Evolution of a Linux User

I don’t consider myself anything more than a Linux user. As such, I am not much different from many others. I have been around personal computers since its early days, so in that sense I am a bit of warrior. This is a personal account of how I came to use Linux.

Warning: this is long and I am long winded, if not a little long in the tooth.

My first experience with a personal computer was an Apple II in the early 80’s. I lived in Western Canada and the personal computer migrated up the Pacific Coast quickly. As an educator, I bought Apple IIs when they first came on the market for educational purposes. The Apple II also became the first computer that I personally owned. My whole set up including computer and printer cost me over $2000. It was a huge investment at the time, but this was before kids and we had money to spend. I am amazed at what that kind of money would buy today. Of course, I don’t have that kind of money to burn anymore.

We moved to eastern Canada in 1984. There were no Apples to be found. Commodore PETs with tape drives were in use in schools. I took my first computer course to familiarize myself with the PET which was rapidly replaced by the Commodore 64. I started attending an Apple user’s group in a nearby larger city. I had the best of both worlds it seemed. I used C-64s by day and an Apple II at night.

When Apple refused to support the Apple II, shortly after the Macintosh came out, I felt betrayed. As far as I was concerned, my much modified Apple II still had plenty of life still left in it. Steve Jobs was not my favorite person at the time. He still isn’t. Bill Gates emerged on the scene as a brash young hacker who was trying to sell an OS to IBM called DOS. I followed his career which seemed to skyrocket.

I watched Jobs stumble and Apple lose its shine as the colorless Mac was passed over in favor of cheaper colorful PCs, Commodores, and Amigas. When Jobs moved out I rejoiced. I never warmed to the Mac, although I trained on them. I liked what Macs were doing. They were always leading edge. I remember when the mouse was introduced and hyperstacks were all the rage in education.

Schools abandoned the aging C-64 and moved to either UNIX or DOS. UNIX was the provincial standard, but DOS had momentum on its side. My board adopted DOS, so I got to play with DOS. I still had my Apple II at home and was still attending a user’s group. I was also very active on the local bulletin board scene. My first modem opened up the world to me. This was before there was a world wide web.

I was active on many levels in the educational computer world. One of the things that this gave me was ground floor connection to the Internet which was still text based. We used Links, Kermit and other old protocols. Later when the world wide web began, I was one of the first to be connected. I thought that I had died and gone to Heaven. Even dial-up was great, then since it was all we had.

I retired my Apple computer. I still have it in the basement along with my Apple Imagewriter. My first PC was an IBM with Windows 3.1 installed. Windows was just new then. I did not like it much and experimented with other OSes for years, running now defunct OSes, including OS2 Warp. I even experimented with dual booting early on. I installed OSes on an almost daily basis. I crashed my system more times than I can count. I learned the inner workings of Windows 3.1, to be followed by Windows for Workgroups, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 98 SE, Windows ME and Windows XP. I tried NT and Windows 2000 just for fun.

I began troubleshooting other people’s computers and became the computer administrator for my school. I was still active on various levels serving on committees and having a say in buying computers. I also become somewhat a rebel which is deeply ingrained in my nature but it has got me into much trouble over the years.

When my school was brand new we were given a lab of IBM 286s which was great because we were among the first to get a lab. As new schools were built they were given 386s and then 486s. While this was happening we still had 286s and the lab went from showcase to embarrassment. I had some connections in companies that were upgrading to 486s and so they offered my their cast off 386s. I jumped at the chance. Over about a week, I took out the network cards and installed them into the 286s. I then sent the 286s back to board office. I did all of this with the permission of the principal.

Well, I never expected what happened next. The word got out of what I had done and the board was embarrassed. I didn’t really care. The kids were proud of our new lab and that was all that mattered to me. I was called to the principal’s office and board personnel told me in no uncertain terms that I had overstepped my authority. The network cards were board property and I had no business removing them and installing them in unapproved equipment.

