Introduction.
Please allow me to share my opinion again ;-)
What bugs me, is the insulting nonsense our Microsoft funded Astroturfers claim: "Linux makes you stupid" and such.
I hope you don't consider this arrogant or narcissist like, because I can only speak for myself and it is _only mine_ opinion.
The only reason I write this message, is because _I am_ proof of the fact that these ignorant colatrolls are wrong!
This will probably become a huge message, so in case you are not interested to read, why Free Software is such a great thing and why it's the best choice, simply ignore this one.
In the beginning.
I passed high school, because my parents wanted me to, not because I was interested at all. I was a very lazy and complete ignorant student. In fact I was educated (sort of) as a kook.
Being such a low educated student, of course I had a lame job, the "coffee bitch" at a local public social services foundation.
However, in 1986 Personal Computers where introduced at my work, connected to a Novell Network file- and print server.
Somehow, I got very exited about these computer thingies, since my colleagues where able to write documents in "WordPerfect", save them on disk and edit them later.
My first opinion was: "Gee, that's handy" and started dreaming of having such a "PC" my self.
In a TV magazine I read commercials of NTI (Nederlands Talen Instituut), who provided programming courses, including the option of buying a (8-bit home) computer.
There was a choice between the Commodore 64 and MSX (Microcomputers with Software eXchanging, which was a Microsoft led attempt for a Home computer "standard", equal to the VHS standard for Video recorders). MSX was pretty popular, however never made it to the UK and USA.
Of course the MSX had a Microsoft produced firmware BASIC interpreter, which also was the source of my (futurity) Microsoft zealotry.
To my own surprise, I seemed to be a very talented coder and my teacher wrote me "Your code is exceptional "smart" it is a joy to see".
However I loved MSX and its firmware BASIC interpreter, at some point I found BASIC pretty sluggish and inefficient. As a result I started to teach myself Z80-Assembler. Which was the base, for turning me into the advanced computer literate I became.
Data was stored on cassettes (using a so called "DATA-recorder"). After a while I bought (a freaking expensive) Disk drive. Which was connected to my Philips NMS 8020 MSX2 machine, using a inflexible thick cable and a so called "expansion module".
This "module" included firmware which extended the BASIC interpreter with MSX-DISK-BASIC.
However, later on ASCII corp. implemented ad CP/M clone, called MSX-DOS, which was compatible (including the disk format) to MS-DOS.
My first PC.
Since my employer (at that time) was a public service, it started a so called "PC Private" project. PC Private projects, where enormously popular in the Netherlands, during the last two decades of the 20'st century.
The employee had the chance to get a PC cheep, funded by the state (payed back by taxes) and the employer did not had to invest in expensive courses, because the employee learned to get used and work whit "the computer" in his/her spare time.
This PC Private machine was a Bondwell 38 XT, with CGA, two 5.25 inch floppy disk drives and a Star NX-1000 matrix printer.
While I was waiting for my first "real computer" I bought a book, called "The MS-DOS Expert", so when this machine arrived, I knew all the ins and outs of MS-DOS, because it was a really great and advanced book.
In the meantime, I turned into this advanced computer literate. I was especially interested in data communications. I was extremely exited by the fact that you could connect your computer to another one, using a MODEM. I started my own BBS and helped a dozen of future sysops getting their BBS's up and running. After a while, I even founded a FIDO alike network, called "Aquarius-net".
I was able to do this, because I printed Andrew Milner's RemoteAcces BBS software and Johachim Hormighausen's FrontDoor frontendmailer documentation. And "studied" it carefully.
Since the rumor at my job got wide spread, that I became a computer literate, my employer offered me a job at our word processing office. Later on I even became the (unofficial) admin of our Novell network. (not bad for such a low educated bitch, eh?)
At some day, our official "Computer dude" decided, the Novell network had to go, in favor of strictly "Stand alone" machines. My employer asked me about my opinion and saw that I was furious about the decision, I almost started crying.
