What’s in Linux for you?
I want to hear your stories. :)
How did you start using Linux? Is it because of school or work? I’d love to hear the beginning of a new Linux user. Everyone of us has a different story why we chose Linux over other operating systems. Let me share mine:
I was using Windows 98 for the longest time but we were always reinstalling it because something would always conk out. It could be something hardware-related — like looking for printer drivers — and there were times that the OS would just hang and leave us, well, hanging. (Heh. I know you think it’s corny but I couldn’t resist. :P) Anyhow, I was getting frustrated a lot so I decided to try Linux. But even before I did that, I was a bit interested already because I learned about Linux in the university. We had discussions on the topic and I listened to what my professors and classmates had to say. We even had the experience of using Linux in some of the computer labs so that was really something good, in my case. Some of the things that made me enjoy using Linux was the fact that it’s not difficult to switch window managers and desktop environments and I found that really fun to do. Anyhow, I still find some things difficult like networking issues. I have to admit that I am not very good at fixing such troubles but when I find an easy to read guide, I could manage to follow it and I don’t hesitate to ask people around me.
That’s my story. How about you?
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POSTED IN: The Free World.
3 opinions for What’s in Linux for you?
alvlin
Jan 4, 2008 at 6:07 am
Well, I’ve been using Linux for the last 6 years.
I first heard about it from a high school mate. Then I tried ZipSlack in my old (not so old at that time) Pentium MMX 233 Mhz with 32 MB of RAM.
I kind of liked it, but you couldn’t do much stuff with ZipSlack as it was then, and booting with LOADLIN :-D
Then I change my system, got a Celeron 600 Mhz with 64 MB of RAM and 40GB of disk space.
I created a partition of 5 GB and installed Slackware 8. Then I really liked it.
When I upgraded to Slackware 10, I just felt in love. It was an awesome system, I learned a lot with it, and I love the ability to change everithing I wanted to change, even if that changes break the system (I did break it several times …) At that time I was using mainly IceWM with some KDE apps (Konqueror, KMail), as KDE 3.x was slow. Usable but slower than IceWM, I didn’t missed anything from it.
Last year I bought the PC I’m using now. An AMD64 Athlon 3200+, with 1GB of RAM and 120 GB of disk space (now 370).
And I have to say: Slackware 12 is the best system I’ve ever used (and I’ve used Windows 98/ME/XP, Ubuntu, SuSE and Fedora)
Arnold L. Johnson
Jan 11, 2008 at 8:59 am
I first encountered Linux about ten years ago. In a book there was a disk of a German version of Linux. I was curious because I was enduring a rash of win95 blue screens. I then tried Slackware and was so confused. Red Hat came and I was hooked and dual-booting with win98se. It bothered me that when win98se became disabled I had to reinstall the whole disk drive including Linux. I tried two disk drives and that was better. I got a new machine and the more stable winXP. I used Linux tools to make room for a Linux partition. Over the years Linux has progressed from a plumber’s nightmare to an easy enough to be used by anyone OS. While I admire the Microsoft OS for all it can do, I can’t embrace its’ politics, motive, influence, cost, etc. Linux on the other hand, has delivered a flexibility and a liberty from vendor lock. Linux promotes competition and open file formats. Today I use Xubuntu 7.10 as my daily use OS and Wolvix. Xubuntu is Ubuntu with the Xfce destop and Wolvix is Slackware 11 based with the Xfce desktop. They came as live-CD’s, which is the greatest thing since sliced butter. They can be run on any compatible machine without installing. Can MS windows of any sort do that? Now I am exploring the use of Linux on a jump drive. Wolvix will let you build a new live-CD iso with the stuff you want in it. Can MS Windows of any sort do that? While some fear venturing away from the MS platform for various reasons, I have moved on to a wider more inclusive world. Mr. Gates and Mr. Jobs might never acknowledge Mr. Torvalds after all they grew up together and Mr. Torvalds is an outsider. What good can come from an outsider? I now have to laugh, are you still using Win/Mac?
Clind
Feb 5, 2008 at 4:00 pm
I kep using Win98 as long as I could but when I changed my hardware I had to switch to Win2k. It was more stable but much more slower than Win98… Switching of OS made me curious and I really wanted to learn more about how it works so I decided to try other OS s.
I downloaded BEOS But my hardware seemed to not compatible so I spoke about my experience and my wheel to learn more at the computing club of my high school and a friend advised me to get rid of BE OS (cause it was a dead OS, not developed anymore) and to try GNU/Linux and he invited me for 3 days to help me install and configure Gentoo on my machine. At that time (around year 2002-2003) I had an ATI video card a poor additional PCI->IDE controller and 2 screens, so We had hard time to make it work, and Gentoo is great but not the more simple GNU/Linux distro to use for a beginner.
At the beginning I was not using it much until i bought for 5€ a second hand GNU/Linux compatible PCI->IDE controller on Ebay, so I was finally able to access all my datas under GNU/Linux.
He advised me to start with the KDE environment because it was kind of look like Windows’ But soon I browsed the Gentoo software list (portage) and tried many many softwares, also tried Gnome and XFCE environment and I was so amazed that you could have so much choice building your system and your graphical environment, there was so much choices were I did not imagined I could have the choice from my Windows’ experience of computing.
As soon as I started to handle the system administration well I forgot about the windows boot and choose to use wine to run few windows software I still wanted to use while searching a way to replace it with free (as in free speech) software solution, and half a year later I erased my windows’ partition to regain space on my hard drive.
On the past 5 years I’ve been witnessing the improvement of Xorg, graphic drivers (radeon open source driver rox :P ) wich were pain at the beginning and I made a few people switch to GNU/Linux. I guess made many people curious about GNU/Linux (impressed few windows users with remote SSH control, software instillation and update simplicity, multi graphical session with several environments, system reliability, wine capacities and more recently, 3D accelerated desktops :P )
I tried Mandrake and Ubuntu on other machines but was not convinced, so i stick with Gentoo
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