A year later we were given a new lab of 486s and my “unapproved” computers were put on a pallet and carted away. I was ostracized for awhile by board higher ups, but technicians and I got along great!

I was now on my second PC by now. My 386 was taken apart and modified so much that it had served its purpose. I bought a new PC that came with XP which was just new out. I can safely say that I hated XP from the start. It was much less forgiving that Windows 95 had been and I did not particularly like Windows 95. The brunt of my hatred seemed to fall on the registry which I learned to edit and fix as it inevitably became corrupted as a result of my tinkering.

When my son started playing with Linux, I was already thinking in that direction. I was considering using Caldera’s Open Linux, in the late 90’s, but got sidetracked (easy for me to do). My son was using Gentoo, but told me a better place to start would be with Mandrake. I began using Mandrake sometime around 2000. It was version 7 point something. I used it for about two years. I switched to Fedora when it first came out, again at the instigation of my son. I used it for awhile, but it became obvious to me that I and RPMs did not get along.

I began to experiment with Debian. I also tried Xandros, because it was from Corel and I was a big Corel Draw user, and Lindows, just because they were taking on Microsoft, early on. I was an early adopter of broadband and so I began to collect distros. I still have many of the early ones in a large box in the back room. I have dozens of spindles of CDs. Having come from the Windows world, I was used to paying for sofware and so I had no problem with paying Mandrake an annual subscription of nearly $100 to use their repositories and get support. Now that seems like obscene and absurd. I did the same thing for copies of Xandros and Lindows.

In the early days, I either dual booted or installed Linux on an older machine. My wife and kids used Windows so we could never give up on Windows totally, although I was sorely tempted.

My first attempt at getting Windows to work in Linux was using Win4Lin. My need for this was based around my photography. As an educator, I can use any ministry licensed software for free. Corel products were readily available, but only for Windows. I used Windows less and less, but there were some products that I used and needed. I paid for Win4Lin and used it, but it never met my needs.

I knew that I would give up Windows entirely when I first used MEPIS, which was one of the new Debian distros that I tried. It worked and did everything that I wanted. I used it solidly until my son was experimenting with a brand new distro called Ubuntu. I thought that it was cool and tried it. My first impressions were positive, but I preferred MEPIS. One of the things that I preferred was separate user and root accounts with separate passwords. Also MEPIS, set up things the way I liked them without any configuration. They seemed to be tuned into the way I did things.

When MEPIS switched to an Ubuntu base, that seemed good. I could run MEPIS, but still use Ubuntu repositories, except things did not turn out that way. MEPIS began to misbehave, so I bit the bullet and switched to Ubuntu. When MEPIS switched back to Debian, I tried it, but it wasn’t the same experience. I was solidly an Ubuntu user by then.

I run Ubuntu on my main computer. It does everything I want. I works perfectly and I seldom have problems. If I do, I can usually troubleshoot it easily because the community is so large. I like to try other distros and am excited by all of the choice. I keep several partitions on my hard drive to try out distros and sometimes I go the route of using a VM, such as Virtual Box or VM Server.

Linux has been very good to me. I try to give something back, by being involved on forums and through this blog. My story is not unique. There are millions of satisfied Linux users. Most use Ubuntu, but many others choose a lesser known distro. Linux has just about something for everyone.

When I used Windows, I constantly felt left behind. The OS aged and so did my equipment. In time Windows began to run slowly and look dated. Since I have switched to Linux, that is never the case. Things are never dull. I can try any number of distros and tailor the OS to meet my needs. I feel the same excitement with Linux that got me using computers in the first place, now over two and a half decades ago.

For those of you who have endured to the end, you have my sincere appreciation and congratulations for your patience and endurance.

If you want to find more about Linux, go to distrowatch.org and see the list of some of the many distros. If you want to find out about Ubuntu in particular, go to ubuntu.com or kubuntu.com (for the KDE version). If you want to use one of the really good small distros, try Simply MEPIS at mepis.org. Linux is all about choice and there is lots of it. It is a computer enthusiast’s dream come true and one of the best kept secrets in the world.