hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr0698.txt

Episode: 698
Title: HPR0698: How I Found Linux
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0698/hpr0698.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-08 01:05:04

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I must admit your praise was way to good progress.
Hello everybody, this is co-cruncher, and I'm doing my first podcast for Hacker Public
Radio on how I discover Linux.
I grew up with Unix because when I got into computing and programming and so on, I was working
at the university in research and lots of universities were just running on Unix.
I also worked a lot on Macintosh and actually from 1994 till 2004, I bought a new Mac
two years. I also bought a new Windows machine every two years, so I used the Mac for productivity
and I used the Windows machine for gaming. But I had to buy a new machine every two years because
there were like huge changes in processor speed and so on. I mean it really made a big difference
and I needed good performing machines, but a two-year-old computer I could also still sell for,
you know, not much less than what I bought it for. So during that time I had no need for Linux,
whatsoever. I didn't feel like I was totally ignorant of Linux, but because I had Unix on my Mac
and I was happy with Unix and I thought it was doing basically the same thing as Linux.
I just didn't consider installing Linux on any of my machines.
In 2006, my actual journey into Linux started. I just moved to Vancouver and
I was working in a research lab where I had to set up or actually reset up a conference video
conferencing system they had. It was a very high-end video conferencing system that could do a
lot of fancy things and it was running on a Linux machine. So the thing was it was really
complicated to configure the whole thing so that it would find its connections for the video,
for the sound, for the text, for all the other things that it was sending forth and back.
And once I had figured out the configuration, I wanted to actually store the configuration,
but there were some variables which depended on the environment of the system and like the
IP address it got and how it would connect to the other host and so on. So I wanted to write
the start-up script for Linux that whenever you started up that machine, it would just automatically
configure the whole thing. And I totally failed at doing that and realized that Linux is not
unique. It has a different way of starting up. So what happened was that there was a system
admin who wrote the script for me and that was kind of a short excursion into Linux world
and not a very successful. The next time I encountered Linux was in 2009, I just went back to school,
was in a master's program for software systems and in this course about operating systems,
we had an assignment to write a driver for Linux that would do something with the LED lights
that you have on your keyboard. So our TA had set up Linux in a virtual machine,
but the whole configuration didn't really work because the driver couldn't really talk to the
keyboard through, I mean outside which is outside of the virtual machine basically. So they changed
the whole setup and let us use the old computers in the old Linux lab, but they configured those
computers in a way that we could only boot from our own USB drive and we had to have Linux on
that USB drive and then we could plug it in and boot it up and test our drivers. At that point,
the assignment became optional, but I was intrigued by just the possibility to program the LED lights
on the keyboard, actually programs something that is hardware and not just software.
And so I got my Linux system on my USB stick and I wrote the program at home and then I went
into the lab and it wouldn't function and I went back and forth a couple of times because it was
really hard to develop in the lab. Those computers, just that crappy little CRT screens
was no fun doing the work there, but in the end I got the LED lights to light up the
Morse code for every letter that you typed in on the keyboard. That was quite fun.
In spring 2010, I did a few installations of Linux in a virtual box and that was in a context of
a cloud computing project that I was doing. I was trying to actually use the Amazon cloud,
but before trying out my scripts on the Amazon EC2 instance, I wanted to test it in my own
environment. The first Linux I installed was Arch Linux because I wanted to install Hadoop,
which allows to do map-produced processes, which is a way to map information, filter information
to get the essential information out of it. So the reason why I chose Arch Linux is because
I found instructions online on how to install Hadoop in a very lightweight Linux, which is Arch Linux.
My installation didn't even have a Windows system. It was just basically a terminal with a command
line, but because it was running in my Mac environment, I could edit the text files on my Mac
and then have a shared drive between my Mac and the virtual Linux installation, so I could
read the program from that drive and run it. The Hadoop installation, which was doing the map-produced
process, was also smart enough to actually set up a web server and publish all the results
in the web server. So back on my Mac, I could also have a browser open and actually watch
the Arch Linux virtual installation, while it was number crunching through the big data sets
that I was preparing for the cloud. So that was fun, except that I wasn't very happy with Hadoop.
Hadoop does this map-produced, which is a very linear process. It kind of goes from a lot of
information to the essential information you want, but I wanted to do more refined queries on
the whole thing. So I figured out that there is Hive, which kind of gives you the similar things
you can do with a relational database. The more queries you can ask a relational database,
but Hive at that time was only available for Debian and Red Hat. So I decided to install Debian
in my virtual box, and I went through the whole process again of installing Debian in my virtual
box and then adding Hive and developed my scripts and my SQL slash HQL queries and have my virtual
Linux installation number crunch for me. So that was a lot of fun, and that made me too.
I admire some of the features of Linux and start to understand how similar and not similar it is to
Unix. The next time I installed Linux was in December 2010 when I was considering contributing to
the KDE project. So the KDE project is what is for example the Kubuntu desktop, but also a lot of
applications that have a K in them, which also includes games like Kess for chess and so on.
