How did you switch to linux? (Page 3 of 4)

+1 and that won't change the fact, that the user is still using Squeeze, the base of #!, with the "outdated" software. So, this argument is somehow not clear.

Never had a computer, then was going to get one, needed to learn everything.
Thought I might as well learn Linux rather than Windows.
Bought separate hardware that was going to be compatible with Linux.
Tried liveCDs: Ubuntu, Mint, openSUSE, PClinuxOS, Fedora.
openSUSE never ran on my system, Ubuntu never appealed, such little thing like lack of su was sudoing my head in. Gnome appeared counterintuitive, having used windows before. Brown.. need I say more.
Chose Fedora KDE, had issues with various things, got kicked from Fedora's forums by one humourless mod.
Switched to Mandriva KDE 2007 until 2010.2
Didn't wanna update to 2011, lookng for new distros
Tried Debian XFCE, liked it a lot
Tried Crunchbang, liked it even better.
Now, trying to get everything to work in #!, remaining issues:
Veetle
Sopcast
Flash playback

I switched to Linux after gaining understanding using the Cromwell kernel and installing it on numerous devices; i.e., mainly Xboxes. After learning there was a fully modifiable OS that wasn't encumbered by patents, I could hack it, and it was designed for power users? I was in. I essentially started playing around with it after first installing it to my Xbox in
2004-'05.
Since I was switching to it from XP I first chose Fedora because I just ended up learning about yum package management first, then I stuck with that for a year or two.
At some point I was playing around with the Linux kernel on my iPod video, but I think that started maybe '05.
I've since chosen FreeBSD as a favorite OS, and I love Debian/ #!.
I like to distrohop around from time to time, but my main netbook is #!,
and my new desktop will be FreeBSD/ #!

I bumped into linux when I was at college; I was using Win 3 and was quite comfortable with it. However, one of my subjects was based on Red Hat so I was kinda forced to learn it. Initially it scared me but the more I used it the more I got comfortable with it. After college, I went back to Windoze on my main machine because I was doing a lot of music production/recording. I had another older pc lying around on which I installed SUSE linux. I never really did any 'work' on the linux box; I mainly used it to better my understanding of linux. At this time I never really knew about GNU or RMS or Open Source/FOSS etc.
Fast forward a few years and I was now using Win2K on my main machine and I'd experimented with a few more linux distro's on my secondary machine. It was around this time that I starting becoming aware of the whole free software movement thing and I realized that there was a better way. After reading a particular article on RMS, I found myself agreeing with everything he had to say so I decided it was time to get rid of MS completely and forge ahead using only linux and open source.

At work however, I was still forced to go the way of the buffalo and use Windoze even though it went against everything I believe in. I discovered that 3 of my fellow colleagues were also linux users at home and so together we took a stand and refused to use Windoze any longer. We made an appointment to see the head of IT and when he insisted that we could not use linux at work, we made an appointment to see the director of the company. After a long song and dance, we eventually emerged from that meeting victorious; we were given the go ahead to use linux as long as it did not pose any security threats to the network and as long as linux did not hinder us in any way to do our job.

I've not looked back...

In 1992, I turned 16, and for the next two years, I had 5 hours of what was called "informatics" per week at school. We learned DOS and batch scripts, WordPerfect, Lotus 123 (writing formulas), dBase (db normalization and SQL basically), some QBasic, an ancient yet powerful and immensely complete (and complex) accountancy app, and some oldschool networking. The machines had Windows 3.1 on them, but we weren't allowed to touch it, because, quote teacher, "that's for the idiots who can't use a keyboard and can't remember commands".

Later at university, I had access to computers running some Linux shell where you could check emails, start the most basic word processing software I've ever seen, check internet in a text browser, and chat on IRC. All in command line. Without the screen command.

A couple of years passed, and I had to learn how to work with Windows 98, because all the clients at uni had migrated to it. I hadn't ever touched Windows or taken GUI OSs seriously. I kept on going back to the command line and people were looking at me as if I was too oldschool for my own good. However, I got this book about Windows 98 that really went into the details and more advanced stuff of the OS and I quickly found my way around it because I finally understood what you could do with it and how it worked. (Book was called "Windows 98 System Files" or something. Other books only told you the basics, and if you need to get the basics of a graphical OS from a book, you're obviously a moron that cannot read or think logically.)

Trying out all kinds of stuff in Win98, I totally messed up my computer and learned tons thanks to that.

