Episode: 376
Title: HPR0376: How I Found Linux 005
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0376/hpr0376.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 19:21:06

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Hey Randy what's up? Oh you sat one? Oh cool yeah I'm working on episode 5 right
now. Okay let me check my email. Did you set it to monster B at likes cranks.info? Okay I'll
check that one. Okay yeah I got it. Cool it's 26 minutes long. I'll go ahead and just this
would be episode 5 just this one clip. Alright thanks man. I'll go ahead and play it right
now. Alright see you later. Hey there this is Randy's or Randy knows his submission and go
by a handful of different names. I'm not that picky call me just about anything. You could
even call me late for dinner. I'll know what I'll look like. How I got involved with Linux
or this is in response to Platoon and monster B's request for an HPR episode of how I discovered
Linux and how I got involved with it. I forget which exact title it is but you know how I ended
up with a Bootsoo on my desktop is basically what I'm going to kind of go through and what I had
and what got me ticked off and brought me to the open source world which is just an amazing
world. Was that I a little bit a little bit of history of me is I've been kind of a geek and I've
enjoyed playing around with computers quite a bit. My first experience with a computer was in
the fourth grade with a mainframe at a college with some sort of a camp retreat that the that our
church or whatever had some church related thing but as a church college campus and I played
Hunt the Wampus on the mainframe during the camp and someone let the password leak on out all his
little kids and all of us were just fascinated and played Hunt the Wampus but that was my first
you know experience with a computer and I enjoyed it and I shouldn't have listened to everyone that
gave me negative reasons why not to get into the whole computing thing early on so I didn't
say he had to be really good with math which actually the computers really good math you just have
to have good concepts and I'm not good with math all right I'm digressing and I do that a lot so I
apologize um in advance because if anyone's listening to me talk before I probably do a little bit
of that here and there and that's just the way I am I guess so um oh I was sitting in my truck
I'm not truck driver right now by trade um these days um not that this is my first love you
worked on a lot of machines for 12 years and I've been involved with the IT IT related type
industry you know one or the other and had a computer since oh since the day of the cocoa my first
but um anyway back to what where I got discussed with Microsoft because I was never really thrilled
with Microsoft it's kind of like a Walmart type of a thing you know they they've got really big
they've pushed things on around and you know Microsoft has never been
high in my list of admiration of companies and business practices that I admire and that I would
ever want to follow myself as an individual ever in my life um but you know the windows
offering system survived the the changes and it became the one on top there is no you know you
don't hear about OS 2 you don't hear about um what is it CPM and and some of the other things and
you know you're not running MS-DOS DR-DOS or IBM DOS um which uh I got pretty proficient of the
C prompt and I'm trying to get a little bit more proficient with the command line and and the
Linux slash units world but the GUIs are kind of nice and you have a GUI solution to get get
done late at night when you don't feel like really trying to muck around with everything um that's
great too that's why I'm an Ubuntu user right now but I I'm also looking around at other stuff
and learning and picking up the other command line sides of it because that's that's an interest
also that uh you know I enjoy but um back to sitting in my truck I was trying to network my two
computers that I had together and the the bias on the desktop that I had in the big truck I had
the monitor over where the TV goes and and yes I had a full blown desktop um in the computer error
in the truck that I used to get I work get around on online with and uh in the bios I figured
maybe a book quicker by disabled the network card oh I reenabled it one night and had a
the network cable the crossover cable and I was just going to see about transferring stuff
one machine to the other and or try setting up maybe a network game if my son was going to ride
around with me in the truck um to where we could play a network game uh really easy
uh that's that was the thought well I reenabled it and XP wanted to talk to the mother ship online and
I don't know why I don't think I had the Wi-Fi the Wi-Fi wasn't working or anyway couldn't get
online and I was really disgusted I thought that was a bunch of BS you know here I am playing
where my computer mess around with it it should be obvious to the operating system that it's still
basically the same hardware um it if they're going to do that kind of a thing they can make it
more intelligent say well let's see you've changed your CD drive from the original but it's still
everything else is the same well you've changed that yeah everything else is the same you know for
a month or two and they could do that in a more eloquent fashion if they were but you know being
Microsoft it probably takes them twice the main lines of code just to figure out how to how to do
the one function and you know rather than remove old code and function let's just blow it up and
make it frustrating for the user experience although to XP's credit it's a lot more stable than
any previous version of Windows that was ever out there and you know thus it's longevity
people got tired of the blue screens of death but oh I've been reading around online
about Linux I was aware of Linux had a little running with a desktop I didn't use it a lot
wasn't my computer for a software company that I worked for they had red hats set up on there
and at that time I thought red hat equaled Linux and it's really pleasant and nice to find out
that that concept was wrong so what I'm looking for when I first try to get an online
the to get Linux I looked for red hat and then I find out it's now for door and I had for door
4.6 and I went through repartitioning the hardware her hard hard drive on my desktop and I was
going to install Linux because the heck with this whole Microsoft thing is I don't need them
