Episode: 1541
Title: HPR1541: How I Came To Linux
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1541/hpr1541.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 04:49:56

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Hi, everybody. This is Claudio Miranda, new manomias, Claudio M from IRC, but I'm also
co-host of the Linux Basement podcast. Well, I wanted to record an episode here for
Hacker Public Radio because I hear that they are in need of shows. So here's my
contribution. Got something in the works for a series I'm planning, but that's
gonna come down later on. It's still not quite there yet, but I'm getting some
ideas floating around. But I figured I'd start off and submit this one here on
how I came to Linux. So in introduction first, let's let's talk about how I
started with computers. Many many years ago when I was a young lad, I can
the late 70s, early 80s, I took a programming course on Basic and this was I
would say maybe fifth, sixth grade in elementary was a Catholic elementary
school. Actually, it was a Catholic K-8. K-8 is what I guess what you'd call
them now, but everything was integrated middle school and everything like that.
But anyway, so I took a programming course there and it was on these old
Commodore systems. Now they looked like Commodore pets, but apparently the
label on them said CBN. So I don't know if maybe they had a version of the
CB of the pet rebranded as a CBM for educational institutions, but that's
what I remember. And I do remember that we had to save all our projects in on
cassette and then trying to recover them from cassette was always an interesting
experience. But that class kind of taught me a lot and I remember the last
project that we had to do was we had to write in the code for a skiing game and
it was all with ASCII characters and everything, but it was a lot of fun and it
really just strengthened my desire for all this kind of stuff. Now I've always
had an interest in all this kind of electronic stuff and I've always had an
interest in music as well. So those are my two loves music and electronics,
specifically computers that kind of went into that direction, but I always had
this desire to tinker and take things apart and my parents would always get
angry at me because I would never be able to put things back together the way
they were. So yeah, so I kind of molded that into
you know, into computers that kind of started going into computers and then
into programming. Well, as the years went by, you know, when I went from, no, I'm
sorry, from seventh to eighth grade, the elementary school I was in had closed
down because of financial issues. So they moved us from the Catholic school that
we were in to another one in nearby in the area and had a bit of an upgrade
there because I was still taking the programming courses on basic, but this
time we went from the Commodore CBN slash pet to the Apple IIE. Now this was
great. I still had the experience from my previous class, but this was more of an
advanced class and I did enjoy it just as much, but the problem I had was
having to stay after school and do my homework for the class at school.
Eventually my parents did get me a computer for Christmas and one of the things
that I always wanted, one of the computers I was wanted was the VIC-20 because I
had a friend who had a VIC-20 and we used to play all these old text
adventure games and I just started it was awesome. Now I had in Atari 2600, I had
you know, all these consoles, but I didn't have computer, actual proper computer.
And so my parents, after telling them which computer I wanted, they eventually
got me a computer. Now, blessed our hearts, they had no idea what to get, so I
ended up opening my present and it was a Mattel Aquarius. Not sure if many of
you are familiar with this system, it's a rather obscure system, but it's it's
kind of intriguing, given that it reminded me a lot of the Intellivision just
put in computer form. Think of the Calico Vision and the Atom. This is kind of
what the Aquarius was compared to the Intellivision. However, they did use
different processors, which I eventually found out. I'll be sure to include in
the show notes a link to Wikipedia about the Aquarius, maybe from some other
sites as well. So anyway, this was a computer that I got for Christmas and it
did have a basic interpreter on there. So the saving grace was that I was able
to actually program some stuff with what I learned in basic. Granted, a lot of
the stuff that I was doing on the Apple 2E had to be ported over and certain
things would work, certain things wouldn't work. So I guess that was my first
foray into porting app porting programs from one platform to another.
