Episode: 887
Title: HPR0887: init()
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0887/hpr0887.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-08 04:08:14

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Hello, this is N. Whiteville, and this is Windigo, and this is a really long overdue HPR
episode.
That it is.
We've been talking about this for over a year, so I think we discussed it on the way back
from North East Linux fast last year.
Yeah, after we ran into all the HPR guys down there, we were we were ready to do one, but
I've had one planned forever, it never got off the ground.
I played with Audacity lately.
I had to learn my way around Audacity a little bit, and I learned how to mix tracks down
and take out noise, and then I realized there's no excuse now, not to do an HPR, so here
we go.
Yeah, I've been trying to monkey around with that program a little bit myself, but I'm
definitely still a novice, so if anybody has any feedback, we're going to be talking
about our contact details at the end of the show.
Okay.
So I tried to do on my own how I found Linux, and it bombed horribly, and I realized like
I've known you for over three years now, and I've never asked you how you found Linux.
The origin story.
So I thought maybe we could just bounce off each other, and it would come out much better
than me, just monotoning into my recorder.
How did you get into computers in the first place?
How did I get into computers?
Well, thousands of years ago.
Now, our first computer was delivered to our household when I was in fifth grade.
It was an old 486, whopping 50 megahertz, it had, I think, eight megabytes of RAM after
an upgrade.
Oh, man.
I got you beat by about 20 years on this, I think.
But go ahead.
Yeah.
So that was, it was Windows 3.1, and I broke that and fixed it more times that I can count.
So that was a family computer?
Yeah.
Well, it was a family computer, but I was a pretty domineering fifth grader, and ended
up kind of taking over the thing, because I was the only person who know how to use it.
So what was your first machine?
The VIC-20, that was early 80s, back with the tape drive, oh, man, I remember, I had
this game, like Temple of a Pashy or something like that, I don't know if I'm saying that,
right?
But it was like a D&D type game, it was like a NetHack type of, you know, it's just like
text.
I think they changed out the character set, but you're just basically like moving little
letters around and shooting arrows, but it was three tapes, and I remember this one
time, I just got it for like my birthday or something, and I want to try the game.
It says, tape in the drive and press play, and I'm sitting there for like a half an hour,
and you know, it's like a 40 minute tape.
I went out, I cut the front half of the lawn, I came back in, put in tape two, I decided
the lawn, put in tape three, I did the back of the lawn, so that was, yeah, VIC-20 with
the tape drive.
And already into the D&D games.
Oh, yeah, that's 77, that's when they came out.
That was my era.
No, I was a kid, I was a kid then.
So that VIC-20 lasted like eight months, and it did a blue screen on me.
Oh.
And then I went on to Commodore 64's.
I went through three of those, and two of them blue screened on me.
I realized like six years later, I was playing these things on the rug, I'd be like
marathon game sessions, the shag, the rug, the vents are on the bottom, so I was just
like cooking the video chip.
Yeah, my first computer computer was after college, I didn't have a computer in college.
Oh, we had a Unix lab though, down in the basement, they didn't lock the door, so I got
in there.
And somehow I got an account, so I used to, I just used to fool around with Linux, Linux
computers.
That's where I learned like most of the commands.
That's awesome.
So you actually, like, you were a breaking and entering Unix hacker.
Yeah.
Well, I was breaking and entering new.
I could have been trashing the disks, I didn't know what I was doing.
I was just poking around.
So there was some poor, assisted man at your college saying, what the hell is going wrong
with all our machines?
There's a chip in the machines.
Uh, yeah.
No, I walked into the lab and I sat down and like, I pressed on the terminal and a
log in prompt came in and I said to the guy next to me, you know, how do I get into
this?
Go ask that guy right over there.
It was like out through the glass and I went over and I said, that guy right there
said, I don't need to see you about getting an account and he just shrugged his
shoulders.
He went in the other room, came out, gave me bill and a password.
And for the rest of my time at college, I could just fool around with those
Linux computers.
Are you next?
Nice.
Oh, so you were into Unix way before I was then.
I, um, the first time I encountered any non Windows operating system was in
high school.
I had a, I had a friend who had a web server and I was always a web guy.
Um, I always kind of took to the, the web stuff through video games, actually.
Strange how video games seem to prompt all of our computer experiences.
Yeah, that's that's me too.
