Episode: 717
Title: HPR0717: My Switch from Windows to Linux
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0717/hpr0717.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-08 01:26:46

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How much?
Hi, this is Jason William, this is my first podcast on Hacker Public Radio, really my first
podcast ever.
And I really like the concept behind Hacker Public Radio, I think it's a great idea and
I just wanted to contribute to it and hopefully maybe at some point become a regular contributor.
This first podcast is going to be one that I think most people give, a lot of people give
anyway as their first podcast on Hacker Public Radio and that's my switch from Windows
to Linux.
And it's a story that's similar probably to most people, just like most people, the decision
to switch wasn't me overnight, I didn't wake up one day and said, hmm, let me just try
Linux.
It was really a decision to span many years and just little by little the decision to switch
to Linux became strong and strong and so eventually I just made the switch.
I think my first exposure to Linux was an ancient laptop that my brother got from a friend
of the family and it wasn't being used for anything, it was, I don't even know if you
can call this a laptop, it was maybe a predecessor to laptops today.
It had a really tiny screen, the screen was really the size of the average keyboard and
the length and width were about the same size as the keyboard and it flipped up like a laptop.
But the screen was, you know, green screen, it wasn't a color screen at all, you know,
that black background with the green characters up front and there was no GUI, it was just
all command line and that was the first Linux PCI I think I'd ever seen and I remember
just kind of learning little things here and there how to navigate through the file system.
I remember I stumbled upon helping and info and I remember stumbling across CAD and what
I was doing was basically just going through the operating system and when I saw a file
that looked interesting, I would try to execute it and see what happened, sometimes there
were disastrous results and I had to restart the computer, sometimes I got something interesting
and then other times I got nothing and if I didn't get anything then I would try to
print that command, you know, CAD and whatever the command was to see if I got some kind
of information to the screen and sometimes that was disastrous, the screen just filled
up with garble and I would have to restart the PC but that's really where I started off
with Linux and I had learned a few things, at the time we had a Commodore 64 in the house
and so I had done a lot of programming on that, I learned basic and I had created a whole
lot of little small applications and I really while I was poking around on that Linux laptop,
I was really trying to see if there was a way that I could do the same kind of programming
that I did on the Commodore 64 if I could apply those same skills to the Linux box and
ended up being a pretty futile task and I guess most people know if you don't have a good
background with bash rifting or shell scripting, you're really not going to be able to do much
with the command line on a Linux computer and so I left that experience thinking that was pretty
a pretty big waste of time, Linux really doesn't have anything that I could use because I was
really trying to do basic programming on a Linux computer and it just wasn't working.
I spent the next several years all the way up into adulthood working primarily with Windows PCs,
I enlisted into the military and they almost exclusively use Windows. Although there were a few
instances where I got the opportunity to mess around with Linux a little bit our Unix
based systems, there was actually a course that I had to attend that basically taught the basics
of Unix, all the basic commands and just the file system and how things work and that was for
a communication system that was kind of new and it used Unix as its base. There was another
command that I was at that used another, I think it was a Solaris spark maybe I think is the name
that rings the bell, I'm not sure if that's what it was or not but it was a spark PC I think and
it was at ran Unix and it was also to do some communications type stuff. So other than those obscure
opportunities that I had then in the military to work with Linux the rest of the time was pretty
much all Windows. I remember seeing Windows 3.1 in the military, we had these old scene I think there
was Z110 computers huge even for that time they seemed like they were huge and I believe if I'm
not mistaken they were running Windows 3.1. I remember seeing Windows NT come around 95, 98 XP,
the military went through that whole thing with Windows but during that whole time I didn't have
much exposure at all to Linux it was pretty much Windows the whole time and you know I was really
never the type of person to kind of run with the crowd I always was trying to see what else was
out there and I always was kind of like techy by nature and so though everybody was messed around
with Windows I was always looking to see what else was out there what's something that's different
that most people aren't using and every once in a while running to somebody that was using some
other OS I remember one gentleman I ran into he was using OS 10 which I believe was a Mac Mac
attached operating system one of the first ones maybe I don't know and it was very impressive
I like the way it looked it was definitely different than what Windows was doing and then there
were several Linux versions that I had tried out my brother I remember him giving me a call one day
and telling me about this Linux distribution that ran off of a CD and at that time that was
unheard up to me anyway it was called Kanapik and I'm sure most people are familiar with that
and I was amazed at the fact that you could burn this thing onto a CD hop it in your computer
boot up and and run Linux off of the CD I thought that was amazing I remember at some job fair
I was at I think it was called Turbo Linux these people were handing out CDs with Turbo Linux
I remember installing that on a PC and it wasn't not Turbo on a PC that I was using by any stretch
of imagination it was very very very slow but that was another one I remember trying out Red Hat
from somewhere I don't know where I got it from but I remember trying Red Hat out as well
and so you know even though I was surrounded by Windows every once in a while would take a look at