I don't know why, but I wanted to know more about Operating Systems and get to know the other ones, so I got a second-hand book on Red Hat (which of course came with a CD) and totally messed up my computer and learned tons thanks to that. I also became a moron that couldn't read or think logically, because I really needed the book to tell me about the basics of this graphical OS

Couple of years later again, and I started teaching at a school and because of my background (it was 2000 and I apparently was the one that knew most about computers, but I was far from a real sysadmin in my head, I was a language teacher ffs), they made me their network admin/sysadmin too. God knows why. Messed up their Linux servers a couple of times and learned tons again. All the student computers ran Windows 2000. I ended up installing Windows 2000 Server to manage those (users, installation), but all the other servers still ran on Linux.

Later, I started working at a game dev as a games producer, and I've been doing that for the last 8 years. We develop for Windows and XBOX. So at work, I'm in Windows all the time, but I still dabble in Linux. Thanks to #! I even "integrated" Linux into my working process for the first time.

The way this all grew, I never really was anti-Windows or pro-Linux. I never "switched" to Linux. I see both Windows and Linux as possibilities. At home, I'm either on Windows OR on Linux, depends on what I want to do. Obviously, I'm a gamer, and even though Wine is amazing, I still install Windows on all my computers, for gaming. If I weren't so interested in the latest games though, I would probably just install #! (or whatever) on everything

Last edited by ForkTong (2012-04-24 10:19:29)

I switched to GNU/Linux after Apple's business model went from just "evil" to "incredibly fucking stupid and evil". Pardon my language. I haven't looked back since.

Out of necessity because I SERIOUSLY needed to ditch Windows 98.

My dA. http://dfx4509b.deviantart.com/

Artistic, techie Otaku, and that ain't changing any time soon!

Enjoy my newline-free story (paragraphs are for pussys):
Well, it was a long process in my case. It kind of started as an experiment 4 years ago. I just had discovered Ubuntu and wanted to find out what the fu** that is. I installed it and... the w-lan did not work. I tried and tried but failed when I had to compile the driver myself (I was around 13 years old then). I thought: "Fuck this shit" and kept using Windows. When I was finished with playing with batch and VBS and started using serious programming/scripting/markup languages like Java (my favorite), php and html/css/javascript I gave it another try and succeeded. "Well", I thought: "It works. Let's reboot into windows.". Another year passed and guess what: Fucking Windows destroyed himself. That was when I gave Linux another serious consideration (Because: "Why not get a system that I actually can modify to my liking now that I have the skills"). I started dualbooting a lot and after another year I had migrated all my programming-stuff to Ubuntu. Still, once a month I was booting Windows to do some gaming. I kept it like that for a while (Except I switched to #! to feel a bit more 1337). A year ago I realized all of the sudden that I hadn't booted into Windows for ages and soon after (dunno when exactly) my entire disk was just one big encrypted mess of an arch-linux-thingy. (During all that time I switched from an old 733Mhz PC to a laptop with 2x2.1ghz to my current thingy 4x3,2ghz i5 and shit).
That's how I switched to Linux to satisfy my ever-growing geeky wants.

Lonely smiley to make this post less monotonous:

Edit: Whee! 200th post!

Last edited by lain (2012-05-01 20:08:08)

Installed Mandrake back in 1998. My university used Unix machines for everything, made sense to have a similar environment at home. Carried on using Mandrake through its change to Mandriva. Switched to Ubuntu to give it a spin, quite liked Deb packaging, felt a little more robust that RPM (at the time). Grew weary of Ubuntu's "user friendliness", so switched to Debian. Got frustrated with Debian's release schedule, so Ummed and ahhed over a distro switch. tried Miont for a while but it was too "ubuntu-ey". So I switched to Arch and built up my system from virtually nothing. Further info on that particular journey here: http://ostracised.triplesix.co.uk

My dad had a Ubuntu Linux live cd, I stuck it in my computer's disk drive, stuff happened. I looked a ton of stuff up, learned a bit. Discovered Linux Mint after it's Debian edition release, eventully install it, screw stuff up after a while, heard about crunchbang and I'm like "I've always wanted to try Openbox!" So I try it, stayed with it for a while, modified it a bit, changed to Scrotwm, liked it even better then Openbox. A bit later I get a bit curious about BSD, then I half switched to OpenBSD. (Still use crunchbang on some of my machines.

It's pretty much the story of how I've made the trip from Windows to Linux to OpenBSD in the short span of two and a half years, it's been a short but long trip, but I've learned so much along the way.