To ease my pain, my employer donated the file server to me, which I donated again to a potential sysop of the local HIV-net. I installed and configured everything needed, all the sysop had to do, is plug in his MODEM and rock ;-)
It's obvious, I'm a outraged computer nerd, I loved Microsoft and worshiped Bill Gates and Paul Allen, for making all of this possible.
Commodore-Amiga.
One fine day, a friend of mine introduced me to the Commodore-Amiga, of which I was pretty exited. The Commodore-Amiga introduced an entire new computing scenario: Multimedia.
Man, was I exited, about that freaking thing.
I've been a one man band, since forever I guess and these so called Tracker Editors (Theijo Kinunen's MED and later OctaMED) and a bunch of other music software packages, really freaked me out, in a positive way.
The most interesting part about the Amiga was however, that AmigaOS was a UNIX like OS. For example, the AmigaOS Shell comes very close to the freaking Borne Again Shell (Bash).
I still have an moronic hardware hacked Commodore-Amiga 500 up and running (including a 1.3 and 2.4 Kickstart ROM, a "boot selector" and more "retarded" hardware hacks). Yummy yum :-)
Microsoft Windows, that boring POS.
It's out of the scope of this post, to sum up all the computers I've used. I'm convinced that most of my fellow COLA "regulars" have used dozens of them, why would I bee an exception?
Anyway, some day I bought a Pentium 166 MMX with freaking 16 MiB RAM and an ATI Expression+ (Mach64 based) GPU. Which was a hell of superpower machine at that time. (It was also the first machine I installed GNU/Linux on, namely SuSE Linux 6.1).
It came pre-installed with Windows 95 and in first case I loved it. After a year or so, I felt very bored about Windows 95. All this stupid clicking, dragging and dropping, drove me nuts somehow, what a bore :-(
Then one fine day, someone yelled at me, on the street "Help me with Linux please".
I had no idea what the heck this "Linux" thingy was, but he got me interested. At a local record store I spotted Redhat (some version) and SuSE Linux 6.1.
I choose SuSE Linux 6.1 because it was cheaper then the Redhat box.
My first GNU/Linux experience.
Since I was a Microsoft Zealot my self, simply because I actually *believed* that everything but Microsoft software was crap, I left SuSE Linux 6.1 for half a year in its box, because I was afraid of messing up my system.
Then a Dutch magazine called Linux Magazine was introduced and I bought it right from it's second issue (currently I prefer the UK based Linux Format and German based Linux Intern). The writers where such enthusiast about GNU/Linux, that I could not any longer resist to install "the damn thing".
Remember, YAST (Yet Another Setup Tool) was fully text based at that time, but as an old CP/M and DOS user, that did not bothered me at all. And SuSE Linux 6.1 included a great printed (English) manual. So I jumped on the GNU/Linux bandwagon.
During and after the installation process, my first impression was: Oh My, this is freaking cools man!
You must know, I have wasted hundreds of bucks on Microsoft compilers and here I've had this freaking GCC for free.
I became even more exited about Linux, when I had to reconfigure an compile Linux, because I needed support for my Baycom MODEM and required protocols, since a couple of CB Packet Radio users, in my area, actually _demanded_ I fired up a Packet Radio BBS.
Conclusions.
GNU/Linux has moved me to figure out how networking stuff really works. It has moved me to run many network services, like a website, FTP and introduced me to PXE (Preboot eXecution Environment), just to figure out how it works. Without GNU/Linux I would have probable never known. (Remember I am yet another "uneducated" hobbyist).
Appreciation.
Finally I would like to speak out my appreciation, who contributed to my knowledge and joy. To limit the text, I won't list the names of all those great people, because it would be enormous. Therefor, I would like to limit my appreciation to this:
Everybody who contributes to Free Software and advocate it.
You know who you are.
Thank you and keep up the good work!
Two weeks ago I bought a Acer Aspire 7220 laptop. Based on a AMD Semphron 3800, Nvidia Geoforce 7000M, 2 GiB DDR2 RAM and a 80 GiB HDD. Everything I could ever wish for is included, except for a webcam.
