hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr0350.txt

Episode: 350
Title: HPR0350: How I found Linux 002
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0350/hpr0350.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 17:02:48

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Thank you very much.
Hey everyone, welcome to Hacker Public Radio, I'm Monster B, and this is the second episode
of How I Found Lennox, and I'm very excited to say there will be an episode three.
And if you would like to be part of this, find out at the end of the show, okay, enjoy.
Hi, I'm Gordon Sinclair, I am Thistle Rib, and the IRC.
How I Found Lennox, basically started off with ideas for lots of different stories.
So I got a word processor, which is basically an electronic typewriter, to see if I could
do it.
I got one second and I got it cheap, and it turned out that I could go through one short
story, and it turned out to be much better than I thought, so I thought, hey, you know
what, I could do this for 11, I've obviously got something I could build on, and learn,
and get better.
So I figured it would be an investment to buy a PC, at this point I had used my mum and
dad's Windows 98 machine, but I was very limited to what I could do with it.
They'd never had it connected in there now, and I never knew anything outside Windows.
So I got a PC, I've spent a lot of money on a PC, and it's the same one I have just
now.
It's a Pentium 4, came with XP Home on it, and I figured, since I've spent a fortune
on this thing, a fortune certainly could put them into my income, I'm going to make damn
sure I'm going to learn how to keep this thing running, what to do, what not to do, regular
maintenance, learn how to fix it, rather than keep spending lots of money and repairs.
That was my motivation for starting learning how to use a PC properly, rather than just
being satisfied as a regular user, basically.
So from that, it turned out that the various things I was looking into in the skill set,
as I was teaching myself, I found out, I can actually, I'm picking this up a lot better
than I thought, but I wasn't struggling anywhere near as much as I expected to.
So I figured, maybe I could do this for a career.
So that led me into looking at certifications, and that led me to the A-plus and MCB.
I didn't know there were indoctrination programs at the time, because I had all our new
as Windows, but I went on both of them, and between, there was a Cisco course on at the
same time, we got the same t-brakes and launch brakes at the same time as us, so we would
quite often meet them outside of a smoke and whatever.
And a couple of them, New Bitlinux, they had, one of the guys, had Mandrake 9.1, they gave
me a copy of the three series, and between them and the instruct, one of the students
on my MCB who was also a teacher, who was resetting his exam, they have to do that every so often,
to be allowed to teach the courses.
He had, when I was sitting in that class, I could see his screen, and I could see what
looked like Windows, but it wasn't Windows, it looked like Windows with some sort of a
cool skin on it, and it turned out to be nobics with KDE, but I only found that out once
I started asking about it, anyway, between those two, and the occasional reference to Linux
and the course books, and one picture I read at desktop type of thing, what do you expect,
it's comp TIA and Microsoft that do the course, what do you expect, really.
Between them, I started exploring Linux, but then I found out that my newfound knowledge
about partitions and file systems and all of this, the bravery to do a bit for the first
time, and that was where I ran into problems of my, I was on dialogue, my modem was a
one modem, I'd never even heard of the concept before that, but I struggled to get online,
without I couldn't get online, with any of the Linux distributions I tried, and I tried
quite a few, because I liked what I saw, I just meant that any time I had to go online,
I had to come back into Windows again, which was really annoying, but anyway, when I switched
up to broadband, I thought, well, that's going to be different now, so, because I got
a SpeedTox modem with my broadband provider, and I started renewed vigor going through
lots of Linux distributions, and most of them required some firmware upgrades to work.