But anyway, so still saving stuff into cassette tape with that system and that
was always an exercise in patience. But it did me well for a good while until
a few Christmas is later. My parents actually did upgrade me from that
computer to an Apple 2C, which is great because now I was working on the same
platform and I would be able to move between the two systems easily, do my homework
at home and submit it day after or whenever we had the class to be able to submit
it in time without having staff school. So anyway, that was my experience with
computers. I held on to that Apple 2C for a very long time. I would say way into
the into the late 80s, probably even into the early 90s. But by that time I had
kind of grown out of doing all that basic programming. Now I did used to get
subscriptions to family computing and some other magazines and I would stay
up late at night typing in all these these games that they had in basic for
different platforms and they had it for the Apple 2. And I do remember
sifting through those pages and those magazines reading articles on different
computers and games and a whole bunch of other software. And I remember going
through and finding this one advertisement for a it was a book on Unix. And for
some reason that stuck with me. It's like what is this Unix that's mentioned
here. I've never heard of it before. I've heard basic, I've heard of DOS,
ProDOS and all that being in the Apple 2 world. But I never heard of this
Unix stuff and it just they made it seem like this mysterious and wonderful
system. But anyway that stuck with me. I never really looked into it and you
know I just kept gong on my own life as a kid as a teenager and you know
eventually we moved from where I was living in New York and like I said I kind
of dropped off the whole focus on computers and started doing other things
focusing more on music and taking piano lessons and things like that. But I was
always a fan of the Apple 2. Never really did have experience with a PC with the
IBM PCs or anything like that. I did actually have my first experience with a
Macintosh. This was in the late 80s. My father was renting an office week with
another person that he knew who was also his client and they decided to work
together and he actually had like a small printing press there while he worked
on a lot of the graphics design. Now mind you this is way before computers so
it was all by hand, all in the old ways of doing things. But his friend there
actually purchased a computer and it was a I believe a Macintosh plus and was
just blown away by the whole graphical environment. Having come from a very
command line oriented environment with the Apple 2 and so I was blown away by
this and I said this is future this has got to be it and so I guess that's where
my my love for Apple machines kind of came from. I've always been an Apple fan
I've always been a Mac fan don't hold it against me but that would that
affinity towards that platform would continue on through the 90s as I
started studying sound engineering and started focusing more on my music on
the music side of my life. It a lot of the sequencing and you know composition
and music composition on a bunch of Macs that they had at the university once we
moved to Miami in the late in the early 90s. We you know that over at the
school they did have some PCs but I always stayed far away from them I always
stuck with Macs much easier to deal with everything was graphical so that kind
of melded to between computers and music and I always I always have even to
this day. So time progresses I graduate from there well not even let's go back
a little bit. I actually was one of the assistants in the meeting lab there
and eventually I did start getting PCs in there. Most of these were the old IBM
PS2s and we had to make sure that they were working with a software and all
that kind of stuff so I said well I got to deal with this Windows stuff and
mind you this is Windows 3-1 and still I'm a star at the time so not really
my cup of tea but I had to thrust myself into it and kind of familiarize
myself with the environment even though I hated it with the passion. So I did
become familiar with Windows and DOS and even the early days of the internet if
you will because I would connect to a freenet that was available for the
college at the time called Seflon Freenet actually it was it was a access that
we had for the what was it the southeast Florida network is I think is what it
stands for what it stood for I don't remember but I guess I can look that up if I
find anything I'll put it in the show notes so I would connect to that I would
use Go for use FTP but that was it it was all a controlled environment I do
remember that when I logged into these machines when I remotely logged into
them it was all through dial up on a PC that was using a terminal software when I
did connect to their servers I noticed that it was a Sun OS server so here we go
again getting exposed a little more to some Unix environments here so it was
rather interesting and I did read up on FTP and all that kind of stuff and
the World Wide Web and all those things well not even the World Wide Web that
wasn't quite popular just yet again this is like maybe 90 93 I would say
93 yeah so I still wasn't familiar with the World Wide Web and didn't
become familiar with it until much later still my experience with that was
was there and I kept working in the middle lab kept doing all that kind of
stuff but I started getting more interested in computers again so eventually my
parents the Apple 2 at this point was useless it's way out of the way and I
think at this point it was just dead because it was just sold so eventually my
