hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr1853.txt

Episode: 1853
Title: HPR1853: I <3 Vista
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1853/hpr1853.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 10:11:15

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This is HPR episode 1853 titled, I Love Mr. It is posted by Alpha32 and in about 7 minutes
long, the summary is how I got into Linux.
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Good evening Hacker Public Radio.
This is Alpha32 coming at you from Swumpy Southeast Missouri.
What I wanted to talk to you about today is how I got into Linux.
It's not a terribly interesting story, but those kind of things seem to be popular on
the Hacker Public Radio feed, so I will throw in my 2 cents worth.
Growing up, I always used Windows like most people in my age, 130.
We grew up in the age of Microsoft as the only path.
I didn't know any better until my early 20s.
My first computer, well the first computer that was mine and mine alone, was a compact
laptop.
It came with Vista.
It came with Vista on it.
Now, I know everybody will cringe, but I actually like Vista, and I get lots of angry
comments.
I'll tell you why I like Vista.
I like Vista because it got me into Linux.
I had my laptop that worked fine for a while, and then inevitably it started crapping
out.
Not the hardware mind you, the software, thanks again to Microsoft and Vista.
I was going to school in Germany at the time, and I was seriously about to just throw
this Vista junk out the window.
It was a 17 inch wide paving stone, essentially, to me.
I told a buddy about that, and he said, no, no, no, no, hold on, don't do that just yet.
He worked some sort of, well, look to me like crazy computer come through and installed
Ubuntu on it.
This was back in the good old days of Ubuntu.
It was 904.
Back in the good old, good old two days, that's always difficult for me to say, good old,
good old.
Anyways, yeah, he put Ubuntu on there, and I was pretty stoked.
At first I was like, what the heck is this stuff, but I mean it worked.
It worked way better than what I had.
So, I went on with that for about a year until the hardware actually started crapping out
on that laptop, and well, I really didn't know anything at that time about a free open
source kind of stuff, and I guess I just didn't really care about it.
You know, I'd never gotten into it.
So I went to the dark side, got a Mac, you know, at least it's still a Unixie, right?
Happily used that for a few years, and then my little brother had this old Acer.
Actually, I'm still using it.
Things got a Pentium 3 in it.
With anything other than Linux, it would be a pretty crusty bit of hardware.
He was about to throw it out.
I said, no, no, no, no, let me play with it, you know, what I like to do.
Take things apart, you know, see how they work, all that jazz.
So I got it, and had to figure out how to install Ubuntu on that.
I said figure out how to, I had never done it before, so, you know, there was that.
But I got it going, and it's awesome.
This thing has been serving me well for a couple of years now.
It's really deviant now, because, well, Unity, you know.
So, yeah, with the old Acer, it was good, because I didn't have to worry about breaking it.
I still have my Mac, so if I screw up the Acer, it didn't really matter, you know.
I could just take the usable hardware and chuck it in the bin, like my brother was going to.
So yeah, I'm pretty glad that I spent that time researching and figuring out what I could do with this thing.
So in getting this computer up and running this old Acer, I discovered the whole world that is free open source software.
And I discovered a community that I can fit into. That's pretty great.
While I'm sure if you're listening to this, you know how great the free open source community is.
I found lots of help where I needed it. I still find help where I needed it.
And lots of great podcasts and people on the forums and whatnot, you know, folks to share laugh or answer whatever sort of technical mayhem I may have, you know, got stuff into.
So that's basically my story of Linux. Currently I'm running devian on all my machines, got an old Pentium Ford Dell here, got an old ThinkPad.
So as you can tell, I'm sure you're sensing a trend here. I'm big on older hardware.
I say I'm big on it because, well, it's cheap. And that's good for me.
So yeah, I mean, if you've got any sort of hardware, I mean, pretty well, just like anything, that's what's great about Linux and open source stuff is you can always find something to make it work.
There's always a as big and fancy and graphically awesome blend of Linux as you want, or there you can find something totally tiny and stripped down and bare bones, you know, to run on some truly ancient stuff, you know.
And I'm sure you could like find a distribution of Linux or run on like a steam powered computer, you know, I don't know, I'm just making that up. But seriously, it's, it's pretty wild.
The whole range of stuff that there is out there. Anyways, if you guys want to hit me up, yeah, just shoot me an email, leave a comment. I'm on Google plus.
So that's basically it. And as other guys say, don't forget to support free and open source software. All right. Have a good day.
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