[NBLUG/talk] 10 year anniversary Linux thread

Mark Janes 707mjanes at comcast.net
Sat Jun 7 10:27:02 PDT 2008


Hello,
 
Ten years ago I was still in the Dark Ages of M$, all but unaware that
any viable alternatives existed. My first attempt at installing and
running Linux (a version of Caldera, I believe) did result in a slightly
usable KDE desktop but few peripherals worked. A year later I came
across a SuSE 7.3 Professional  Edition at Best Buy, and with that and
some online research, had a dual-booting machine which was somewhat
usable booted into Linux. Around 2000 (the year), I read somewhere that
Microsoft was contributing to the Bush campaign in the belief that a
Bush White House would be less likely to pursue antitrust action against
them. I knew then that Bush would be a bad idea and I decided at that
time to totally kick Microsoft off my computer. That fall I enrolled in
the "Introduction to UNIX" course at SRJC, which was taught by Mark
Street; by the end of the course I had switched over totally to Linux
(and made friends with the command line, one I still maintain ;-)  ). At
first getting certain files (or web pages) to open or peripherals to
work was a struggle, but over time I was able to get more peripherals to
work and today I can open nearly any file I care to open. Further, with
broadband access my software costs are now zero as everything I need is
free for the download, and my computers remain functionally useful much
longer- I believe that running Linux adds at least two or three years to
a computer's useful lifetime. Finally, it's been awesome watching Linux
evolve from almost a hobby alternative OS to one which is at least
nearly a match for ease of installation and use, and is being adopted by
major corporations and governments around the world, as its proprietary
competition, and yet still remain free for the download. I look forward
to even more in the future.  :-)

Mark Janes

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