Yeah, I maintained a website based on this old school RPG that I could, um, I
could plan that for 86 because we actually had that up until 1998.
It was, it was terrible.
But I could play this one RPG on it and I said, oh, this is great.
I, as soon as I got online, I, uh, I hopped into the community and started
up a fan page.
And one of the problems with that was you were always having to find web space
because you needed to host your files somewhere.
And in the 90s, the, the web was just starting out and the free web hosts
were, um, kind of fly by night agencies.
They'd start up, they'd shut down.
So I was, I was always looking for some free space.
And one of my friends in high school said, oh, well, if you need a web host,
I run a server at my house.
And I said, oh, really?
So I took him up on his offer, got some web space and it turns out that he was,
I think he was running an old Fedora installation and started talking to me
about Linux.
All right, nice.
Yeah.
So I, I got into that a little bit.
Maybe it was Fedora.
I'm not sure it might have been pre Fedora.
That, that might be my first distro too.
You were a red hat guy after, uh, college, I got a 386.
That's the first, the first computer I bought like for my, my first PC, 25 megahertz,
like with a 120, one mega ram, 128 megabyte hard drive.
And it was, it was $2,200.
Isn't that seemed like insane these days?
It's a shame we can't return them now.
Yeah, right?
Why is this still worth that?
Mm-hmm.
But always like, enjoyed computers.
I've been geeky.
So I'm out in, uh, I think it was a Barnes and Noble.
And I saw a magazine that said Linux on it and it sounded like Unix.
Oh, it sounded like that old Unix lab was in.
So I start flipping through and I start recognizing some of the commands.
And that got me initially like started looking into Linux.
Really?
So that was, yeah, that was probably 94, 95.
That's ironic.
That's when I got the first 486.
So, hmm, so you predate me by quite a bit.
I didn't get a running distro up.
This is just, that was my initial interest in it.
Yeah, that's awesome.
I kept track, um, you know, just reading up on Linux when I could.
And then in, remember, CompUSA's?
Yeah, yeah, I think they're all gone now.
But yeah, their computer retail stores in the US, were they early 90s or?
Actually, I still have a CPU fan that I bought in us in a CompUSA.
So it wasn't that long ago.
And I think they closed down maybe about eight years ago, seven years ago.
Yeah.
But anyways, I was in there like a long time ago and they had box sets.
I think it was red hat.
And next to it was a green box.
I don't, I don't think Zeus was out back then.
Maybe Slackware or something.
This was a, this was a wild back like 98-ish.
Mm-hmm.
There's a bunch of different older Linux distributions that have, have died out a little bit.
But, hmm, someone just brought one to the lug, like,
Yagra Cell or something.
It was like, oh, 20 letters long.
That was an old one.
Really?
I've, yeah, I've heard of, I heard Vector Linux used to be very big.
I don't know too many of them.
They were all way before my time, unfortunately.
Well, I got the, I got that box set at CompUSA and the, the manual in it was like the size of a phone book.
And then it just had a couple like eight discs.
So I did way back then try and get a Linux box going on an old 386.
But I never got past the command.
I couldn't get X up back then.
That was like, if you got X running, you, you were there.
You climbed the mountain.
I heard it was like you had to manually write all the Xorg.confakes and stuff.
And then like warnings everywhere.
If you, if you go out of bounds, you're going to ruin your monitor, things like that.
Oh, yeah, they didn't have any of the monitor modes preset.
So you could set it to anything and fry your hardware.
Yep.
So there you are back when computers used to cost a thousand bucks a piece.
And you can fry your hardware playing with this yikes.
I, I did not get into that, the scene quite that early.
Well, that was just my initial figuring out that, oh, there's a Linux out there.
And this is different than Windows and it's unixy.
And I want to know more about this.
So I just, that's that, that peaked my interest early on.
I think what got me interested the most was that it wasn't Microsoft.
Because I came in much, much, much later.
This was like very early 2000s, like 2000, 2001, when I was in high school.
And since I was a web developer, as soon as you learned how you were supposed to
program a website, you developed this fierce burning hatred of Microsoft,
dude, all of the IE stuff.
There was, there's no, no end to the frustration that you, you ran into and
trying to get pages to work in, in IE five or four, even, it was, I was painful.
I've never developed anything for the web.
Well, I did this one little cheesy, like hand-coded HTML thing back in the days.
