Episode: 605
Title: HPR0605: How I found Linux
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0605/hpr0605.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 23:47:28

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Hi my name is John in SC short for South Carolina as the Nick I use on IRC and I
heard a call for podcasts on HPR and I thought well I can I can do a how I find
Linux podcast I believe I was wanted to just try to do one and see what all
it took and how it all worked so I thought I would give it a shot I should say
that I've been into computers a long time I originally started with a TimeX
Sinclair in 1982 my first computer I paid I think $99 for it it came with 2k
memory but I spurged and got extra 16k for $50 and I was thoroughly happy with
that figured that may yet be all I would ever need of course the Sinclair
came without a monitor or a hard drive or a floppy drive you had to connect it
to your TV and use a cassette tape to save the programs on but it was a
computer and it was my first one and it was the only one I could afford so I was
happy with it I brought it home and started filling with basic and I wrote a
program to add to and to and get four I showed it to my wife who then told me
without the slightest hint that she was joking that she could get that a lot
quicker on her calculator so that established a great deal of difference between
me and her she is now my ex-wife wasn't directly related to that though around
1985 I got an Apple 2C which I was very happy with really stated the art for
that time and I could do everything I needed to do I had Apple works I could do
spreadsheets whatever I wanted very happy with the machine kept it for many
years and finally gave it to somebody else and let them use it my job started
using IBM PCs and I started having to use that so eventually I bought myself one
and started using those I believe the first version of DOS I had was four and I
think Windows 3.1 was the first one I actually dealt with my work PC in those days
actually so long ago that when we ran Lotus programs we had to put the Lotus
disk in the upper floppy drive and the data disk in the lower in order to save
our programs that's the time period I'm talking about 1988 or 89 somewhere around
in there I was I read a lot and I was at a bookstore in Columbia South Carolina in 1996
somewhere around there and I found a used book called Using Linux it's 850
page book and inside was a CD for Slackware 2.0.1 from a CD I didn't have a CD
player so I had a borrow one but I did connect it into my PC and it's been a lot
hours fiddling around with Slackware I really liked the idea of the open
source and the alternative to Windows and I was really excited about the whole
thing it was pretty rough on those days in those days to get anything done with that
and also learning it other than the book getting any information other than the
book was really hard to do and nobody I knew in the entire world was using Linux
or anything like it so it was kind of rough there at the start I went back to
Windows because I couldn't do everything I wanted to do in Slackware and couldn't
figure out some of it this day I still don't know whether it was just hardware
related or just my lack of knowledge I tried Slackware again over the years and
gave out frustration I would get it close to what I wanted and then something
would pop off when I try and fix that and spend a week trying to find
information or fix it or experiment with it and never get it to quite work
right and I just gave up and said I wasn't never going to use it again but few
years passed and somewhere around 2004 or 2003 I got another version of
Slackware tried it again this time I had the advantage that I had a second
computer and I could put it on there and just play with it and not interfere with
the stuff I actually needed to do I could do that on the first computer and
really take some time to try to get in the Slackware plus it and improve the
great deal by then I did get it to work I was happy with it I finally said
myself that finally Slackware was working I saw myself switching did and using
that as my main system then on as I was trying to get extra information on
Slackware I did a search one day on the internet for Slackware and I ran
into Chess Griffin's Linux reality podcast on the subject which I listened to
and even though I had it working and thought everything was going pretty well
Chess had a way of explaining things it made me feel like well now I'm really
getting somewhere and I'm going to this is really going to work out since then
I've started experimenting with other versions of just other distributions I've
tried Fedora and Susa and Mephas and Ubuntu and Mint and Debian and Puppy and even
PCBSD and probably 40 others I always came back to Slackware I have
Slackware 64 bit on my computer now although I don't use it as my everyday
machine I have Ubuntu on there now and I do a boot between Ubuntu and Slackware
but for the most part now I use Ubuntu I was listening to Dave Yates a lot of
Linux Linux podcasts I can't remember two and a half years ago and I think he
was coming back from Ohio Linux Fest and he mentioned that he didn't see
why there couldn't be a southeast Linux Fest of some sort and I immediately
thought to myself well if there is I'm going so I've been to both self one and
two enjoyed both of them I haven't really contributed much to the Linux world I
do get people I know to try it and several of them use it now I do go to the
Linux link tech show on Wednesdays usually and sit in the earth channel and
listen to the show live and read it up on the chat I can usually be found
there although I don't always make it and I still listen to a lot of podcasts
the new world order and Linux outlaws a lot of Linux links tilts and of
course hpr but I wanted to as I say I wondered what it would actually be to get
one of these things done and get it out there for people to listen to and so
that's my story and I hope you enjoyed it thanks
thank you for listening to H.P.R.
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