time for my next upgrade. So
happened to be in the local Sam's Club. I don't know if those are popular in your area or not,
but they're kind of like a big wholesale club membership Costco type store and they had
computers in there and they had some on sale as an HP computer. I don't remember even remember
what processor and specs it had, but it came with Vista. And and I know I'm sorry, you're going to
say I'm sorry. Vista was the worst operating, one of the worst operating, you know, one of the
versions of Windows that's not every other versions of a pig or a flop, you know, so
and I brought it home, got it hooked up and I had this older flatbed scanner that was no longer
supported in a brand new operating system and I could not use a scanner and it was all because,
you know, it just wasn't going to be supported no more in Windows. And so I ended up wiping Vista off
of it, putting XP on it and come to find out if I put XP on it. I couldn't, the drivers were
known for this computer, the XP drivers were not available for some of the things. Or maybe it was
and I was dual-putting XP and Vista and I'd have to go back into XP just to do some scanning and
I thought, well, why not, let's just try Linux on it. So I ended up, you know, reconfiguring
dual-putting the system with XP and I think Linux Met 5 was my first furry into the desktop,
you know, for a workstation on my personal workstation. And when you come to find out, you know,
the old scanner I had was still supported in and I'm sure it is still today,
the only reason I'm not using it anymore is I happened to purchase a newer printer that had a,
as an all-in-one unit that I already had a scanner in it. But I'm sure that same scanner
would still work today if I plugged it in. So that was something else that just, you know, drove
me to Linux was the, some people say, you know, that your hardware, some people's downfall Linux
is because hardware is not supported. But my set, the selling point to me was that my older hardware
was working in Linux and it wouldn't work in Windows. And to that same point, I never understood
when people would tell me that Windows just works because it doesn't just work. It just works if
you buy it straight from the store and you bring it home and it's the thing that's automatically
installed on the machine, then yes, it's automatically installed on the machine at that time.
It still, it just works. But if anybody who has ever installed an operating, a Windows operating
system from default, just like, like buying a Windows XP disk and putting it in a random machine
and then trying to, then doing a saying a little prayer and hoping that you have all the drivers
that you need for that machine and the first one being you better hope that you have the network
card or whatever or whatever the modem or network card being the first one because then you can
actually go and download all the the drivers that you need hopefully from the manufacturer's site.
But if you don't have that one, then you are just so because that's that's the worst thing.
And you sit there and you go over to the little settings thing and just sit there and go through
the different yellow yellow triangles that are there and go, yep, I gotta go find the driver for
this and yep, I gotta go find the driver for that and how come my screen is so freaking big.
I think that's one of the reasons, I mean, I go back to the project I did for my mother-in-law,
I fixed her computer, I cleaned it up and I put like Vista on it and when I did, it did something,
it didn't like the original the the the video card that was originally on that machine and so
I could not for the life of me get it past like 800 by 600 or something, it was just massive bulky
and ugly, it didn't recognize it and so I actually had to go out and purchase a video card just
to be able to get Vista to run right. I don't know, it just baffles me that when when people say
things like like when those just runs, no, no, it does not, it is a struggle at times.
There are times when it runs just fine with with it's a lot of the drivers that are automatically
on there, but it is not just run just fine by default. Yeah, I know, I run into that, I do
sidewalk at home on repairing computers and even today if you install Windows 7,
unless you're installing the like if you have a name brand computer like Dell or HP, unless you
use the you know the restored desk that came with that computer, you're going to you're going to
have like what you describe, you're going to have driver issues and you've got to go and if you
don't have another computer to go out and find those drivers, you know, you're going to have to
go to a friend's house and download the drivers for various things and like you say usually the
next or next in video cards I find are the ones that usually don't they can't the can't recognize
right off the bat. Yeah, it can get scary when you're when you're installing from scratch.
Quick question real quick, you were trying to set up a you were using 98 to try to set up
network file sharing, didn't you say you were also you also had worked around with NT though?
Yeah, I had NT40 at one time and that was because I was doing
side work at home doing CAD work and the CAD package I had recommended using that over I think
Windows 95 and since it was the you know the enterprise version of Windows or whatever
and I just I could I guess I could have went that route but I just didn't I just didn't and I was
just frustrated with Windows at that time and I still am today. I understand fully.