I'm talking about those 90s, but, uh, but Mrs.
NYU bill, she has to put applications online and she comes home complaining like that.
Like she runs, she runs whatever she ran, like through Firefox.
It's fine through this, it's fine.
She puts it in IE and it spits out a bunch of garbage.
Yes, it's getting much better at this point with the newer versions of IE.
They're starting to catch up, but the fact is they're starting to catch up.
This was IE six was out for like six or seven years, I think.
And it was just the worst experience ever trying to make the thing show a page.
When I heard about this Linux thing, it, it made a dent, but I didn't try it
until like the first year of college when I downloaded a nopics CD.
Oh, nice.
Yeah, that was my first introduction to Linux.
So I didn't have the X problems.
I got, I got the first graphical boot on heart, any hardware kind of Linux going
with this nopics CD.
I'd bring it to the networking lab, put it in the, uh, the lab machines.
And I'd take notes on it instead of using their Windows installation.
Cool.
So that was the first experience I had with Linux.
And there were supposedly ways you could install it.
So I grabbed an old PC and tried it, but I couldn't get it to install on anything.
So I never had nopics running on a system.
So I ended up trying Debian.
Yeah, I downloaded a Debian CD, got this old clunker piece of hardware, um, put a hard drive in it.
This happened to me too.
Really?
No, not, I'm saying that you said old clunker hardware and this, this reminded me of something like
all my install, my early installs I would do on old clunker hardware.
And I think that was like half the problem was you're trying to hack something a little,
that's a little bit newer into this old piece of crap.
Unsupported hardware, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry, sorry to interrupt go ahead.
No, not at all.
So I was, I got this old PC downloaded a Debian CD and, uh, ran through the installer,
hit a lot of questions I did not understand and was not prepared for.
So I, I fought through the installer, rebooted a couple of times, gave it another try.
And finally I got it installed.
And, you know, moment of triumph bells and horns going off everywhere.
And, uh, I was left at the shell.
I was like, huh, well, that's interesting.
Did, did X come up?
No, I don't think I installed a, I don't think I installed X even.
I didn't know what I was doing.
So I just installed the base system and was left at bash.
So I said, well, that's, that's interesting and, uh, try typing a bunch of stuff and
eventually help showed me the bash help with a bunch of bash scripting hints, I guess.
And, uh, I said, oh, well, that's good and didn't load it again because I couldn't do anything.
But after that, I, I found a Linux journal in, in a bookstore and it came with a CD with
Mandrake on it.
Okay.
I don't think I've ever run Mandrake.
That was the first distro I got up and running on hardware permanently.
And I used it for years.
Oh, nice.
And, uh, I actually found the CD recently.
So if you want to borrow it, no, it's reminiscent.
Yeah, it, it came on an installation DVD and that was the first system I actually used.
So what was, was Red Hat, Red Hat, you got running with the GUI and everything?
No, no, I didn't, that, the box that I didn't get running with the GUI.
Oh, that was the one like, I'd read that phone book and trying to try to figure out what to do.
It turns out I was talking, somehow I mentioned Linux to a friend and a friend of a friend,
you know, his friend, just like his ears perked up and he turns around.
He goes, Linux, so this was like, probably 98-ish.
He goes, I run Linux.
I go, oh, really?
Because I'm trying to get it going and blah, blah, blah, blah.
And one thing leads to another and he goes, well, why don't you come to my dorm sometime
and I'll show you Linux running.
And if you need any help and I'm like, oh, yeah, great.
I didn't know the guy.
But so I go over, he shows me Linux, he shows me X running back when X used to,
the cursor used to actually be an X. Do you remember that?
So there was no Windows manager.
It was just X.
I can probably narrow this, this time period down his wallpaper was Beavis and Butthead.
That should, when was that?
Probably 98-ish.
Yeah.
Anyways, it's like in TV shows when they play theme songs from the, the period that they're in.
So he showed me around a working system and then he goes, oh, I also run a server.
So he took me over to his college and he showed me his server.
And he used to let me, you know, if he was around and I said, hey, you know, I want to,
can I come over?
I'd go over to their lab and I was able to poke around on his server.
He gave me an account and everything.
So I was, I was there like FTPing out and, you know, I could tell net out.
So then I said, is there any way I can do this from home?
And he gives me like a little look and he goes, maybe.