parents did purchase another computer for the family for Christmas and yes
this was a Mac since we were practically an Apple household my father also
was starting to work on Macs and he would actually in the past use that Mac
Plus just to kind of familiarize himself with it but he never really touched
the computers until much later on he still as a Mac user and I'm trying to
get him out of that but anyway so I still working on Macs now I finally have a
Mac at home and I can do all the music stuff that I wanted to do but I was still
connected to the BBSs and and Seflin and all that stuff from that Mac using
terminal software that was available for the Mac so I continue on as a Mac
user as an avid Mac user and I eventually graduated from that college and I was
hired I started working at this local ISP so the good thing about it was that I
heard up had already gained some experience with Windows and DOS not told
not a lot of experience but good enough to be dangerous so I was I was hired by
this ISP local ISP which doesn't exist anymore and and I went ahead and you
know I was basically a field tech and going to different houses different
businesses and setting up the internet for them through the ISP mainly on
Windows machines some DOS machines absolutely no Macs but I did configure my
Mac to connect through the ISP through DILO so if that ever was a situation I
would come into I would not have a problem unfortunately it then never happened
but anyway so at this ISP I was exposed to a lot more Windows and a lot more a
lot more PCs a lot more different environments even Windows 95 which at the time
I would say this is about 95 96 I started to become familiar with at the time
also personally I was collecting a bunch of old PCs just playing around with
them now with Windows and yeah I did have some Windows 95 copies flown around
from friends given to me but in my time with this ISP and as I guess I became
more you know more comfortable with the owner of the ISP you know we became
friends and everything and he introduced me to well he showed me the servers that
they had for for allowing people to access the internet through them and I guess
this would be my first introduction to Linux as an operating system I had no
idea what it was he was the one that introduced me to it and he would speak he
talked about Linux like it was God's gift to the world and and I'm listening to
this and and I always had the philosophy that an operating system should be
something that comes with the computer I guess because my computers at the
time came with some sort of oh as or some sort of basic interpreter something
that can make it useful I'd never believe that an operating system should be
something separate from the computer because without an operating system the
computer is useless so at least my opinion anyway so I always thought that the
operating system should be something that's freely available and the
applications I guess if they want to charge for it as proprietary open or
whatever that would be up to the developer but an operating system itself is
something that I thought was essential for a user to just a computer so he's
telling me about Linux and about all and about how it's free and it's not just
free to to download and install but it's also free to modify and that you could
actually make those changes available freely to others and I kind of that's how I
kind of was introduced to the whole free and free software and open source
philosophy so I'm sitting here I'm like wow this is amazing and it just opened my
eyes to I said I've got to give this a try and so he actually set up a box for
me with I believe it was a version of red had an early version I don't
remember exactly and was running fvwm as the graphical as a window manager I had no
idea how to get that going but he would set our for me and I would just go and
try and browse the web and try and do all these things and while I could it I was
rather limited mainly because of my lack of knowledge but I said I was
determined to learn this because I really wanted to get this installed on some
of the PCs I had at home I didn't want to run Windows I wanted a Mac back
and afford it so I said I'm gonna learn this I'm gonna try and figure it out
I broke that machine so many times you have no idea and I didn't know how to get
it back up and running so he would sometimes help me out and get that going but
that was kind of it was kind of a love hate affair with with me and Linux but I
wasn't gonna let myself get get down I really want to learn this the whole
philosophy had already captured my heart and I was in love with it so I eventually
well just to make this little short the ISP eventually after a couple of years
closed down and as a parting gift I guess for having stuck so long with the
company he the owner actually gave me one of the PCs for free so I took that one
home and I went ahead and I installed a Linux distribution or actually not
really I at this point I was still I needed a computer that worked out of the
box so I went ahead and I installed a copy of Windows 95 on it and that won't
from Windows 95 to Windows 98 and so on but I didn't give up on using Linux again
I was still would have preferred to have a Mac being a Mac user preferably and
I dabbled in emulating stuff on there and Windows as to make it run like a Mac
but it which just wasn't the same so I would actually end up using the Mac and
my parents house because I was still with my parents eventually I did move out
and I couldn't take that Mac with me so I was forced to use that PC now while I
was using Windows on that PC Windows 98 I guess at the time later on late
