Episode: 750
Title: HPR0750: My path to Linux
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0750/hpr0750.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-08 01:53:13

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Before going in.
Hi, I'm the new age techno hippie, and I'm recording my first show for Hacker Public
Radio.
It's going to be my path to Linux, and hopefully in the future I will be able to do more shows
on Linux and the things that I do that I would consider hacking.
So for my path to Linux, it started in 1995.
I was at the end of my high school career, and I had really only experienced Microsoft
operating systems.
I had used DOS and basic in school for programming simple little things, and it also used Windows
311 and 95 and word processing products.
I used the Corral word perfect application a lot, and a little bit of experience with
the Microsoft works and word products as well.
So when I was handed the disks and my friend told me, you have to check out this new operating
system.
It's called Linux.
Here's these red hat disks.
I was like, okay, whatever.
So I went home and I tried it out, and it was interesting.
It wasn't usable, but it was interesting.
And the portion of me that was very hacker mentality said, you know, boy, I should really
keep on tinkering with this.
So I did.
And while I was never able to get the X Windows server running, which I think was kind
of a common problem back then for a lot of people, I was able to get it installed.
I didn't delete my entire hard drive, which was a bonus, and I was able to play around
with it.
So I eventually started up after I got into college and got settled in a little bit,
a dual boot system between Red Hat and Windows using Lilo.
And I would tinker with Red Hat.
I got the X server running and started to check out Window Maker.
And when I started to check out Window Maker, I thought it was very different and a very
unique experience, but I was still looking for something a little bit more comfortable
for me.
I settled on FVWM and that worked out pretty well.
I was able to check out all the X Windows applications from there and had a good time playing around
with Linux in general.
I wasn't able to use it for my daily needs yet.
I was stuck doing a lot of school projects that required Windows only software at the
time, and I still like to play video games quite a bit and really didn't know how to make
them work under Linux.
So I kept on going through school, eventually graduated, and got a job for a company.
Many though used Microsoft for almost all of their needs.
I did get to check out some very interesting older hardware and I learned about deck computers
and back systems and those operating systems, and I also learned about real-time operating
systems with things like VX works and also did a little bit of microprocessor programming
in assembly.
It was all very interesting, but I had to learn a lot of Windows too.
I was administering some Windows servers and doing web development for Microsoft's web
server and web-based applications that would interact with some of our real-time systems.
So I wound up learning a lot of Microsoft specific products, Microsoft SQL Server, and things
that you would find in the Microsoft developer network subscriptions, but when I got
laid off from that company, I got to address my real interest, which was Linux.
I wiped off my computer and installed Red Hat 9 as the majority operating system that
I was going to use and made it my default choice as an operating system.
I was really impressed with Red Hat 9.
It gave me all the functionality that I was looking for, and because I was laid off,
I had lots of time to learn everything that I didn't know already.
So I learned how to use Wine to run video games, I learned how to use Open Office, I learned
how to use all the other applications that came along with it.
I learned a lot of the new applications by reading through Linux format that exposed
me to a lot of new applications that I might not have found just sort of searching around.
It was a great introduction to the Linux community.
Now when Red Hat decided that they were going to go with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and
that the only community offering they were going to have was going to be Fedora, I started
to look for new distributions, something else that I could sort of latch onto, because
I liked the whole sense of community, even though I wasn't really involved in it.
And I also liked the stability that Red Hat had provided, but that stability really
wasn't there with Fedora.
It took a couple of releases before Fedora kind of got stable again and got its feet
underneath of it.
So I was looking for something else that was different.
Now I stayed with Fedora as my primary desktop, and I was on Linux pretty much 100% of the
time by this point.
I had no windows installed at all on my computer after upgrading to Fedora, but Fedora wasn't
running 100% smooth for me either.
I tried Sousa, I tried Debian, I tried Mandriva, I tried Gentoo and Slackware, and probably
several other distributions that I can't remember.
But I never found anything that really took the place of Fedora.
I was comfortable with Fedora, I just wasn't particularly 100% happy.
So I kept on looking around, and eventually Linux format ran a special magazine a while
back that had a whole bunch of different distributions and sort of a comparison between
them and who they were for.
So by this point, I would say that I was definitely identified as a power user of Linux.
I'm not a developer for any open source software, and I don't really contribute yet.
I'm looking to get into it in the future, but I'm awfully tied up with my kids and my
day-to-day stuff that I'm not really open to being able to do much development at this
point, although I'm looking to get into more.
So I looked at this review and found Arch Linux, and Arch Linux is a wonderful distribution
if you haven't tried it in your power user, and you like having the latest and greatest
stuff that's actually stable, but the ability to tinker as much as you want, and Arch Linux
is probably a very good lineup for you.
They have a user repository, a wonderful wiki, and the ability for any of the users to upload
packages you want, and you can maintain that package for your own needs, and other people
benefit from that too, and it's a very wonderful system.
So I use that on my desktop and my laptop, and I have Memo 5 for my phone, which is an
900, wonderful phone, even though Nokia is really tanked lately with their support for
open source by bowing down to the Microsoft machine, but hopefully somebody else will
step up and take up the moniker for releasing a good open source type phone like the N900.
Alright, well thank you for listening, and I hope you enjoyed the show, and I'll try
and do some more in the future.
Thank you for listening to Hacker Republic Radio.
For more information on the show and how to contribute your own shows, visit Hacker Republic
Radio.org.