Again, I don't want to push the topic more but then when did when did you recognize that Windows had
the the Windows work group the the peer-to-peer networking thing was that actually did they
I pushed that into XP or was that still back in the earlier like no it might have been like
ME or something. I believe they came out with a 90 Windows 3.1 came out with a Windows
it was called Windows 3.1 for work groups and I think that's when work groups actually showed
up on the scene was in Windows 3.1. Because isn't that the sort of the same idea of the it's like
a peer-to-peer network like when I was using 3.1 trust me I wasn't doing any networking
good lord I all I had was a little dial-up modem when we were just dialing out every once in a while
yeah I didn't I didn't experience any you know home networking until until that time period I
mentioned and I think it was you know Windows 98 period and I think I even tried doing it with
Windows 2000 before I for I finally put Fedora on that machine and it just even with Windows
2000 it just you couldn't get the full control like you could over with you know the Linux
system with file permissions and shares and and I just I just it just it just became difficult
and it always seemed like the shares would break on Windows and it was it was just a big headache
right I think thinking back I was about 98 when I well was no Windows XP I'm sorry it was
run Windows XP that I actually started playing around with a with actually networking that's when
I probably when I first moved into this house here probably about 11 years ago or so I decided
that I was going to we were mean my roommates decided we were going to basically network the house
and I think we started using the Windows peer-to-peer networking to do file sharing and stuff
like that and that and it was a lot of fun doing gaming so after you after the free spire what
what's your what was your ventures down on Linux road what what distros have you tried and played
around us well right around the same time as he had given us well he had actually given us a
a disk for free spire because one of the things from the class was to do an install and he also gave
us a disk for Ubuntu and K Ubuntu and so I had actually installed both of them I was I was a
KDE fanboy for a long time but I don't know after a while KDE just kind of seemed
bloated and heavy and so I kind of stuck around with regular Ubuntu for a while right up into actually
the point of the switch from Nome 2 into Unity just because Unity had died I probably would have
stuck around with it longer but it just it started to get kind of heavy on my system and I had
I don't know I was running an older hardware and it all of a sudden when I didn't update on
Ubuntu it switched over to Unity and all of a sudden my network file sharing or something broke
on it on that version so I just kind of went ah what the heck basically anytime I would break
something in Linux I would go ah let's try a new distro so I went to in a net and it didn't
help that I would always get the oh what is it called Linux format magazine yeah Linux format
magazine I mean for the longest time that was my my biggest thing with Linux was I mean it was
before I had found the different podcasts and the forums and IRC which my biggest connection to
the Linux community was that Linux format magazine and I mean good lord the back of that book
with the the back of that magazine where it has all the articles of people's writing in
questions and stuff like that those those were just I mean those were invaluable I mean
and so with that magazine I'd find different distros and stuff like that and I would just every
time I would screw around and break something I would just go ah let's install a new distro and
I've bounced around from a lot of a lot of Ubuntu based systems mostly because with my older hardware
and my my older hardware has a a wireless network card that isn't always you can't always see
it's not I don't know it isn't supported by default by a lot of distros but it is supported
by default by Ubuntu so any type of Ubuntu derivative be it I use Bode for the longest time
because I'm a big fan of e17 enlightenment I use mint and that all the things like that
it just they just work you know I think I like I mentioned I think my first you know install on
my main desktop regular is mint five and I just kind of been a mint fan for a number of years
up until lately I've I think my last install was mint 14 actually on this system here
that I'm currently running and I'm just I've tried some different derivatives of Debian I think
Solos OS there's a there was the Linux Mint Debian Edition I ran for a long time then there was
another offshoot it's called solid x and they make a xfce and kte version and I'm just I don't know
I've been on the one the Debian based and Ubuntu based systems for so long I'm I'm just I'm kind
of getting tired of them I've been wanting to try to expand my horizons so so to speak and
here maybe about a month ago I finally gave mangero a try which is an arch based I kind of
compare it to the being the Linux Mint of the arch distros it's it's very easily friendly
installer you don't have to sound like installing arch from from the command line and building it
up from scratch it's pretty much ready to go once you walk through the you know go through the
graphical installer it's very similar to other distros and I'm really finding it stable and
pacman package manager in the arch wiki even though it's not a straight arch is very useful with
mangero since it's based off arch so anything you want to usually install and learn about the art
you know the arch and pacman and configuring arch you can find even though like say this as a mangero
you can find through the arch wiki the arch wiki's and even on other distros it's the arch wiki I
find is very helpful in learning learning things but I also have been running my own myth tv system
for years using Linux for that I've got two systems in the house one on my main tv it's using
my comcast cable for the unencrypted channels that I can pick up and then I also
have a system out my garage it has a antenna hooked to it that's up in my attic that captures
you know records video off the over the air stuff so I'm fully ingrained in Linux now my main
system I no longer dual booting I just I've got my wife off of windows pretty much we still have
the kids have some windows laptops you know of course but I've just on my main system now I just
have one of a windows 7 vm for some particular a hallmark basically it's for a hallmark card program
that my wife likes and I can't find a replacement on Linux for creating for creating greeting cards like
she likes and I have to use I'm currently taking a Microsoft access access class that I have to
have that for so that's basically the only thing I use my windows vm for anymore at home was I've
pretty much found replacements in the Linux and open source world to do everything I need to do
and very like say just very seldom have to use windows yeah going back a little bit one of the
greatest things I've found like right now I've just kind of I've settled on straight devian and I
have a plan around a lot with that but one of the greatest things about about about Linux is just
the whole idea of the package managers and the package repositories and stuff like that