what other operating systems and it was mostly Linux that I was trying to see what they had
had to offer but I never really stuck with Linux and really the reason I think was because
everybody else that I knew and everybody else that I was working with was using Windows and then
even those times when I did try out Linux there was no way to integrate the work I was doing
in Linux with the work that I had to do with Windows there was not much compatibility
there at least that I could find and so it became more of a headache to use Linux because there
was there was no way to take the stuff that I had done in Linux and use it anywhere except for
the PC that I had at home so I really sort of abandoned Linux because of that that compatibility
issue several several years after this I think I was about a year away from retiring from
that from the military I think there was two computers in the house there was a desktop
and a laptop all of them had XP on it and I was doing a lot of audio editing work for our church
on the desktop and at this time that desktop had seemed to run slower and slower and slower as
many of us know Windows PCs tend to do and I remember one day in particular that I went to the
desktop and started up to do some some audio editing and I saw this little pop-up come up on
the screen and I was really kind of used to seeing little pop-ups pop-up all the time that I really
wanted to show what they were for and just like I had done before I just hit cancel and didn't
really think anything of it I was accustomed to that Windows computer doing things like that that
I wasn't sure why it was doing or what it was going for just hit cancel and move on but this
time was a little different after I clicked on cancel my explorer internet explorer application
pop-up and went right to a webpage that was selling antivirus software now I was no dummy I
realized that something terrible just happened that was pretty sure it was a virus the pop-up was
kind of like my first warning in the fact that this this explorer when his internet page popped up
asking me to buy antivirus software was my sure enough clue that I probably had a virus on
the computer and that really you know scarred me as far as my using Windows I became very jaded
because I didn't think that was something that should just happen so easily without me knowing
and there might have been other indicators that I might have caught if I was you know more
knowledgeable about the subject but it just really caught me off guard and so I you know for the rest
of the time while I had that Windows computer I was constantly paranoid that there was going to be
a virus on there or some guy in Timbuk 2 was hacking into my computer and setting out spam
mail to all my friends you know and everybody in the rest of the world right from my computer and I
was you know sort of convincing myself that that was the reason why my computer was going so slow
and so uh you know this was all really happening around the time that Vista was coming out
and I read many reviews about Vista how awful some people's experience was and so I really
decided to to skip Vista I didn't want to mess with it because I though views I heard were so
negative and so those two things together really started me thinking if you know asking the
question if Linux really had any solutions to offer for these little problems I was seeing one
that Windows had produced garbage in many people's and many people's opinion with Vista and the fact
that I felt like my computer was being overrun by viruses and I was having not a whole lot of
luck controlling it and so I stuck with XP through the whole Vista debacle and I was constantly
trying to squeeze you know more and more life out of my PC seemed like it was getting to the point
where it was really almost unusably slow and so I was constantly trying to remove files and
clean this up and do this and do that and none of it really was working the PC was slowly getting
more and more unusable and Vista was on its way out and Windows 7 was now on its way in and I learned
some things about Windows 7 that really were the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back
the first thing I think was that there was three or four maybe more different flavors of Windows 7
and they all had different pricing and to me that really sort of irritated me because it was saying
to me that Windows was not a Microsoft wasn't really interested in putting out their best product
they were interested in making money and if they can make it with a lesser product than they
would do it if they can make it with a better product they could do it and that sort of irritated me
I think there was a home version for about fifty dollars and I think there was a professional version
for I think it was ninety nine dollars at the time and you know with my current satisfaction level
with Windows I wasn't really willing to spend twenty dollars let alone ninety nine dollars
for the professional version and I remember all those other Linux distributions that I tried
in the past I didn't have to pay one cent for any of them and so that that was really starting to
look pretty appealing to me and I was I was also remembering the virus episode and another
little tidbit information that I learned about Windows 7 around that time was that although I could
upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 I couldn't upgrade from XP to Windows 7 so basically installing
Windows 7 for me would wipe out everything that was already on my computer and that mean that
meant I would have to do a whole lot of work you know go through a lot of hassle to preserve the
data that I accumulated on that PC throughout years and that was something I just wasn't prepared
to do so you know at that point the camel's back was broken I couldn't see myself really sticking
with Windows but the question was you know could Linux meet the needs that I had and really the
needs of my family and so what I did was I started trying to devise a plan to see if my family
could use Linux and be happy and so what I did was you know this was actually around the time
when Ubuntu was doing a lot of advertising they were actually advertising you would see commercials
on TV for Ubuntu some guy poking away at a computer and he would invite some stranger
some passerby to take a look at it and the implication was that the passerby was amazed
that what the computer was doing and that they assumed it was a Windows PC person would reveal
