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What made you think of using *Nix?

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cloudstrife:
Well 6 or so years ago i had a "career day" at school where we go follow someone around at their job.  Of course being the geek i was, i spent the day with a computer programmer.  He used Solaris - and when i asked him what it was, he was like "yeah u may have heard of linux...." turns out my dad had a copy of slack for some unknown reason and had never used it.  So of course i went right home and installed it.  the rest, as they say, is history.

dishawjp:
My first exposure to *nix was in about 1990 when I was given an account on a MicroVAX running Ultrix.  Not too bad back then.  Then we went to SunOS5 which to me, as a user, didn't seem to be a whole lot different.  I had the Sun account until just about a year ago, but went through some time using VMS, and eventually OpenVMS on an AlphaVAX.  I have to admit, I am kind of fond of VMS even today.

About a year ago, we got a new IT director who felt that Windows was the only way to go and all the real stuff got replaced with Win2k servers and Novell.  I could go on about the problems with that setup (which continues to this day), but when a friend of mine offered me an account on his Red Hat Linux server, I jumped at it.  That was probably about 6 months ago or so.  It was like coming home again, and I ended up copying all my network files to that server and more or less abandoning the ones provided by my employer.  I use those for backup purposes and not much else.

Last month I finally put my first Linux desktop box together.  There's a big difference between just using a *nix account and actually setting up and configuring your own computer.  I used to think I knew a bit of Unix, but quickly found that I knew some basic commands, some vi, and not a whole lot else.  Without this group, I'd probably still be trying to get my hd partitions set up :)

Now, although I'll probably keep my Win98 home computer as is, I do most stuff at home on my Linux desktop. I hope to be buying a much better machine and upgrading to RH 8 in another few weeks and may eventually even see about putting a Linux box in my office after I get a bit more experienced with it and make sure that OpenOffice can support all my office needs.  I already know that it can do everything else I need.

Although my resume is nothing like void main's, I do a lot with computers at work. I use computers to control the physical plant of the college I work at.  The server is a WinNT4 box that communicates with 25 MBC's in the field.  They use Z8 chips to do their things.  The language used is PPCL, which is a Basic-like programming language.  I (and my students) write the PPCL and put a GUI front end on the command line interface so that even Windroids can pretend to use the system.  I also use the system to "harvest" data from the system that gets dumped into spreadsheets and databases to assist in determining fuel costs, system efficiencies and stuff like that.  Oh, I have my students turn a lot of the data into pretty little charts and graphs for those that like that stuff too.

Until recently, I also maintained the department's web page.  I did that as long as I could telnet into my www directory, use vi to write HTML, and put up the web page.  I enjoyed that, and I felt that my students learned something from it.  Now we're supposed to use Dreamweaver or some such nonsense, and the pages are about a year out of date. I'm too old and stupid to learn that crap.

Computers have been a part of my job, albeit a small part, since the mid-80's.  Unix first came into the picture over 10 years ago, and with any luck at all, Linux will make it fun again. Windows sure managed to squeeze the joy out of it.

Jim

Doctor V:
Actually my first exposure to UNIX was in a computer sci class.  On the first couple days the prof gave us lectures, and started describing UNIX.  At the end of class he asked us 'Do you understand why we will be using UNIX instead of DOS?'.  I didn't really understand, but I didn't ask a question.  All classwork was done on UNIX (Solaris), and all the university servers were also UNIX.  The comps in the non CPS labs were about half mac and half win3.1.

V

TheQuirk:
Around 1998, I was really into "on-line communities." Being not the most popular person around (it was the same time I moved into Houston. . .), I spent a lot of time on the computer, making various "on-line friends." One day, a met a guy that went by "haunted" in my starcraft clan (back then, I even played games, heh. . .) He was some college student. The clan, at the time, was becoming big and had a lot of fan submited art work. To upload all of it, "haunted" built an old computer that served as a server (I think it had 3gb of HD space, a p75 proc. . .) to upload all of that crap. Being the only guy that was intrested in it, he patoinetly explained everything to me. He told me a few stuff on linux, and gave me a telnet (not ssh) account. I logged in, and didn't really know what was happening - but I did mess around with it a lot. After a few hours of messing with commands like "top", I asked him how to get this crazy ass "linux." He pateintly explained to me I can either download it buy it - I was on 56k, so I bought it on-line. When I asked him what distro, he talked about Mandrake, Red-Hat and Caldera - he was running Caldera eServer. I narrowed it down to Caldera and Mandrake, and at the end, I bought Caldera for various reasons (He was running it, webmin, and the fact that it got rave reviews and a pac-man game at the installation   .) It was actually pretty odd - it didn't even have 1.x.x kernel or kde 1.x.x yet! Anyway, the rest is history!

pkd_lives:
I have been around computers as long as I can remember. Used Orics and Sinclairs and Amstrads. On all of them I had the ability to program, and play around. Then I worked with a UNIX based system, and it was fast and stable (Windows today still can't do well the database stuff that system did then).

Then I used DOS and and Windows, I spent years missing those old systems, then finally snapped after having to use wizard oriented crap. I tell the OS what to do. If you use wizards you do not know what you are doing. And I am back in the *nix fold and will never ever go back on a personal level, and if certain plans come to fruition then I will soon be working *nix on a professional level.

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