Eventually I found my Ndriva1 that found it okay, and I managed to get online, but that
was buggy itself, I moved from there to PC on XLS, and I was on that for quite a while,
so that's an awesome distribution, but I was very KDE-centric, when I was digital hopping,
I was trying different distributions, I'd look for KDE versions, and I wouldn't really,
as much as I would try stuff with Nome or XFC or Fluxbox or whatever, my mindset was
going in very closed, I was looking for things to not to like, anyway, I eventually got
kind of bored of KDE, moved to Ubuntu for a little while, I tried to Ubuntu again, and
found that hey, I actually quite like GTK, I like Nome, and then I found, I was on that
for a little while, Ubuntu, and then found it was really, I mean, KDE and Nome are really
too heavy for my computer, I need this borderline, they work, but they're just too heavy,
really to be all that practical. So, then after I sort of liked or grew into GTK, I could
then give XFC another go, and it was like coming home, it was like suddenly I felt like I've
got something I really like using, so since then I've basically been an XFC user and looking
for different distributions that I've got good, strong, well implemented XFC variants,
and tried a few, and I've came to Linux Mint as my current favourite XFCE distribution,
Woolfix is incredible as well, there's the only thing that I could see that would possibly draw
me away from that, is the Linux Mint KDE, is that I really like the look of KDE for, or KDE
4.2, and the Mint's implementation of it looks really sweet, it's just my hard work, it doesn't
really stand much of a chance at running KDE 4.2, that's why I've not even tried it yet.
So, there's that, I did flop for a little while with Crunchbank, and I really liked that, but I found
myself drawing back to Mint XFCE, so that's how I got to where I'm just now, and how I came to
Linux, so thanks for listening, goodbye. Hey, this is Terry F, and this is how I found Linux,
must have, is the late 90s, probably around 2,099, 98s somewhere around there, I'd had a
screwed up Windows 95 install, and I'd asked a friend of mine, Monster B, to give me a hand,
because I knew zero about computers, so he installed Windows 98 on it, and had mentioned Linux at
the time, so I had downloaded a version of Red Hat, I forget which version it was, I'd dial up,
so it probably took a couple days, so I installed Red Hat on an old Packard Bell, well, it wouldn't
really old then, but I guess it is now, a Packard Bell 46 DX, it was a huge pain in the ass to install,
reading all kinds of guides, partitioning the hard drive, it was just a thrill to get the sound
to work at that point, but I got it installed, and did absolutely nothing with it,
so I dropped that, went back to Windows, till about, I don't know, three years ago, somewhere around,
three and a half years ago, started with Ubuntu, and about, I don't even know, about a year and a half,
two years ago, I've been on Linux exclusively, on my desktop, my laptop,
and I've got a second desktop downstairs, that I screw around with Slackware and
Arge a little bit, Debian, but my dad also has an old laptop that I've put,
Linux on for him, that he uses daily, I just built a desktop, a home theater PC type
case, but she uses it on her, built this for her mother, she uses it on her 40, 47th TV, 42-inch TV,
because she used to have a MSN2 TV box, that died, and I decided to build her a computer for
TV instead, and he's a Bluetooth keyboard with an integrated mousepad, works great out of the box,
and Linux, she loves it, I built that last week, and loves it much more than MSN TV,
but that's pretty much my story.
Hello, Linux Cranks, my name is David, I live in New York City,
in your last show, Clare 2 had an idea for how we got ourselves introduced to Linux,
I wanted to add that, I got into Linux from using a Unix account back in 1993,
and my first Linux crystal was E desktop 2.4 from Cadera,
and right now I am currently using Arch Linux, I've been using Linux since 1995,
and like they say the rest of the history, you guys have a great show, and I would love to see more
windows bashing, it makes me show more interesting, sorry for any pops, I don't have a pop filter,
I don't, all I'm using is a microphone, anyway, that's my input, and I hope you use it, and have a great day.
Hi, this is Weeks from the Trigon to Linux Free Software podcast, I found Linux in 2002,
after a friend suggested it that I play around with it, I went and bought myself a book,
and read a good deal of it, then tried to install it on a system,
and I really had no idea what to do with it once I had it installed,
but nowadays I use it for a web server, for a database server, for home server and desktop,
and laptop, so really this guy is a limit, and in addition it's introduced me a whole,
into the whole world of free software.
