I’ve been involved with Linux and open source software for almost twenty years now. I’m writing this post using a Linux laptop from System76. I’ve been writing a lot of thought pieces lately which come my heart. Linux and open source is also from my heart.
I was introduced to Linux around 1997. I bought a book with a CD in it and tried to install on an older 386 PC. I could only get a command prompt. A year later I bought Red Hat 6.1. I installed it on an HP Vectra that had been upgraded to 233 MMX with a Cyrix chip. I got the GUI and it ran well. A couple of years later I built my first Linux server which was for web filtering using Squid, SquidGuard and later Dansguardian. One thing led to another and soon I built a web server, a network attached storage and began to try it on older laptops that were in sitting in closets where I worked.
I started distro hopping around then too. I moved from Red Hat to Suse to Mandrake and then back to Red Hat and later Fedora. I 2005 while on a trip to meet with K12 LTSP team in Portland, Oregon I got introduced to Ubuntu. We had been invited to the PLUG (Portland Linux User Group) and they were handing out Ubuntu 5.04 CDs. I took it home and installed it on a laptop I had been using. I didn’t like it at first but it did support the wireless card I had in the laptop.
Over the years I’ve run many different Linux distributions. I’ve run Centos, Red Hat, Fedora and Ubuntu on file servers and desktops. In the past six years I’ve been toying with the Raspberry Pi and Raspbian.
There are lots of great open source applications that I use everyday. WordPress is one of them. It’s my favorite blogging platform. I use GnuCash. I used to use a proprietary solution until I made the switch four years ago. I’ve learned Python in the past five years and although I’m just a beginner I’m keen to learn more and share with others.
Are you a Linux user? Would you like to learn? Let me know in the comments.