going into a windows machine and then going and trying to find different places to download all
of these files and programs and stuff like that like I always went to some a place called file
hippo and I usually had a lot of the things that I needed but it's so just it's so easy just to go
into a drop down into a terminal terminal get root access and just type apt git and then just
whatever the package name is and just have it install right on your system it is just oh it's
so easy it it's so that's why I like Linux so much it's so configurable it's so easy I can
just go straight in I can just download when I I can have a whole operating system with everything
that I need probably up and going and like no time flat it's just it's just easy um I agree and
and one of the one of the major pluses about Linux that I you mentioned all the software that you
get what when you do your regular system updates all the application that you install on top of that
distro get updated along with it I mean on windows you have to go to every you know if a if a software
package has an update you have to go download the new version may you may have to uninstall the old
version first you just can't upgrade it or you may have to do you know stand on one leg and hop
on the other to get to get it to work it's just Linux is just so easy just you know a couple
command you know app like you say on tabian based systems that get update and app get upgrade and
you're and it updates everything the OS you're you're all your software and it's just it's just so
easy yeah it's it's absolutely beautiful um real quick I had you said you were using myth TV how
is that working out for you um I only asked because modern I've originally looked at the idea of
myth TV a lot of the backend stuff that I saw maybe just because I've been I was getting my original
stuff from the Linux format magazine which is a uh British magazine but most of this stuff seemed
to say that they couldn't uh that you had to pay for a subscription to get the um what all of the
the channels are and what all the the uh an update of what all what time all the programs are
and stuff like that and I think that was why I never uh one uptriended to to to do that the
myth TV before was I didn't want to have to pay for something like that and I didn't know whether
I can download that from somewhere or uh just uh quickly what was your what's what's been your
experiences with myth TV oh it's been great uh the service you're speaking of yes you do have to
pay for the channel guide to get all your channel guide information and when I first started it
was $20 a year and I think they just up my and I've just last year when I did my uh subscription
update they raised it to $25 for years so it's nothing you know outrageous to pay for this
service and you get and it goes out and downloads all the schedules the TV schedules for you when
when you when you and you have to have well you don't have to have it but it just makes it so
much easier to have right because without it you don't have the uh like program name you just have
basically you're just choosing a time that you wanted to continually uh uh record right and like
it has a the main backend of myth TV has a uh a web GUI interface that I can look at a listing of
you know the program listings and choose programs to record and how you want to
handle those recordings and it's it's very it's very daunting the first time you set it up but
now I can get if I wipe my main system you know and I can get my myth TV system back up and running
in pretty much in a couple hours it's not that difficult anymore for me but uh I don't have to do
that very often maybe every two years I try to not I try to base it on a long-term support
Ubuntu right now I'm running on the main system uh Zubuntu the XFC version with the
myth TV added on to it the whatever the last long-term support version was so that I don't you
know so I don't have to worry about you know and I don't care about all the the latest updates on
it I mean I keep it up to date and I very rarely use it for anything else but the myth TV I don't
sometimes well my wife will uh uh use it for Pandora if she's working around a house and she just
wants to have some music playing through the it's connected to my home stereo system so she'll
fire up Pandora to play some music while she's working around the house that's pretty cool
it's it's very well it's very well worth playing around with um if if you're going to get into it
what type of TV sir I mean we could do a whole HPR broadcast show on just myth TV
all right but it all depends on what you're wanting to do I mean if you're just wanting a media
a front like an HTPC you know home theater PC that you don't need DVR functionality then you
don't need myth TV there's other packages where you can you can do XBMC and other you know like
a front end for your your own digital media like home movies pictures and ripped you're ripped
content and stuff like that and I think and I'm not sure about whether you can interface to like
Hulu and Netflix and stuff like that because I've never used it but uh it was all kinds of ways to
if you want to cut the cord completely or whether you're not you know but myth TV is basically
if you don't it's a DVR it's a it's a it's a replacement for a set top box for digital you know
video recording so if you're not into recording TV shows and you're pretty much don't need
myth TV right and I am because I've been I've been using Tivo for about uh at least good
well eight years now seven eight years and if I can have that networked to all that might have
a one solid back end and have that networked to all the televisions in the house then that would be
invaluable yeah you can do that um you just have a it doesn't take a very beefy system to run
them back and you know to do all the recording you just need a lot of space depending on the type
of tuners you have and what type of you know if you're if you're recording HD content it takes about
six gigabytes for an hour or show so you have to take into account you know the file storage
of the recordings and the best the best thing going today is a device made by Silicon
dust it's called HD home run they make different models but it's a network based tuner you don't
even have to open up your computer to add it you just hook hook hook power hook it up to power and
hook it up to your network and it has the tuners built right into it you don't even
myth TV recognizes it and I can say it you don't it makes things a whole lot easier just
hooking up this network based tuner nice well we're coming up on an hour now and do you think
do you have anything else you want to add or do we consider this good well not unless we want to talk
briefly about servers or whatever but you know we are coming up to an hour so we guess we could
just kind of cut it off at the how we first get into Linux and then how we could first get
into desktop Linux yeah I think we'll we'll stop there maybe we'll do a part two later on down
the road so for now this has been Kevin Wisher K Wisher on IRC and honky magoo honky when I say good
night have yourself a Marlow this evening and thanks for listening good night everyone and thank you
for listening HPR you have been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio does
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