How I got into Linux, hello my name is Ken Simeon, aka script monkey,
when I was in my first software quality assurance job, I was first introduced to Linux back in 1998,
my software developer that wanted to make sure our in hotel internet connection service would
also work with Linux operating system, and not just Windows and Mac. He handed me a software box,
but I don't remember if it was Caldera Linux or Corel Linux, I loaded up the distro without a
problem on the pinning one laptop, and I tested the OS with the Netscape web browser to make sure
it all worked, and it did, about a year later in 1999 or 2000, I was working for a different company
that produced network appliances loaded with BSDI, I wanted a way to better interact with our products,
and I was told to try Linux, at that time I loaded Red Hat, Linux 5.5, or maybe 6.0, I don't remember
which, I instantly fell in love with the ability to tweak, customize, and try new software packages,
without cost. I also love that I didn't have to run Windows to get my work done.
From that point on, I moved from not only running Linux at work, but also running Linux at home,
I stuck with the Red Hat until about release 8, or whenever they stopped producing a
free desktop product, and switched to Gen2 as my distro of choice. I ran Gen2 until about 2007,
then I tried Fedora 7.8, and eventually switched to Arch Linux based on the recommendation of
Chess Griffin of Linux Reality. That is how I got into Linux.
Hello, this is Russ Wender, the host of the TechieGeek podcast. How did I find Linux?
Well, we have to go back, back in time, back, back to 1983, when my dad brought home an Apple 2E.
That was my first experience on a computer that I got to touch and to play with,
and I remember my dad subscribed to some magazine where I could type in programs and get them to work,
and it was very cool. And I played with computing up through college, I was exposed to
Fortran in college, even some old punch card readers that were around, and then 1990, I took
a course in college on using the PC in the business, and that was a IBM PC, and I think around that time
was when the geekness started to kick in, even more so than back in 83. I took seven years to
germinate, but in 1990, that's when it started to kick in. And where I worked at the time,
we had some PCs out on the shop floor that ran THOS and used a program called DNC, which communicated
with the automated equipment, and I learned everything I could about how those DNCs operated.
And in 1993, I got promoted into the engineering office as a CAD designer, and the CAD software
that they used was EDS Unographics, which ran on HPUX, which is a UNIX platform. And what I found
was most everybody, the engineers and everyone, just wasn't that interested in learning how to
do much on the UNIX platform. They just wanted to use the CAD software, and they avoided doing
upgrades and backups, and the things that they really should be doing. So I took an interest in
how to do those things, and I learned how to grab and change directories and fine files
within the operating system itself. I often wonder if I had become a UNIX admin back then in 1993,
where my career could have gone. But instead I stayed on the engineering track to things.
Also in December of 1993, December 3rd to be exact, it was a Friday after work. I picked up my
first PC that was my own. It ran Windows 3.11, and also had DOS 6.22 loaded on it. And I thought
this was it, man. I just learned everything I could about that computer, and I had it, but a few
days, and I began to wonder what exactly you could do with this thing called a modem, and it had a
2400 modem, and I learned about a program called ProCom that I could use to connect to something
called a bulletin board system. And I got hugely into the bulletin board scene, and one of the
sister admins that ran the bulletin board that I was really into said that he was going to begin
an ISP, and asked if I wanted to be one of the first members of the ISP. Yeah, heck yeah, I want to
be one of the first members, and it ran on Sun Solaris, too, I believe it was. And I got something
called a Unix shell account, and it looked very similar to what I knew from HPUX. So I started
poking around quite a bit in the Solaris shell, and at the same time, the interwebs was starting
to get underway, and I learned how to use this directory called Public HTML, and I started to
experiment with some web design, and by 1996, I was very into the whole internet scene. In 1997,
I switched companies and went to a company that had virtually no IT infrastructure at all,
and the VP of engineering at that time was given the task of getting a PC on everyone's desk,
getting internet, and getting email for everyone. Well, being the good delicator that he was,
he gave that duty to me, and that was like the coolest thing. I mean, I had to do everything,
shop for an ISP, routers, firewalls. I ran every foot of CAT 5 cable in that company,
everything. And the firewall was a white box PC, essentially, that ran open BSD. And open BSD
seemed a little bit intimidating at the time, but I was quickly convinced that it was the best
most secure firewall out there. And to this day, I believe many firewalls still rely on that
open BSD technology, and specifically the IP filtering program within open BSD.
