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Old 08-01-2016, 01:47 PM   #1
jeremy
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How Did You Discover Linux?


The Official LQ Poll Series continues. This time we want to know: How Did You Discover Linux?

--jeremy
 
Old 08-01-2016, 01:59 PM   #2
suicidaleggroll
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My brother introduced me to it. Despite the dependency hell that was package installation in those days (RedHat 7 era), it ended up sticking.
 
Old 08-01-2016, 02:07 PM   #3
notKlaatu
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Find a tip on an os x forum on how to play tetris "in the terminal" → discover emacs → read GPL in /usr/share/doc/emacs → convert to Linux the next morning.
 
Old 08-01-2016, 02:10 PM   #4
rongrimes
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I was a product manger of a Unix communication product, and my tester asked if he wanted me to test the product on Linux. This was back in 1995...
/Ron
 
Old 08-01-2016, 02:34 PM   #5
Freaksta
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Read about it somewhere on the internet, downloaded Slackware Linux via Zipslack w/ UMSDOS.
 
Old 08-01-2016, 02:42 PM   #6
drf99
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It was Win ME

After a few too many blue screens of death with Windows ME, I sent off for a mail-order linux CD and haven't looked back.
A notebook of mine got trapped in the Win10 upgrade, but when it was insisting on a birthdate, it was definitely time to remove it. While I have a couple esoteric windows applications I use on that notebook periodically, in reality Linux is where the work is done.

Dave
 
Old 08-01-2016, 02:49 PM   #7
beachboy2
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The same way that a lot of people discovered it, via malware on Windows and regular daily truckloads of spam on email, all of which disappeared as soon as I switched to Linux (openSUSE initially).

I was fortunate to have a friend living nearby who used Linux and he gave me a helping hand to learn in the early stages.
 
Old 08-01-2016, 02:51 PM   #8
tarazed
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We switched from VAX/VMS to Unix and Solaris at work and my line manager, seeing how much I hated Windows on PCs asked if I had tried Linux. Researched it and installed RedHat in 1996 and never looked back -> Mandrake 7.2 -> Mandriva -> Mageia. Now enrolled as a QA tester for Mageia.
 
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Old 08-01-2016, 02:54 PM   #9
Akflash
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Smile First linux

I bought my first 7.2 Mandriva on E-bay in the 90's.
 
Old 08-01-2016, 02:59 PM   #10
NeilM
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Wanted to have a server and tried Red Hat first 15 years ago.
 
Old 08-01-2016, 03:02 PM   #11
astrogeek
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I flew through the air, saw a great light, heard a voice from the sky, and had a vision that changed my life forever!

Well, almost like that... really!

Late 1994, early 1995 I took on a project to provide engineering support for a research project. So I packed my bags, jumped on a plane and flew through the air to the site.

At the time I was still dragging around a 386-SX monochrome notebook with serial port and floppy but no network capability (those were the days!). When I arrived on site I found myself among some really smart, really nice people doing some really neat things - all networked and mostly Unix'd!

Now, I had broad computer experience, including Unix, going back to the 1970's. So the technology was not totally unfamiliar. But the culture and work environment complemented by the pervasive usefulness of Unix-on-a-PC was new to me, and very exciting!

I decided it was time I upgraded so I found a Computer Shopper, decided on new laptop and had it FedExed to my hotel room.

By the time it arrived two days later, I was already immersed in my work, and the Unix-on-a-PC culture via Lynx-OS, a real-time Unix-like OS used at the core of this project. But I had also been introduced to something called "GNU" and a free Unix-like OS called "Linux" which was used by most of these smart people on their own laptops and lab computers!

With a lot of enthusiasm and support by others at the site, and off-hours at the local hotel, within about a week my brand new Pentium laptop had been wiped clean of Window$-{3.1/95} and was doing useful work with GNU/Linux!

(The project was a radio telescope with a unique, indirect connection to the Hubble Space Telescope, hence the great light and voice from the sky! It was literally a life changing encounter, and the start of my own GNU/Linux adventure.)