So I, this, this was a different time than hacking was okay back then.
We found a number in the college that was in an office that would pick up to a modem
and put me on the network and nobody was ever in that office.
So from home, I, he wasn't thinking, I wonder if I have SSH installed.
He was thinking, I wonder where I can get a phone line.
Yes, exactly.
So I had a number I could call up this college.
It would from home and get on their network and then hop into his server.
And that's where I, that's where I was just saying I made like a, my own little web page,
like just handcoded some HTML.
This was back in the 90s.
So of course I had a flashing font.
Oh, the blank tag.
Yeah, yes, yes.
One thing led to another and with, with his help and just continuing to hack around on it,
I got, I finally got like X up.
But being in the gamer that I was, it was always like off in the corner of, you know,
I'd hack on it once in a while, but I was always like on a Windows, Windows box gaming.
Yeah.
So I had a little, I had a little pause in my Linux in between there.
Yeah, same here actually.
Valve was the worst influence on my Linux career ever.
Mine was probably a return to Castle Wolfenstein.
An id game then.
Yeah, we used to set up servers and like friends, you know, have knife only fights and things like that.
So I didn't get back into Linux, like back into Linux full time till probably 2004ish.
First one was playing Memphis was a Debian based.
This is when I like started giving up on Windows and, all right, I'm going to use Linux full time.
And then it was all the early Ubuntu's.
I used a lot of those always Debian based things for me, which is funny.
Since you started out on Red Hat.
Yeah, well, I didn't, I didn't know I wasn't an RPM guy back then.
Not to say anything bad about it, you know, I don't know.
It's just something about Debian clicks with the way it's everything's where my brain thinks it should be and just kind of fits.
Since then it's, it's just been Linux full time.
I do confess I still keep a gaming cart partition, but
That's I'm yeah, I have a Windows box sitting behind me. It's off at the moment.
But if I ever do need to hop back into Team Fortress 2 or something, yep, that stopped me from running Linux full time for a little while.
But a couple of years ago, I want to say 2006, I started listening to Log Radio actually that got my interest back up into Linux.
And like you said, Ubuntu was starting to come out and everything worked a little bit better each version.
So I'd install it on a partition and I'd fool around with it for a little while and then I'd go back to Windows.
And then the next version would come out and I'd install it and then fool around a little bit longer.
And I think it was 710 that it supported enough of my hardware, including my wireless cards.
So I could get the internet that I moved over full time and that was my primary operating system.
Now wireless used to be a pain for a while.
Yep, you get a Broadcom chip that's I remember buying network cards and I had to dig through the shelf looking for a specific version.
Because that had a chip in it that was supported and the 90% of the other boxes all around it, which said they were the same card, none of them supported it.
Yep, that's I had the same experience with my wireless card.
I couldn't I could see wireless networks, but I couldn't connect, which was horribly frustrating.
But but yes, with 710 it finally kicked in.
But there's always that that little bit of Linux that doesn't quite work.
It's it's when I started it was the wireless cards and I guess I guess when you started it was probably the X configuration stuff where you could you could do it and it works, but it has a chance of blowing up your hardware.
Keep a fire extinguisher nearby.
Exactly.
And afterwards it seems like sound was the culprit for quite a while.
No, no, it wasn't sound sound happened later, but it was flash.
It took, you know, it took a small team of MIT researchers to get flash installed on a Linux system and still at hogs most of the number.
Yeah, now we don't want it.
Now that we've got a working.
I remember were you around in the AOL days?
Like when AOL was part of the internet or when we were using messenger?
This is when AOL kind of ruined computers for me for a while.
Like all growing up when you met someone who had a computer.
You knew they were into computers like a new kind of what they were doing.
They were loading things into high-mem and yeah, you know, getting their CD drive and then the AOL thing happened.
And all of a sudden like my whole family's on it and my grandparents and my aunts.
Oh, I see what you mean.
She was going computers for the masses instead of the enthusiasts.
Yeah, and then like for a long time I thought like oh look they're finally they're getting into computers like I am.
They're seeing what they've been missing.
And really was what it was was they wanted to send some emails and they wanted me to fix everything.
You know, you become the tech guy.
That actually made me like what would you say become reclusive, close up a bit.
Yeah, it withdrew you a little.
Yeah, so I was like very, you know, you're mentioning podcasts so I'm coming around to a point.
It takes a while though.
