Episode: 1402
Title: HPR1402: How I Started Using Linux and Free and Open Source Software
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1402/hpr1402.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 00:51:59

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What's good Hacker Public Radio? My name's Taj, and I'm here to do the customary
first Hacker Public Radio episode of how I got into Linux and open-source software.
I've been a listener to Hacker Public Radio for several years at this point, and I've
never actually contributed anything. There's been calls for shows recently, so I figured
it was time to get off my button and do something about it. If we're going to talk about
how I got into open-source and free software and Linux in particular, I guess I have to
start with how I got into technology. My first real experience with tech in any kind
of substantial way was an Apple IIE that was in my first grade classroom. I spent lots
of time on that computer playing organ trail and printing out things with the color printer
that we had that was loud enough that it shook the building. Not too long after that,
my grandmother bought one of the first Macintosh computers. So from a very early age, I got
indoctrinated into the cult of Apple. And for a very long time, Apple products were all
that I used, simply because that's all I had access to. A few years later, after that,
my parent went and bought a DOS machine. And once I got exposure to that, that was the
first time that I actually were playing with multiple OSs. The side effect of this is
most Hacker Public Radio listeners probably know is that I became the unofficial tech
support for everybody in my family and everybody that my family knew, because I was the only
person that they knew that was able to go back and forth between different operating systems
and actually fix things, simply because I wasn't scared of ruining things. A lot of the
time that I spent on that DOS box, which eventually became a Windows box, was programming in games
in the basic programming language that I would find in the back of magazines. I'm not
exactly sure which magazine it was, but I remember there was one at my local library
that you could pick up. And the last page would have a page long program written out
in basic and I would set and type those in and run it and get errors and backtrack and
find out where that error was and then fix it and then run it again and kind of got a
small introduction to programming. Unfortunately, that's as far as I went with programming,
I wish I would have learned a little more because it would be really handy to fix things
that I wish I could fix now. All the way through high school, this is pretty much the
pattern that continued. I played in the Apple world and I played in the Windows world
and frankly, I didn't know much different than those two things. I didn't even really
know that Linux existed at that point. I think I'd try to not pick a disk at one point
just to run the live environment and it was so slow that it wasn't really functional,
so I didn't pursue that any further. I don't think it actually turned me off on Linux
because I didn't know what Linux was at that time. It was just a toy for me to play around
with. It didn't work very well. Fast forward to me going to college. I decided to go to college
and major in music. I'd been a musician for many years and played in bands and was in
the marching band at my school and I decided that I wanted to make that my career. Once
I got to college, I realized that if you're playing with music in any professional sense,
you have to be in the Apple ecosystem. Most of the software that we were using at the school
was Apple-based. So to do this, I had to buy a computer. So I went and bought a MacBook
and I loaded that MacBook up with all the proprietary software I would ever need to do basic
audio production or recording or mixing because that was part of the classes that I had
to take. I pretty quickly became disillusioned with the idea of paying up to a thousand dollars
for a piece of software that I felt did pretty simple things. Unfortunately, they wanted
to have a standard and at that time the two standards that were going around were pro tools
for music production and final cut for video production at least on the level that we were
doing. So I was boxed in. I had to have those programs and I had to pay an extremely large
sum of money to have both of those programs. Another time jump further into the future. Once
I get out of college, I go into audio and video production and I do it professionally.
I'm still boxed in in that career to using those standards. Some shops were using different
things but because of my skill set, I went straight into a shop that was using pro tools
and final cut. So using any other kind of software was an issue. I was kind of tied down
to the Apple platform and that really irritated me. For some strange reason, I have an aversion
to being tied down to anything, any one provider. So I think inherently I was looking for an alternative.
I wasn't really aware of the alternatives at that point but I wanted something different.
I think like most people, the first piece of free or open source software that I ever
used was Firefox. I used it because it was amazing and it was better than anything else
that was out there and I really didn't pay too much attention to what free or open source
software meant. I just knew that it worked and at that time I was really interested in
what works. Eventually I sat down and started researching what open source and free software
meant and I fell in love with the concept. It was exactly the intituses of what was going
on in the Apple ecosystem that irritated me so much that the code was given away freely
that it was free to share that everybody could work on it. There were lots of times when
I was using that proprietary software where we wanted something to work a certain way
and we couldn't do it simply because we didn't know how the program really worked. There
were probably people who could have changed it if they had access to that code. So all
of this led me to rip out everything on the MacBook that wasn't free or open source
that I could. I still had to do my job so I had to keep some proprietary software but everything
else I had managed to find a replacement that was either free or open source simply because I love
that idea so much. So hold on we're going to take another time jump. I had decided professionally
that I wanted to go into education. The world of audio and video production wasn't
soothing what I wanted to do and I kind of wanted to make a difference so I decided to go back to
school to be a special education teacher. Once I did that and I switched careers I was able
to finally get away from most of that proprietary software. The free and open source alternatives
to that software were good enough to do everything that I wanted to do personally so I didn't
need to rely on that big bulky software. I finally decided it was time to take the plunge
and go whole hog on the free and open source lifestyle and try Linux out. I couldn't afford a new
piece of equipment so I just kept the MacBook I had and I set up a dual boot between OSX and Linux
at that time I was using the Ubuntu distribution and it worked out great. I found myself going into
the Ubuntu more and more and more and using the Mac side less and less and less. Eventually in 2007
I decided to really take the plunge and I went full time using a Ubuntu. At home there's been no
going back. Every computer that I have at my home runs Linux. The exception being my wife's laptop
she wants Windows so unfortunately being the dutiful husband that I am I make sure that her Windows
box runs. Now that I'm a teacher I kind of found myself back in the position I was as an audio
production person. I'm required to use the software that they want me to use. Fortunately most of
what we use is web based so I'm able to use it on Linux and I take my personal laptop to school
and use that. I've also become the technology coordinator for my school and the nice thing is
we have rolled out a one-to-one program for every kid in the school district to receive a Chromebook.
Now as crippled as Chrome OS is it is Linux on the back end and I can get into a command
shell and give it commands so my experience with Linux has actually put me in a very good
position at work because I have knowledge that even the technical directors for the entire
district don't have because they're not familiar with the Linux operating system.
Personally for the last year or so I've been wandering in the wilderness of distro hopping,
trying out lots of different operating systems to see what fits me the best.
Ubuntu wasn't really working for me anymore for a few reasons so I decided to play around.
Right now I've settled on using Manjaro Linux. It gives me the arch base without having to go
through an arch install. I've done an arch install. I can do an arch install but for me the convenience
of just being able to run through an installer and do it in five minutes outweighs doing it in
the command line and learning more about it because I already know those things. I don't need to
relearn them so having that convenience makes it a lot better for me. Well that's about all I have
for how I got into Linux and open source software. I hope to be a more regular contributor to
HPR. I've sat on the sidelines and listened to great episodes for years and never actually
contributed anything so now it's time for me to do something for the community. I especially
want to thank 5150. He introduced himself to me in the IRC chat room a few weeks ago and we
got to talking and he's the one who really convinced me to finally do something about contributing
to HPR so if I know you or this show is terrible you can blame 5150. If you loved it you can blame
5150. Thanks man. Well everybody be good. Stay safe. Peace.
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