hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr0608.txt

Episode: 608
Title: HPR0608: sp0rus: My Linux Experience
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0608/hpr0608.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 23:49:40

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Hi, this is Sporus, and today I'm talking about my experience with Linux.
In the beginning, I just wanted to use Linux because it was what all the people I looked up to used.
I just thought, you know, it really looked a lot cooler to be using Linux and to be on the command line
instead of, you know, using Windows or, you know, having forbid using a Mac.
And as time went by, I found that more and more of the things I wanted to do in security and just different, different things,
they were a lot easier to do in Linux and more and more of the programs that I found that I wanted to use
either worked only in Linux or they worked best in Linux.
And now that's what continues to fuel my move.
Some of the distros I used when I first got into Linux were DSO was the first one, damn small Linux.
Mainly because when I first got into Linux, I only had a dial up internet and downloading a 700 megabyte ISO file,
you know, that really wasn't feasible.
But, you know, downloading the less than 50 megabyte file that DSO was, that was a lot more doable.
And so, you know, I messed around with the live CD for a while and played with it.
But in the beginning, Linux was kind of scary to me because I had no idea what I was doing.
And whenever I heard anybody talking about it, they were always talking about the command line and, you know,
like many people in the beginning, that kind of scared me.
It always seemed more fun, but it was kind of scary.
Eventually I messed around with Ubuntu a little bit and I still have my, you know, the disks I burned of Ubuntu 6.0,
whatever it was using.
And then I was also able to play with Mandrake Linux.
This was before it changed into Mandrava.
That one was quite the challenge because even back then, that was big enough that you had to put it on a DVD
and having only dial up, downloading multiple gigabytes of files was really not going to happen.
So, you know, I went to my dad's work where they had a T3 connection
and downloaded Mandrake there and had my dad burn it to a DVD because even there, it seemed like it took a while.
And so I played with all those for a while.
But then for several years, I just didn't use Linux at all, you know, except for maybe using System Rescue CD or something like that,
every now and then to get some little task done on a computer, somebody needed to make a work on or something like that.
But since then, I've continued to use Ubuntu for the most part up to now.
I'm still using Ubuntu.
I've also used Fedora Linux Mint, SintoS, and lately I've been testing out DVL, damn vulnerable Linux,
Jolly Cloud, and other more specific use distros that there's something I've been messing around with lately.
Currently, the main things I'm using is that I have Ubuntu 10, point whatever it is they're using now,
the netbook remix on my netbook.
And then I have the desktop version in a virtual machine that is my main virtual machine I use.
And then I also have a new Ubuntu server that's there, I have that running on the LTS release.
And I use that for SSH proxy server, file server, you know, various different things like that.
I have them in separate VMs just because that way when I screw something up in one, the other one's still running.
I like to have redundancy like that.
And then I'm also using Mint 9 on my netbook right now.
Now, I can't say that I'm fully migrated to Linux because I am still using Windows quite a bit.
On my desktop, the HostOS is Windows 7.
And, you know, the main reason that I haven't switched yet is that, you know, I'm just lazy for the most part.
I haven't had the time or the desire to rebuild all of the software on that box and start over with a Linux OS as the HostOS.
While I realize that kind of shoots down my redundancy argument when I have all those different virtual machines running on Windows.
And when Windows crashes, it brings down all my Linux stuff.
I just haven't gotten around to switching it some day I will, but most likely it's not going to happen until I build a new box from the bottom up.
But I am spending more and more time in Linux, especially on my netbook, which is where I spend the majority of my time these days as I'm out and about.
I typically use the Ubuntu distra on that.
I just installed Mint the other day to try it out because I'm not the biggest fan of the newest release of Ubuntu netbook remix.
But I'm still using it because Mint wasn't exactly what I was warning either.
When I'm testing out new S's, I typically use the virtual machine route just because I've gotten pretty proficient at spinning up a new virtual machine quickly.
So that way I've got right now around a little over 10 virtual machines installed on there.
