I have been called a linuxsnob... by several people.
At first, I was unsure of what to think, but as time went on, and my sense
of humor kicked in, I find myself relatively at peace with the idea.
If I'm going to write something on a computer,
I use Vi, pine, or a quick html generator. Presently I'm
writing this on Netscape 6 for linux, I just put it on recently,
and the previous versions of netscape composer for linux were prohibitively
buggy. So I'll consider this a test of netscape's ability to allow me
to type, without mucking around with too much html.
I began this journey, as many people have,
working with the mainstream products that were available at the
time. When I first became interested in computers, the
Apple //+ was the best you could get for a hobby / home computer.
( Does apple still make computers?? Oh, yeah, I almost forgot,
yellowdog
will run on one! ) As you might expect, I didn't
really see myself going anywhere with my substantial wealth of information
on the apple 2, and I shied away from computers for years...
So along about the time of the 486dx chip,
I started getting back into the fray, I learned all about MSDOS v5
& 6. I learned windows 3.1. Then I learned Netware.
Win 95, & NT started creeping up.
Windows was still kinda fun, I knew how to get it to
do what I needed it to do.
And it was about then that I got my first look at a real
OS, Unix. I was working in a test lab, I called it an amusement
park for geeks!
Wan connectivity to 2 mainframes, 6 or 8 Unix hosts, 8 or so Compaq
servers for NT & Novell boxes, and a dozen or so workstations.
Network quake anyone??
About a year into that job, I found out about
Linux. I was missing something in the gui world. I used to write
basic & hack hex code back in the days of my apple //+.
I used to write batch files for my dos / win 3.1 systems.(weak, I know!)
I realized that unless I went out and bought something from M$,
I wasn't going to do anything that I wanted to do on my own computer.
I went out and bought a copy of Redhat, as soon as I could.
Sliced off part of a hard disk for the install & made my first
dual boot system ( Win95 / Redhat 5.2) since win 3.1 / 95, on
my 486, f-ugly as that was!
Spent more on manuals than I did on the OS, but I got rolling.
Shell programming ! tcl ! Perl ! python ! C! shit! I had so
many options I didn't know where to start!
As I started to get used to the keyboard again, I found
myself becoming more frustrated when I was using windows. Find this
properties page, click on this button... But wait a sec, That properties
page is suddenly missing, Opps! need to reinstall the Fscking service pack
AGAIN. Click, Reboot, click, click. Reboot reboot. You
get the picture.
So the number of linux installations I had grew, I put
one in at work, and suddenly somebody I worked with wanted to use it as
a dev system for a web page he was making. No Prob, setup apache.
away it goes. FTP services on that system became a regular part of
the setup process for the test lab. It took a while, but it got to
the point where I was using Linux as much as I was windows.
Then, I did it. I thought about the things
that I use my PC's for. Email, Instant messaging,
web browsing, word processing, games. The only reason I
had to keep windows was for the games I'd bought that only ran under
windows. Notably Battlezone, BZ II, Half-Life, and one or two others
that didn't have decent linux ports.
So I made the cut-over. I quit using windows except
for the few games that I needed windows for.
Since then, I've found
loki. They have made a terrific installation for Unreal Tournament
and ports for Descent 3, and a bunch of other 3D / high graphics
games. There's some other folks out there too, like
linuxgames that do good work. I applaud them all.
But I digress.
About this time, I was getting bored outta my skull with
the windows support in the test lab, & I was getting pretty handy troubleshooting
3 tier application problems in Unix. So I started looking for a different
job. I'd gotten a pretty good reference from some of the Unix support
guys that were taking care of the systems in the testing environment, and
with a little patience, and a lot of sweat, I got myself a job as a Unix
Administrator.
I continue to use Linux as my primary OS on the Intel platform,
and seeing as I've met several people who I'd classify as "Solaris Snobs"
( I'm not certain that they have the sense of humor for it ) I hereby proclaim
myself
"The LinuxSnob"
Honestly, I'm not sure if it was my wife, or my brother who first
started calling me a LinuxSnob, but it has kinda stuck.
So if you have windows questions, please feel free to e-mail them
to "devnull"
Or you could send me an e-mail to
snob If you think that I can help you with one of my
*nix talents.
This brings us about up to date. I'm still a
Unix admin, and that currently includes supporting HP, IBM, Sun &
Linux Intel systems. I'm running Linux on my systems here, except
when I wanna play BZ. and I NEVER buy any accessories for my PC without checking
the status of the hardware in linux.