I just like kind of went up into my little like computer shell and I felt very isolated.
And then one time I'm listening to NPR and they said you can get our show as a podcast.
And I didn't know what a podcast was.
So I went home.
This was probably seven, seven years ago.
So I just googled, you know, podcast.
And there I was never into Macs and I didn't have a iPod so I wasn't really sure what it was.
And then I figured out what it was.
And then I go Linux podcast and boom, like they were all there.
And I like, oh, these are my people.
These are where they these are where they went.
These people, these guys are still around.
So that it gave it refreshed like computers for me again.
What am I trying to say?
It's that yes, that point where I'm not alone.
Other people think like me too instead of yeah,
because when when everybody started hopping onto computers and all of a sudden you weren't
weird because you had you had a computer and you liked computers.
But they didn't they didn't want the same things out of it.
It's it's not like they were looking.
Oh, I can I can mess with highmem.sys.
That's awesome.
No, they they were about, you know, I want to look at the cute cat pictures.
Yep, yep.
The like the mystery and the discovery and none of that was there for me.
It was like an appliance.
Exactly.
This is the email machine.
And then again, that's a whole another podcast really if you think about it.
Which which is you mean a whole other HPR episode?
Yeah, that would be a whole another subject whether it's a good thing that people almost take
computers for granted in that way or if they should be more involved.
I'm starting to kind of see it like this happening again with the you know a phone is a
device and a tablet is a device.
It's no longer like a computer.
It's just this thing you get to the cloud with.
Yeah, that is a whole other subject.
That's true.
Like when I found a podcast, I started getting I started getting into the forums and stuff.
So that led into just like chatting with all you guys online and
you know finding out about IRC and it led to going to conventions and actually meeting you guys
shaking hands actually you and I found out through forums that we have a local lug
and that we live right near each other and now we've been hanging out since then.
So there are still geeks around.
Yeah, once you find out that there is somebody else out there hanging out seems like the next
logical stack even if they happen to be across the ocean.
Yeah, yeah, we've done that too.
Actually speaking of steps, logical steps, I just had the laugh.
I came back from the lug last time and me and Asphere, we stopped at a pub after.
Yeah, so we've known Asphere for probably as two and a half years.
We just exchanged phone numbers this last time at the pub.
So that's how fast geeks move socially I guess.
Yeah, I think we're more open to the different channels of communication as well.
So maybe the phone number wasn't that necessary since you'd see them every month.
You always have the email list.
Actually, you have a good point because he just wanted my number to be able to text.
He missed an exit and he was late.
He just wanted to text, you know, I'll be there in 10 minutes.
So that's a good point.
We were using it technology wise.
And that's again, that's another huge subject.
For instance, I don't even have my roommates cell phone number.
And as far as I know, you don't have a cell phone.
No, I have a secretive like old flip phone style emergency phone that I keep in my dashboard.
But yeah, you should have that.
Yeah, but I don't have a I don't have a portable communication device.
We're going to drag into the Android smartphone.
Oh, I've got that tablet, but it's terrible.
Oh, are you not liking it?
It's it just doesn't do enough of what I'd like it to.
Primarily, I'm back to the wireless problem where it won't connect to my local wireless network.
It connected at the log, but still not at home.
Yes, yep, still haven't gotten that figured out.
But we digress.
Yeah, yeah, we just got off track.
So that kind of covers how we found Linux, I guess.
Yeah, so that's that's the story.
I guess that does cover just about everything.
I don't have much in way of contact information, but I'm in various forums and IRC sometimes
and identical as NY Bill.
If you find a chimpanzee holding a gun for an avatar, you've probably found me.
And if you find a chimpanzee holding a gun, give him what he wants.
Don't mess with, yeah.
Yeah.
So I'm I'm on a identical, well, status net, I guess.
As we go, yeah, you're on status instance.
We've got our own instance.
And there's another HPR episode, I suppose, but I can also be contacted.
I'm so excited.
I've got this set up specifically for this moment.
You can reach me at podcast at fragdev.com.
I'll have to make sure that email forwards actually working,
but yeah, I figured that would be a good idea.
Cool.
So I think we have one in the can.
I'd say so.
It's been nice talking to you, Bill.
All right.
And hopefully we'll do another one soon.
Yeah, we'll see you all of you in HPR land later.
Okay.
See ya.
See ya.
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