finally that this wasn't XP but this was Ubuntu and so those commercials were out there quite a bit
so what I did was I went to the Ubuntu website I burned a copy of Ubuntu I think it was 8.04
the XFCE version and I did a dual boot on the desktop so I had XP and Ubuntu and I kind of
instructed the family just use Ubuntu see if it will meet your needs and don't use the XP
version and all which was really not a hard choice because the XP version was was just so slow
that it was really not even feasible to use it at all so it wasn't really a hard choice
for the family to use the Ubuntu installation that was on that desktop and what happened was
within weeks the family was really using the Ubuntu Linux exclusively with very few complaints
and it was then that I started thinking how you know this this just might work we might be able
to make this swap and so I think the next thing I did was my wife had a laptop and with a lot
of complaining on her end I said well let me just go ahead and put your Ubuntu on this laptop
and the presumptuous promise was that it would dramatically increase the speed of the computer
you'd be able to do a whole lot more but I have no weight and weight and weight for you know
whatever tasks you were trying to complete to finish and I went ahead and installed Ubuntu on
that laptop it was an uneventful install it installed perfectly right off the bat and thankfully
there was a noticeable performance increase so that was that was fantastic I was really impressed
at that at this time I didn't have my own laptop and so I went and purchased one and I was
determined that the PC that I purchased actually had this no on it and I was determined that I
would never boot the computer with a Windows operating system on it so as soon as I got it home
and unpacked it the very first thing I did was you know take a little pin and use it to open the
CD tray so I did that before I returned it on and put the Ubuntu CD in the CD tray and so the
very first time I turned that computer on it was to install Ubuntu so I completely wiped out
everything that was on there originally and installed Ubuntu and with the exception of some
graphic card issues this is an HP PC and had an ATI graphics card and radion 3200 I believe
and that gave me a little bit of trouble but with exception to that the install went perfectly
and I was really at that point pretty much set in stone that I would never go back to Windows
I had learned a ton in Ubuntu I found a lot of the applications that that I would normally use
it was a huge learning curve but it wasn't hard to learn because there were so many resources
available so many people who are willing to lend a helping hand so it wasn't really that hard
or switch but there was a lot that I needed to learn a lot of differences between how Windows
operates and how Linux operates and so I tried a whole lot of different distributions I think
the desktop remained Ubuntu until really just recently Ubuntu had been on that computer
really my whole Linux experience until just recently I tried a puppy Linux on my laptop
for door I tried OpenSusa Slackware which Slackware I think is still my favorite I had tried
even LFS Linux from scratch which is mind-blowingly complicated it was not really complicated it's
just tedious the steps are laid out very clearly but it's an extremely tedious process
if you want to learn everything there is though to learn about Linux try Linux from scratch and
next to that I would say Slackware and I really like Slackware because of its simplicity it was
just plain Linux and it was very predictable you know exactly what to expect the one thing I
really didn't like about Slackware was the maintenance that was required to keep the system
up-to-date doing upgrades and things like that so because of that there were just certain things
that I didn't want to have to work at that I hadn't seen in other operating systems and so although
I really am fond of Slackware I'm not using Slackware now right now all the PCs in house
are on PC Linux OS which I like a lot there's some little things that I don't like
but for the most part PC Linux OS you know they they had a slogan as being the distribution
shopper stopper and I found that to be true once I tried PC Linux OS I pretty much stayed
with that for the remainder of my Linux experience to date right now I'm actually recording
this on the laptop that I purchased a while back and it has PC Linux OS installed on it and so
really that's that's my story one of the most gratifying aspects that I've found with Linux
is that it really instills a sense of creativity in its users it kind of compels you to create
just the tools that that come with typical Linux distribution really kind of
caused the person who's using a system to come up with a solution to create a solution
for whatever issue you're faced with grab and said and you know all the other command line tools
it gives you a massive amount of control a massive amount of options and possibilities
and it just seems like Linux is designed to put control in the hands of the user
and and give the user every opportunity to create their own solution and comparison to windows
windows seems to promote buying your solution there's a very limited amount of resources on a
windows pc that are openly available to the user or even openly advertised to the user
there's probably other tools there that you can find if you look and you search but they're not
really well advertised and not promoted and so without question I've become definitely more
productive more knowledgeable more creative more satisfied user under Linux than ever I was under
windows I've actually learned Python it seemed like everyone I first installed Linux it seemed
like everything was done in Python and so because it seemed like Python was so dominant in Linux
I thought well maybe a good idea for me to learn Python and so I've actually taken that knowledge
to work and where I work I've created some tools in Python and and that was really the catalyst for
that was really my knowledge that I had gained in Linux and so that productivity has really
even crossed beyond what I do at home and it's carried over into so what I do at work so that's
my my Linux story my switch from windows to legs I am definitely satisfied and the only thing I
could say is I wish I had done it a lot sooner and so that's my story there's many like it but
this one is mine bye bye
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