and a lot and off with work it trying to go my off time my down time trying to get that going
had a dual booting trying to figure out grub the permissions there's a lot of there's a lot of
stuff to learn especially if you can't get online and find the stuff out easily
with a long story short for door 4.6 was installed up and on my system but I couldn't
get connected to the internet because it didn't support my Wi-Fi card that I had or device
USB device I probably two of them and either one of them worked
I was really just heartening
and so I just kind of put the whole Linux idea thinking well crap
other people saying they're playing on Linux and they're having issues and maybe I
that's a little bit more work than what I want to put it to
I read an article about Ubuntu by I think Adrian Kingsley Hughes off his eating that I believe
and he was talking about this and Ubuntu thing and is this the year the Linux desktop which
now I think has come to the point of just complete ridiculousness
so I start probing around again for more Linux information I got curious again so well what you
mean red hat isn't the only thing this for door thing isn't the only this isn't the only thing
for Linux start finding out more and more and I find Chess Gryffin's podcast and iTunes because
I was using iTunes and grabbing that for for pod catching and hating it because of how much
bloat was in the iTunes and looking for other other methods to get on and other programs to use
as pod catchers this is underneath windows and because I've been hearing about this whole podcast
and I was not familiar with it either you're about it but you're not really sure what it is and
why people get excited about them and I was talking to the young lady last night to get
now excited about this stuff because she's not aware of what's out there and it's I feel it's
one of my jobs is an open source advocate is to make people aware of it but I can't get at least
get some seeds planted out there me Johnny open source seed the search for distros and
distro hopping and downloading them the time it took and I think I actually ordered some stuff
with on desk but by the time I got because I was over the road got around to getting to my
mailbox which could take you know two to three weeks five weeks six weeks before I get to it
at a time and it's always kind of Christmas for me because I forget what I'd ordered I was like
oh there's a box oh shit what an order yeah I can even wrap my own Christmas gifts and I would
know what I'm opening but and so as I do it six months in advance uh problem is that probably
buy a duplicate of it because I forgot I've done that I got stuff in storage that I've bought
duplicates of things because I forget I have more I'm on the road and I need something and I buy
another one but I got puppy linux up and running you know booted off a life CDM I'm on machine
and puppy linux was the first distribution that I had that I the browser work the Wi-Fi
um was the device card was found and I was using C monkey and I was browsing the internet using
linux and you know puppy is the will always have that little notoriety for me as being the first
distribution that I used that that worked for getting online um I found a boom-to I think it worked
on one of my machines one of my machines right off the bat because I was trying it on with two
three different machines and I am fact after listening to a script and I decided to look for an old
laptop online and I got a hundred fifty dollar laptop think of a Pentium 2 which you know 190
was a hundred ninety eight megs of ram is anyway it was it wasn't what the ram is processor it just
it was a little old machine it was a great little machine I think it was a Toshiba I think I
have Toshiba's all the way around for everything I that I've had I've really liked the durability of
the Toshiba's so far but um you know puppy linux it wasn't very new friendly getting it installed
on the hard drive um I found in the in the beginning was confusing the probably that confusing
today to go through the stuff and look at it because I now understand a lot of what they're saying
and I'm getting better at understanding the quick installer or instructions which are vague
for a new but for someone who you're the bare minimum it's like for how to do stuff so
but I got a boom-to I've been running a PC Linux going on one of the machines and all this time
I'm listening to chess griffin marlin done uh found you know chess via you know items like I
mentioned which um I think it was on like podcast fifty and they just gotten done with the OOLF
or they talked about it I know that he and David dates and marlin done even until those guys
were talking about it there's a couple other Linux podcasts that kind of went by the wayside
and uh for the ones that have kind of gone off into the ether marlin done
it is one that if you can find it archived and someone had that he's he's still a lot of fun to
listen to go back listen again he had a lot of enthusiasm um and you know he got he came he was ill
and his his healthy he quit doing the podcast he had a book um I actually bought his book
because shortly after the tilts interview with him and it's a huge book he covers a lot it might
have been a little bit better if he he done a little smaller chunks of it at a time because you look
at something that's um as thick as his and for someone that's new at it that just it looks like a lot
to try to digest um but he covers he covers a lot um that I just think he's amazing for what he
what he's done there but um you self-published and I got a boot too got it up and running on one
of my machines it was dual booting get all the time um I don't remember it was one of the desktops
or laptops that I used for the most part but I still needed windows for some of the programs I was
using in in wanting to run and um you know I was wanting a new laptop so I bought another laptop
later on another tissue but with all the intel chips because hey that should be safe and I got
more issues with that silly thing oh man I'm going a little too faster um downhill with a big truck
there's mr. cop on the median I hope he didn't think I was getting I was speeding at such degree
a deserved ticket anyway I look like he's coming out here that might be lucky but it was I was
pushing it though um going downhill with a load it's yeah use that gravity I don't know he's
going out here he might be coming to talk to me I don't know in any case um
all right for Linux but that's that's pretty much it I started finding other podcasts they
