diff --git a/src/site/notes/My journey to Linux.md b/src/site/notes/My journey to Linux.md deleted file mode 100644 index 39bd59c..0000000 --- a/src/site/notes/My journey to Linux.md +++ /dev/null @@ -1,37 +0,0 @@ ---- -{"dg-publish":true,"permalink":"/my-journey-to-linux/","hide":true,"tags":["draft"],"noteIcon":"","created":"2024-09-26T19:01:39.422-07:00","updated":"2024-10-03T12:09:42.373-07:00"} ---- - -[[Dashboard\|Dashboard]] | [[Garden Home\|Garden Home]] - -[I grew up in Southern California](/about/bio) in the 70s and 80s. When I was in elementary school, [Steve Jobs donated an Apple IIe to every elementary, junior and high school in California.](https://hackeducation.com/2015/02/25/kids-cant-wait-apple#:~:text=We%20realized%20that%20a%20whole,to%20every%20school%20in%20America.) My schools were recipients. In junior high, I took "computer literacy" as an elective. I learned what a "mouse" was in that class. - -This was the early days of consumer personal computers. The [IBM PC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer) had recently come out, so had the [Osborne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_1) (which was "portable"), the [Kaypro](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaypro#Kaypro_computers), the [Commodore 64](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64) and the [TRS-80](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80) . Computers were finally affordable to middle-class families and my dad was keen to get one. - -While Dad considered all of these brands, he did just what Mr. Jobs and Mr. Wozniak hoped we would do. He reasoned that since the kids were learning on Apple computers at school, that's what we should have at home. So, our family's first computer was an [*Apple IIe*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_IIe), followed in a few years by the [*Apple IIc*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_IIc) (Apple's version of a "portable" computer -- the "c" stands for "compact") and finally, the [*Apple IIgs*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_IIGS) in my senior year of high school. I even brought the *IIe* to college with me, despite the fact that all the cool kids were switching to [*Macintosh*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_(computer)) by then. - -Much of my junior and high school years were spent behind an Apple II-series computer. [Mavis Beacon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mavis_Beacon_Teaches_Typing) taught me to type. I learned [BASIC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applesoft_BASIC) by typing programs from a big spiral-bound book. I was a fan of [Infocom's](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mavis_Beacon_Teaches_Typing) text based adventure games like the [Zork Trilogy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zork) and [Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy_(computer_game)) (which also helped me develop my typing chops). I learned how to [notch a floppy disk to make it double-sided and writable](https://atariprojects.org/2019/06/28/make-floppy-disks-double-sided-5-10-mins/). I had a nerdy group of friends who called ourselves the *Infocommies*. We'd gather at each other's houses after school and trade games, often the latest Infocom title, by copying our notched floppies. The first "office suite" I ever used was [AppleWorks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppleWorks). In fact, I used AppleWorks(GS) all through college. - -My first actual *Mac* was a [Macintosh Color Classic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Color_Classic), which I bought with college graduation money. I followed that with an [LC 475](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Quadra_605) (also known as the Quadra 605, it bore the "pizza box" form factor). I took the LC 475 with me to graduate school. I explored this cool new thing called the [World Wide Web](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web) on it using a "browser" called [Mosaic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCSA_Mosaic). Finally, after graduate school, I bought my first laptop, a [PowerBook G3 Wallstreet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerBook_G3), marketed at the time as "the fastest laptop in the world." - -I began my post-college professional life with the PowerBook G3. It was a great machine for its day. But my professional world was a Windows world; specifically, a Microsoft Office world. While I had MSOffice on my PowerBook, at the time there was definitely a lot lost in translation when a Mac user and a PC user passed a Word doc back and forth. My having a Mac started to become more of a liability than an asset. - -As my issues with compatibility continued, my PowerBook started showing its age and would soon need to be replaced. Up 'till then, I'd always been an Apple Guy. I'd been using Apple products since around the time the [US Festival](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Festival) rolled through my hometown. I'd always thought "Windoze" was for squares. The OS was clunky and everything needed a [driver](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/drivers) in order to run properly. It wasn't Fun! - -But then, a friend of mine who worked for none other than IBM offered to lend me her employee discount toward a pretty sweet ***PC Multimedia Package*** with a tower, monitor, external speakers, and a CD-ROM(!). I couldn't buy a similarly appointed new Mac for that price. So around 2000, I reluctantly traded my Apple heritage for a friend's employee discount and bought an actual IBM PC. - -I owned a string of "PCs" after that. One thing I definitely appreciated about them is that their hardware is much more hackable than Macs. After I switched to PCs, many of my machines were custom builds (often made from spare parts I brought home from the office as the Windows machines there were upgraded). It wasn't so easy to scavenge Mac parts to cobble together a "new" machine; but using PC architecture, I could build home theater machines, servers for files and media, and my own personal "Frankenstein" machine that was stuffed with as many hard drives as its ports would support. PC parts are fast and cheap. The OS they typically ran on is bloated and clunky compared to a Mac but I began to see the utility of that trade-off. - -I particularly enjoyed building [home servers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_server) out of spare PC parts. I still do. My first builds used [Windows Home Server](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Home_Server). I think I built one for every member of my family. WHS was a solid server OS until MS introduced Windows Home Server 2011 and removed support of its Drive Extender functionality, a core service. - -In the early 2000s, I also started relying more heavily on [free and open-source software (FOSS)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open-source_software). I'd been using [BitTorrent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent) for a while to find "cracked" versions of Windows software. But that became a hassle, "crack codes" didn't always crack the code; you often had to download two or three versions of software before you found one that worked. Not to mention the less-than-legal aspect of it all. - -But then I'd discovered that there were open-source titles that did a decent enough job replacing their proprietary analogs. FOSS titles such as [OpenOffice](https://www.openoffice.org/) and [LibreOffice](https://www.libreoffice.org/) do an excellent job of replacing Microsoft Office. [GIMP](https://www.gimp.org/) and [Inkscape](https://inkscape.org/) are excellent replacements for PhotoShop and Illustrator, respectively. Document sharing had become much easier than it had been after I got out of grad school. So I'd been gradually replacing my proprietary software titles with FOSS ones, even on my Windows OS. - -I'd always been Linux-curious. I didn't know what a "distro" was at the time but I knew Linux was free. In 2009, I came across a blog post about this Linux "version" called [Ubuntu](https://ubuntu.com/). This was around [Hardy Heron](https://old-releases.ubuntu.com/releases/hardy/). At the time, I was also playing around with the free version of [VMware](https://www.vmware.com/products/desktop-hypervisor/workstation-and-fusion)'s virtualization software (I use [VirtualBox](https://www.virtualbox.org/) today), so I spun up a virtual machine with this new Ubuntu. - -It was fun! There *was* a bit of a learning curve. But Ubuntu's (2009) UI was similar enough to *both* Mac and Windows that I was able to find my way around. I liked that many of the FOSS titles I'd been using on Windows were defaults in Ubunbu. Soon enough, I learned what a [Linux distro](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions) was. And that some [*distros*](https://linuxmint.com/) are based on [*other distros*](https://ubuntu.com/). I created virtual machines for many of them. - -Around that time, I also came across the [Debian Linux](https://www.debian.org/) based home server OS, [Open Media Vault (OMV)](https://www.openmediavault.org/). As mentioned above, [the Borg was beginning to assimilate](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4OQJIw-PxQ) Windows Home Server into [something unrecognizable](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Home_Server_2011) so I was looking for a replacement. So I built a new server out of some parts I had in the bone pile and installed OMV on it. This was my **first official Linux machine***. - -It was great! \ No newline at end of file