Last edited by astrogeek; 08-01-2016 at 03:03 PM.
 
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Old 08-01-2016, 03:13 PM   #12
M-Files
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how did you ( I ) discover Linux?

How Did You Discover Linux?

I originally was hired at Intel as an expert in win 3.51 installs and Intel hired me to make crash test dummy’s out of Windows, so they could create a crash resistant processor: P-6 Pentium pro - I was taught Linux - red hat 4.1 from the engineers to help create reliable system as a comparison that was very crash resistant... ( I could install any OS )
Jones farm, Hillsboro, OR., Microprocessor design and compatibility test lab.
Eventually I came to the conclusion based on total evidence... ( 1995 ish ) Windows was both inferior and very crash worthy... it was easy.
Linux was better and I never went back personally - I have installed Linux hundreds of times back in the days were it was a little tricky to do so on alpha and beta hardware... I use today several Debian SID based distros. Not commercially doing it, but for our company’s computer systems... and just because it is great.
http://www.jenalabs.com/computers/linux.html
 
Old 08-01-2016, 03:15 PM   #13
MensaWater
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I was a long time UNIX admin on many variants. Around 1995 we got the idea of using Linux workstations instead of Windows (3.11 for work groups in those days). At that point Caldera Linux was around and they had licensed WABI from Sun for it so we were able to use Caldera Linux workstations for most our UNIX access and the WABI with Windows 3.11 installed for the things that our corporation insisted needed to be Windows.

Later in 2003 while working at Cisco they started porting their ERP application systems from UNIX (HP-UX) to early RHEL (1.x I think). Also we used it for a Faxserver at the time. On leaving them and coming to my current job in 2004 it was mostly UNIX but we had some stuff on RedHat 7.3, RedHat 9 (not RHEL - original RedHat) and BSD. As time went by we would install anything that didn't spec UNIX on Linux (RHEL 2.x and above) then later migrated our application tier off UNIX to Linux (RHEL4 and above) and in 2013 migrated our large database tier systems as well and quit using UNIX for all but our payroll environment. Payroll recently migrated to a vendor system so we now do only Linux. Also we had some test/workstations using CentOS. We also have a newer environment running CoreOS with docker containers based on various distros such as Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS etc.... Most recently we're building a new environment using CouchBase on CentOS7. At this point we don't have any actively used UNIX any longer.

Of course none of that mentions the various appliances we use that all have embedded Linux on them or VMWare which of course was originally derived from RedHat.
 
Old 08-01-2016, 03:19 PM   #14
Ook
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I think it was a Comdex show in Las Vegas in the late 1990s. I developed and maintained some software for the International Business Center at the time, and while roaming around the convention I came across some rather hairy scary looking individuals representing some Linux distro, not sure which. And I remember thinking that their appearance was probably doing Linux more harm than good, they really were a bit off of the beaten path. Maybe it was intentional?

I ended up taking a CD, as they were giving them out at the time, but I don't know if I ever installed it. My fist serious jump into Linux came a year or two later, and It was Slackware version 7 I think. I still have the CD somewhere.

Shortly afterwards I moved my Opposing Force servers from Windows 2000 to Slackware, and to this day I still run the worlds oldest Opposing Force servers on Slackware. I have another box that runs 8 minecraft servers, and I'm probably going to move Ark to it. Also Slackware.

I've used about a dozen distros since, Ubuntu was the worst, Debian was fair, Plop is a good live CD, Suse annoyed be because of their outdated packages, but I always came back to Slackware. Today I run all of my workstations in my house on Slackware (Windows is not allowed in my house, my entire family uses Slackware), I run a dozen web and application servers, I use it as a dev machine, and I also use it for gaming. Today it's Slackware all the way.
 
Old 08-01-2016, 03:28 PM   #15
astrogeek
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ook View Post
Windows is not allowed in my house, my entire family uses Slackware... Today it's Slackware all the way.
HAHA! Same here! FLOSS - Family Linux on Strictly Slackware!
 
  


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