So I installed Kubuntu as well as Ubuntu in my virtual machine just to look at them and understand
them. I didn't get to actually contributing to KDE because I was busy with other things,
but I really like the setup of that project. It's very well set up. I was impressed by how easy it
was to actually see what is going on, what the bugs are that could be tackled, which ones are
the easy ones and so on. But I also liked Ubuntu better, the desktop it just seemed to run smoother
in my virtual box. Kubuntu seemed a little sticky or heavy, I can't really, I don't really know why,
but I liked Ubuntu and the next thing that happened was Poke signed up for a table for
the Northeast Linux Fest and talked about having stickers and I helped with the design of the
stickers so that they could be printed and then I figured out well there is also a Linux Fest
Northwest and I saw that you could have a table so I just signed up for a table and decided to go
to the Linux Fest Northwest. But that meant that I mean you can't really go to a Linux Fest with
a Macintosh computer so I really had to install Linux on my Windows machine to be able to go there
with a computer because I mean the idea is to be able to you know show the Hacker Public Radio
website and show people how to do podcasts and have a machine there and just in case whatever
happens. So I really had to install Linux on a machine now and I was pretty much decided that
it should be Ubuntu and at the same time while I was thinking about installing Ubuntu I also
discovered that there is a meetup group in Vancouver and Ubuntu meetup group or as they call it
the Vancouver Ubuntu local community. So I went to an event which is it's called a couple of Ubuntu
it happens on Saturday mornings because you drink coffee and you don't bring your computer you just
go there and talk and I got an Ubuntu CD which was a great thing to have so it was Ubuntu 1010
really new desktop edition. I could just slip it into my Windows machine and see whether it would run
so you slip it in and it asks you whether you want to install or just write out. So I tried it out
first everything looked good except for the wireless. I thought okay that's only one problem everything
else is running. I'm just gonna go for it. So I erased my heart disk installed Ubuntu and was
facing the wireless problem which actually set firmware missing and I have to say it took me two
days to solve that problem because it was a dull latitude 8600 laptop and it has a broad
wireless card which uses some very proprietary firmware so what Ubuntu does is there is this
program called FWCutter, something like firmwareCutter which kind of cuts the firmware out of the
driver that would drive your wireless card and actually installs the firmware on your wireless card.
So a pretty complicated process. The reason why I had problems is because my other network card
for the wired network is also Broadcom so it didn't know which hardware to use and whatever I
told it to do didn't fit because I wanted to install the driver for the wireless and they
don't even found the wired card. So I searched the web and so on and couldn't find an answer
but then I found the launch pad for Ubuntu which was a really great discovery. So the launch pad,
the first time you go there it looks like just the forum, a discussion forum. So I posted my question
and within two hours somebody was asking more questions and I responded again and then after
six hours more or less I got an email which said that my question was categorized and I thought
that's really interesting and I thought let's look into where it was categorized it made a lot
of sense and then I figured out that this launch pad is actually much more than just a discussion
forum. It's actually also kind of their book tracking project management environment so it's a
great way to you know have the whole community involved in the development and actually the
improvement of the whole environment of Ubuntu. So I really like this launch pad and I also got
an answer for my wireless problem which I basically had to use a different version of that
firmware cutter. The one that I was using which is the default one just doesn't work well with
Broadcom so they had another one which was more appropriate and did the job. I had one more problem
with my Dell laptop which was waking up from sleep totally screwed up the screen but then I found
a solution on launch pad was really no problem to find the solution for that. So that was my
first conversion of Windows machine to Linux and then I got courageous and looked at my little
Samsung Q1 Ultra tablet computer which I bought in I think 2005 or 2006 and it came with Windows
XP and it has an 800 megahertz processor and it really it really can't really run Windows XP
like at normal speed. I mean I can run maybe a browser but if I open a second program it already
slows it down incredibly. I can't really listen to music on it I mean it gets stuck all the time
so I thought well that Windows system isn't running very well. Anyways let's just put DuBunt on it
so the Samsung there are two things one it doesn't have a CD drive and I don't have an external CD
drive and it has a touchscreen so those are two things that I have to deal with. The CD thing was
easy to solve because on the Ubuntu site there was an instruction on how to create a bootable
USB stick so I just followed those instructions that was easy. I had a little bit more problems
figuring out how to tell the Samsung to actually boot from the USB because it doesn't have a real
keyboard with an F12 key that would allow you to just you know select the boot volume on startup
so I actually had to go into the BIOS and and make the changes there but yeah with the help of
the internet that wasn't a big deal in the end and again with the stick I could start up from the
stick and choose whether I want to install it or just test Ubuntu so I tested it and it was fun
because the wireless worked so I didn't have to deal with that problem again the touchscreen
didn't work which I didn't expect to work and I also on the internet found instructions on how
to make it work. It basically needs one extra X11 library and and the appropriate configuration file
so yes I raised the hard disk and I installed Ubuntu on my little tablet computer and I got the
the touchscreen Tuverk and now I have zero windows machines and two Linux machines which feels
really good and the only reason that I I mean the reason why I made this final decision is because of
Hacker Public Radio because I want to go to the Linux Fest and have a table there so thank you Hacker
Public Radio. By the way if you're going to the Linux Fest in Valleyham and of April 30th and May
1st please stop by at the table and say hi and if you have a little bit of time and could help at
the table that would be great my email addresses in the show notes or leave a comment and if it
would be great to have a few more helpers I already found Ira is gonna come and help but a few more
would be great. So this was my first show for Hacker Public Radio and it wasn't really that hard
so thanks Ken for asking for urgent contribution and I hope that others will have the courage to
do a show as long that's it. Kill Cruncher and thank you for listening to Hacker Public Radio
HBR is sponsored by Carol.net so head on over to C-A-R-O dot-N-C for all of us in