90s I started reading up on Linux following all the different Linux sites
and I eventually did get a copy I don't remember if it was for my birthday or
for Christmas it seems that it always seems to be the theme of Christmas in these
milestones of my life so I ended up getting a copy of Red Hat 4.2 as a gift and so
I said this is awesome I finally have a copy of Linux and I can install because
for me downloading and ISO just was not possible on dial it would take
practically forever so I went ahead and decided to take one of the pieces I
had and install Linux the Red Hat on that I was able to get it up and running
after a few trial and error and but I couldn't get it on the internet and that's
what I had some trouble with especially with the with the modem now I don't
remember if the modem that I had was a win modem or if it was I do believe it was
an actual hardware US robotics modem but this is so long ago so but nevertheless
I did do what I what I could to get it up and running and there were times
where I actually was able to connect with that Linux box but I still had the
Windows box just as it's something for school and just for other tasks that I
needed because I needed something that worked it was my production machine well
time went by and I started dabbling a little more with Linux and he came
more depth with it more familiar with it and I started I started doing some
distro hopping and so I would go to school and I would start downloading
distributions before that I actually purchased the copy of Suza I think it was
5.1 and I started playing with that and installing it at work and telling my
co-workers about it how great it was and and and it would just fall into fear
just because they didn't see they didn't see the what I saw with Linux and how
great it was and the whole idea of a free as in you know not just free as in
beer but for instance beach district you know operating so I played around with
ads all with that later on as the the beginning of the 2000s I started
playing around with a lot of other distributions I went from that Red Hat to
Suza and then jumped to Mandrake and I stayed with that for good while because
I liked that a lot of graphical tools for the command line stuff I really kind
of washed out on the command line stuff but I did have some max some older
max that I played around with and got them online again I've still preferred
using the Mac for my everyday use still didn't have one still didn't have enough
money for one but I was able to get some older ones I also started playing
around with some Linux distributions that were for the PowerPC I started
installing yellow dog on some max at that that I had at work and that was it was
fun to try out and to and to just play around with and I eventually just started
using that for the majority of my time while I was working but I did have to
switch back to Mac OS I had the computer that I had at this one job once I
was working for the school system was was a power Mac 8500 I believe anyway so
I would play around with a part PC Linux there and I would play around with
X86 Linux at home and you know I would I would install it on my then
seller on 300 a I would I would test out with with Debbie and Mandrake and
Suza and all these distributions and like I said I stuck with Mandrake for a
good portion of the 2000 the early 2000s and then I kind of got tired because I
would end the breaking things and some of the tools that that Mandrake had at
the time would end up breaking everything else and it's just there was no
consistency and so I said you know what let me try and find something else and
so I saw this Slackware and they say it was simple a very simple Linux
distribution of course I misunderstood and took simple to mean easy to use and
not in simple as a simple design of the operating system so Slackware kind of
kicked my butt when I tried it at version 8 I cried and then went back to
Mandrake but eventually I did come back to Slackware version 9 and I stuck
with it and I have to say that's where I really cut my teeth with Linux I know
there's a saying out there that says you know you want to learn Red Hat use
Red Hat you want to learn Debian use Debian you want to learn Linux use
Slackware of course nowadays that can be debated with other distributions but
at the time it was Slackware so I did enjoy Slackware I I had it installed on
that 300A for a good while until it just was tools for anything and on the PC
end it ended it ended up being probably my main my main Linux distribution so
I went ahead from configuring stuff graphically to configuring stuff the
command line and at least just to get x11 working so you know and start using
stuff again we had at the time at this time we had broadband everything was
connected through the network ports so very easy to get all that going now my
love for the Mac still did not go away I do that thanks to work I had some
experience with OS 10 when it came out and I got to play with it and I love being
able to pull up the command the the terminal I'm being able to run commands
that I was familiar with in Linux and it just blew me away so I eventually moved
to OS 10 at work but I still played around with Linux there at home I was
basically Linux with this desire to be running Mac OS 10 at some point at
around 2005 I want to say I finally was able to purchase my own Mac so I got
myself and I'm actually five two gigahertz came with OS 10 10 points three I
believe I don't remember it's not even that important but it came with a
decent version of OS 10 no I'm sorry OS 10.4 came with tiger and I was so happy
to have that machine so for a long time my primary system went from being