And in there, I learned a little bit about send mail. I rekindled some of my interest with
TAR and VI, and I really started to rekindle that interest in the unique style operating systems.
And then one day, while surfing the internet, I came across an interesting link
that mentioned a new type of Linux distro that ran from a live CD. And I was like,
what the heck is a live CD? So I went and checked it out and said you could run a Linux distro
completely off the CD without installing it. And the name of the distro was NOPEX 3.1.
And I said, yeah, I got to get me some of that. So I downloaded the ISO for that, and that was
probably the beginning of the end for me. Because when I saw how cool Linux live CD was,
and how I was able to mount corrupted Windows drives that would no longer boot. And people were
panicking that they lost their pictures, and their data, and their email, and their favorites,
and their whatever. Here I was able to drop in an OPPIC CD, boot up, and save all their data.
And every time a distro came out with a live CD, I downloaded it. Every time NOPEX came out with
a new version, I downloaded it. And to this day, I still download live CDs and try them all the time,
although more so these days, I download the ISO and install them into virtual box.
So in 2002, my employer kind of got on a kick where they were going to send people for
continuing training, and anything that they wanted to go for, as long as it was somehow
work-related. So at that time, I was very adept in Windows environment, but I really wanted to
increase my knowledge in the Unix-like operating systems. So I signed up for the fundamentals of
Unix administration, and then right after that, I took Advanced Linux administration. And by
today's standards, even the Advanced administration would seem not so advanced, but was very
interesting to me, and very surprising. I entered the classroom totally expecting to see HPUX,
or some other Unix operating system on the classroom PCs, and we booted up, and it said Slackware
8.0. And I was like, wow, this is Linux, isn't it? And the instructor went on to say that
Slackware is the most Unix-like of the Linux distros, and that was in 2002, I believe. And I was
like, cool, I could totally dig it. And I went for five days, I think, two days on the fundamental
of Unix, and then three days on the Advanced. And all five days were in the command line,
and it was very cool. And it was right around that time that Slackware 8.1 came out. So the
instructor actually downloaded the ISO and said that if anyone was interested, after the last day,
he would show anybody who was interested how to install Slackware. And I was like, yeah, I'm very
interested. I think I was the only one who stayed after, and we went through the whole installation
of Slackware 8.1, which was a tremendous help, because when it hit that partitioning stuff,
I would have had no idea what to do if he wasn't there to walk me through it. So just as soon as
I could, when I got home with that Slackware 8.1 CD, it just went to the next level. And I ran
Slackware 8.1 for a long time, and then I installed Debian. And I ran Debian 3.0 for a long time.
Then I got the itch to switch distros again, and I went to Fedora 6. And I ran Fedora 6 for a while,
and then I ran who bought to Guetzigibin was the next GUI desktop that I ran. And then from there,
I've been pretty much Ubuntu on my computers at home. Now I have installed on the server side,
I have installed Debian Ubuntu and Senos on server. So right now, I have a Senos server that I
just upgraded to 5.3. At work, I have two Ubuntu machines, a Ubuntu hardy-haaring desktop,
and an Ubuntu hardy-haaring server. I just feel more comfortable staying on the long-term
support software for the stuff I use at work, no hurry to upgrade there. And at home,
I have the Senos 5.3 server, and then I have three Ubuntu i-backs machines, two desktops,
one I would consider my test machine. The other one was my main desktop until I got my system 76
Pangolin laptop, which runs 64-bit Ubuntu i-backs. So that's where I am today. I'm loving Linux,
99% Linux at home. Unfortunately, as a Windows sis admin, I don't get to use Linux very much
at work, but I'm finding places to use it more and more. So that's my story, and I'm sticking
to it. See you. All right, that was sweet. All right, come on, send your audio clips in.
We want to hear from you, and you can send them to Monster B and Linux CrankstownInfo
and check the show notes for more information. Well, this has been fun. Thanks for listening
to Hacker Public Radio, and I'll talk to you next time.