IRC's uh joining in live for uh the chats and looking forward to Wednesday nights for uh
tilts and there's a couple others Linux cranks and uh freelance help line and there's
there's a lot of people are getting involved with helping promote the open source and
it's really kind of cool you know I've made it to oh well I've made it to oh well left twice the
first time I met chess Griffin um he pointed out he pointed out David Yeast to me and uh he saw David
it with one meeting there's like a meeting in a center area where you can kind of wander in and out
I wasn't in an enclosed room and uh David was there in shaven with his arms clarost and really
intent looking and he looked really mean nasty and I didn't want to talk to him because he looked
he looked like you know he's ready to hurt something and I didn't want to be mean so uh I didn't
meet David Yeast the first one but the second time I met him and he's actually one of the nicest
people he ever meet you know so um and you know John O'Bacon and a few other uh open source
notorieties at that uh at the 2008 oh well left there in Columbus and it was it was really fun
I have to agree with some of the others it's it's it's the apex of my year there's other
cons cons going on um sled or self excuse me um pangle con I just I'm not going to be able make
them all of if I and if I'm going to pick one it'll be the oh well left uh just
because I I seem to think that that's the one where everyone else is at I remember hearing David
Yeast after the 2008 one how fired up he was and I'm so glad he's doing the south east limits
fest I really wish I was in a position to get down there and uh participate with it uh
I think you know I really yeah that's
pangle cons about 180 miles away from where I where I live and uh
uh I wish I could make it to that too which is next weekend uh which condates this here in this
podcast a little bit I don't think I'll be able to make that either it's just works work is work
and life gets in the way those things
but anyhow um yeah listen to the various limits podcasts and using a boom too and when I got
that my new laptop I got to the point I came with this on it and it was just you know this
of the whole this experience thing I I booted it up saw it while shoot maybe I'll do a booth
this thing and you know we'll just see what this whole Linux thing is about
because I was looking for some um I was looking for for employment back into the IT type world
and you know got my A plus certification uh I don't know about a year ago you're
you two ago and trying to get out of the big truck and couldn't make the
couldn't make the interviews because I'm over the rough
got them in the wrong state but they wanted to meet up for interviews so I got a local
driving for right now and uh I'll pursue that here here in the next few months
okay try to get settled in first but yeah yeah log a short of it I got to that new laptop
oh let's back up so you know I had the the desktop and the truck and I had an older laptop
and I took the desktop out of the truck and I want to get a second laptop I was
and have a little bit more room more portability in the truck and I want to have two of them
because what if one went bad and the new one was going to be my Linux machine that had the
Intel chips and uh figured I'd be safe without knowing that's a shiba and it
it works but the sound on it the the headphone and microphone jack that are built into it
don't work properly they haven't yet I haven't tried johnsy yet um I don't know that'll
fix that problem or not but we'll see but when I went to boot that machine up it
was going to dual boot it and it got to the screen or my cafe while I'm in here and all this
information I just thought the heck with it just completed the heck with it and I heard length
come the tilts talk about it on his machines he says he didn't even boot up windows he
got home he plopped in the disk and just formatted he just he didn't he had a chance to
just spin around on his hard drive so you know I admire that in that man but uh
so I figured you know what these guys are doing it I got another machine that
that's got windows on another laptop so if I if I uh get confused or need help I can get online
and that was a in boot two six ten probably was the first one I had uh because I know I upgraded
from six from something to seven oh four so that uh so that would be the logical steps I believe
and yeah most everything was working and uh yeah I with I had the two different laptops when I
old one they had basically booted straight into windows the other one the boot straight into Linux
and uh and nothing but Linux on the one and nothing but windows on the other and I
just finding myself more and more liking playing around with the Linux machine uh just it's
also light or hardware the hardware on it is just a little bit a little bit better the older one
this build kind of like uh an Abrams tank it's just it's big it's heavy it's hot
it sucks up a lot of electricity I still like it because there hasn't been one distribution I've
put on it that didn't work but granted it doesn't have a Wi-Fi card built in it doesn't have
you know uh cam or uh webcam built in it's it's it's lacking some parts of the hardware
but everything has worked on a headphone jack microphone jack that just
right out of the box every everything on that machine has just been
dandy you know inspired the fact that it's hot big and heavy um it works
uh I've replaced the the hinges on it upgraded the ram on it upgraded the hard drives
two or three times just getting bigger ones so but yeah that's that's my Linux experience
I've got a you know laptop it's got nothing but Linux on it the other one dual boost boots into
Linux now the windows uh I need to get around to shrinking it down and oh it's my secondary
machine the big and hot heavy laptop it's what I'm using now instead of a triple EPC for a lot of
things uh it's the secondary stuff and I don't really have a desktop that I use anymore um although
that might be changing you just but all right uh I think I've rambled on enough um I've
added this sucker and up might let let's put it in it and even down more yeah all right guys
have a good one HPR radio you are listening to hacker public radio
the radio truck drivers listen to on their media players
oh yeah podcasting at six 55 miles an hour 18 wheels
don't have the speed but I got the rubber
thank you for listening to hacker public radio HPR sponsored by caro.net so head on over to
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