Typically I only have two or three running at any one time, but they're all different things that I just remember to know us that I tried one time or you know us that I hear a bunch of people talk about.
So I'll install it and I'll give it a shot for a little while, but for the most part either don't feel like learning all new package managers and all these different things.
So I end up going back to Ubuntu or something other DB and based.
Or I just don't like the thing and I'm done with it or sometimes I just end up breaking it and then I don't know how to fix it, which is happening quite often actually embarrassed to say.
But that's how I test for the most part every now and then I'll actually do a USB boot to test or really now a live CD boot.
I use those to test a bunch of things and another distro I've been using is a backtrack.
I've got a backtrack four or one right now and I've got that running on both a virtual machine and I use it on USB.
Still working on getting that to run fully on my netbook. That's another story entirely.
One of the things I've noticed is that when I'm in Windows, you know, like most people I rarely go into the command line.
I'll go into the command line when I'm writing Java programs and things like that to do my compiling and stuff in the command line.
Because a lot of times, you know, I clips and other IDEs don't really play nice with me.
But when I'm in Linux, I've come to where I enjoy doing most things on the command line.
There's just something about doing it on the command line that seems a lot more fine and a lot more in touch with the computer.
And though my command line foo isn't quite up to par yet with strategic use of Google and the man pages, I feel that I'm getting better and I'm much more comfortable in the command line now than I was just a few months ago.
That's about where I am right now. I'm, you know, trying to get more proficient in it. I'm trying to spend more time in it.
If I come back a year from now, I'll probably be able to say that I'm spending 90% of my time in Linux, whereas now it's probably more like 40 or 50% of my time.
What I'm going from here is that though I've found many distros that I like for specific uses out of the box, I haven't found a distro yet that just screams to me, you know, this is the one, this is what I should be using.
And while I realize that the key point of Linux is being able to change it to be and do what you want, I'm still looking for the distro that I consider to be the perfect distro for me to make perfect for me.
And so from here, I'm going to continue doing what I'm doing right now and just testing more distros and, you know, whenever I hear about one that sounds cool, I'll test it out.
That's what I want, you know, I'll stick with it for a while or something.
And something that I've been wanting to try for a while, but this comes back to that lazy factor is gin too.
When I mention to people that I'm wanting to try it, a lot of times they'll say don't plan on doing anything else for a few days or they'll have a similar warning.
But honestly, that excites me. Having a little bit of a challenge in the install is something I haven't experienced in Linux since when I was, you know, first testing things out and things didn't, you know, live CDs didn't come with installers out of the box all the time.
You had to hack around to install the live distros or, you know, installation was always known in the command line and documentation wasn't as good.
Now it's really easy to install a lot of these OSs and so I try and get, you know, more of my friends to try and use things and, you know, sometimes I hope to be able to convince more people to switch over because I'm really enjoying my time in Linux.
But other than that, I'm just planning on more completely migrating into Linux and, you know, I feel like over the past couple months I've been spending more and more time in Linux, in the command line and just doing various things that are getting me closer to that complete migration.
And I don't know if I'll ever completely migrate because I'm not a fan of wine. I do like playing my games every now and then and, you know, there are some things that though I and everybody else would like it to not be this way. There are things that you can only do in windows or they are easier to do in windows.
And I don't think ever I'll be at 100% in Linux, but I hope to get closer to that number someday.
Now, and I can only hope that other people will try out Linux if they haven't been to it in a while like I did.
You know, I took those couple years where I didn't even touch on Linux distro. If you haven't done, if you haven't been in Linux in a while, try it out.
Things have gotten a lot better. There's a, you know, hardware supports a lot better. I haven't had, I've had rarely any driver issues lately with things.
It's very easy to install and life CDs are more easy than ever.
It's, it's, give it a shot if you haven't in a while. And, you know, I may be preaching to the choir here with hacker public radio, but I feel it's worth saying anyways.
So, you know, leave a comment or find me on Twitter at jamstit and let me know what distros you're using or better yet, get on HPR and record a podcast about your experience with Linux.
Thank you for listening to hacker public radio.
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