Windows and then Linux and then from Linux and Windows to OS 10 and Linux and
Windows so that was the order of my preference I really didn't want to use
Windows I only used it because I had no choice but now I had the choice to
have a Mac and I was able to do all my I was able to use all my applications
that I did for sequencing and everything especially the stuff that was on
on on the older Mac OS and work on that on OS 10 and I was happy until Apple
decided to sell some nuts not so quality hardware I guess if you want to say
the hardware had a defect and the defect was a bad capacitor design so my name
I'm actually five that I loved then last very long I would say maybe around
2007 2008 it was it was becoming an issue and I had to have the boards replaced
twice and Apple was not forthcoming as even though they had a replacement
program because of that defect so I was pissed and I said never again will I let
Apple burn me and so thus began my migration after the first motherboard
fail and the second motherboard fail over to Linux at this point I was already
getting into a boom tube which was the up and coming Linux distribution for
human beings as they proclaim and I was happy I liked it I liked it for my
everyday use it it kind of slack work took a back seat to it home was that I
still love slack work and I didn't want to give it up because I learned so much
and now I'm still distro hopping playing with Debbie and playing with with
slack we're playing with the boom tube and every so often I may be play with
Fedora but there's some history to that I know back in the day Redhead did some
Redhead did some things with the community that was not not very pleasing to
the community and so I didn't like what they were doing and I decided to stop
using Redhead altogether and Redhead to base distributions altogether I
fell in love with the Debbie in way of doing things and the slack war way of
doing things and the boom tube had a very user-friendly way of doing the Debbie
in way of doing things and so I ended up doing that so my order of preference I
guess would have been at the time Ubuntu, Slackware, Debbie in and then moving
over from OS10 trying to make my primary system a Linux-based system and not
the other way around because of all these issues that I had with Apple so
eventually I was able to do that the IMACG5 finally took kicked the bucket and
the replacement program had already expired so I had no choice but to move
everything over. Thankfully I had already done that and so a lot of my computer
usage towards the late 2000s before 2010 and into 2010 was was all Linux-based
so my primary system finally moved to Linux I was a lot more advanced now in
my Linux usage it was it was not afraid of using the command line it was just
my preferred platform and so I started dabbling in audio especially with
Ubuntu Studio I started dabbling with audio programs on that as a matter of
fact I actually installed the Ubuntu Studio on my PowerMACG5 because there
was a PowerPC port of it and actually no my mistake I actually installed Ubuntu
on it and installed the Ubuntu Studio metapackages for until it finally died so
that one was due of booting for a while with Linux and OS10 preferably on OS10
in the beginning that was my primary and then eventually I moved over to
being strictly Linux and moved all those applications and songs and
projects and everything over so once that IMACG5 kicked the bucket I copied
everything over to my PC at the time which was an Athlon XP 2400 plus which
was running Linux and I just continued on and so been dabbling with a bunch
of Linux distributions going from Arch going from various flavors of Slack
where eventually I did leave Ubuntu because you know it just didn't like the
direction that we're going into and actually ironically I moved over to
Fedora after playing around version 13 and falling in love with it because all
the previous versions just were craft to me but anyway so I'm still sticking
strong with Fedora I've got Fedora 28 on my laptop here which is a Toshiba M4
Prodej M400 I've got my oldasis EPC 901 which ran various flavors of Ubuntu
ran Slackware for a little while and is now actually running Ubuntu which I'm
using for some testing just that's how it's the operating system and on my PC at
home guess what I'm running Slackware 64 and it's been running ever since
like a champ and that one is actually a newer system I would say I got it in
2010-2011 it's an AMD Phenom X4 965 Black Edition and it's running very well
and it's been running Slackware and it will keep running Slackware for as long
as I may have I guess or it lives so how funny that my life and that were
started actually with my life with Linux started with an advertisement
a family computing magazine about Unix and never thought I'd end up
running a Unix like operating system like Linux or even with the BSD's which
I'm dabbling in recently so kind of funny how life how life is so there you
have it that's my how I got into Linux how I came to Linux episode I hope you
enjoyed it I hope I haven't rambled too long as I usually do if you've
listened to Linux basement if you want to contact me you can contact me at my
email to Claudio at Linux basement dot com no longer on the social networks
and that's for personal reasons but you can find me there and you can find me
also on IRC is Claudio M on a cast planet on the free node network and so there
you have folks thank you for listening hope you all submit a an episode for
Hacker Public Radio as they need as they do need shows very important it's up to
us to make sure that Hacker Public Radio stays alive thanks again have a good
one bye-bye
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