A look at Linux

In the early-mid 1990s, I transferred from the community college I had gone to after high school and went to a local state university. At the community college, my major was Information Computer Systems, the closest degree they dad to computer science. Little did I realize how different the programs were and the influence that becoming a computer science major would have on my future. 

My first academic quarter at the university, it was recommended that I take a class that was essentially a basic introduction to the UNIX operating system. That first quarter I learned so much about UNIX and something I had never heard of before: the Internet. 

A Silicon Graphics Indigio workstation.

That first quarter I had classes in two computer labs: a Sun Microsystems Solaris lab and a Silicon Graphics (SGI) IRIX lab. These labs were all networked and connected to the university's Internet connection. I remember for the first day of the Intro to UNIX course, our regular instructor wasn't able to be there, so he got the head of the Computer Science Department to cover the class. Since he wasn't going to go over the syllabus or talk about what we'd be doing that quarter, the department chair decided to do an informal of how the IRIX operating system works and what we could do with the Internet. I distinctly remember watching him log into the NASA FTP server and downloading weather satellite images of the university taken an hour earlier! Amazing stuff!! 

When I left the university, I lost my access to those awesome UNIX machines. I yearned for a way to have a UNIX computer at home. I started to hear about this new operating system that was designed to by "UNIX-like". The operating system was called Linux and it was called "open source", which meant to me it was free to install on a personal computer. My curiousity was piqued! 

Flash forward a few years and I had just finished assembling my first computer, a large tower with an Cyrix/IBM 686/166 CPU and a Western Digital 4.0 GB IDE hard drive. I installed Windows 95, as I needed it for work and for my favorite video games, but I knew enough that I left some hard drive space available for an installation of Linux. 

My family and I were visiting a local mall when I stumbled on this book, Slackware Linux Unleashed w/ CD-ROM in the clearance section of a major chain bookstore (I can not remember which one it was). As I thumbed through the book at the store, it seemed to be a pretty comprehensive resource that I could use to learn about Linux AND it included the installation CDROM for Slackware Linux v3.1. Since I didn't have a very fast Internet connection at home (remember this was before home broadband), it seemed like a great investment. 

What followed was a series of lessons (success and not) about installing Linux and non-Microsoft operating systems. I learned that WinModems were junk and only ran on Windows. I learned that PS/2 versus serial mice were not interchangible. These lessons taught me to carefully read the HCL, hardware compatibility list if I wanted to install an operating system. 

After many late nights and a lot of researching, I was able to get my installation of Slackware Linux up and running. It wasn't an easy process but I learned a lot: about myself, about computer hardware, and about operating systems. I would later go on to try many other Linux and non-Linux operating systems over the years.

BeOS: my all time favortie!

I've installed so many different Linux distributions over the subsequent years. I've also install many non-Linux operating system, including my all time favorite: the BeOS! I will have to do another blog post about that topic!