** Anthony Anson tony.anson@girolle.co.uk [2011-12-02 17:56]:
wiedxma k wrote:
And I work and live in Ipswich.
Ditto
I'm afraid I'm from way down south, so almost a foreigner ;)
I’ve been interested in GNU/Linux since 2002/2003.
Ah, we're on less contentious ground now.
My interest started with Lasermoon's FT, which I used at work. Liking it better than the Win 3.11 I was using at the time, I acquired the discs and nearly got to grips with the distro, but soon defected to Debian. I still have the FT CDs if anyone wants to play with the distro. (Achtung! Lasermoon was taken over by the developers of SuSE, and SuSE was based on FT - I am informed,)
I started following in around 1992 or thereabouts and didn't realise how new it was. I spotted an internal IBM forum on getting Linux running on the IBM L40 laptop and since I'd just bought one I took an interest. Not sure whether it is still there, but there used to be an option when compiling the kernel to support the floppy drive on an L40.
I live quite close to where Lasermoon were based - well, closer than I do to East Anglia anyway. They were in Wickham, and I kept meaning to get a copy. Unfortunately as I worked for IBM I ended up working with OS/2 (which I actually liked a lot) and Windows NT (not so keen), and with dual boots of those, and a lack of spare machines I didn't get around to installing Linux until much later.
I don't remember the SuSE involvement, but I do remember Lasermoon working with Caldera to work towards getting Unix certification for their distributions.
The first distro I saw and got installed on my HP nx9020 laptop was Slackware. Someone told me ‘if you learn Slackware, you will be fine with any distro”, so I gave it a go.
I have no experience of Slackware, but the same is said of Debian, probably with better reason.
My first distribution as Caldera, but I moved quite quickly onto Red Hat and had fun compiling new kernels with my first installs just to get the Token Ring network cards I used working. I spent a short while with Red Hat before moving on to Debian in 2000 and now Ubuntu.
I used to work on Windows 98, Windows XP and HP, HP-UX.
I used to work in CP/M until I wanted to play with graphics, when an IBM compatible (386 SX)was put together for me. The bloke wot done it like, insisted that I would *need* Windows, so, much against my gut feeling (prejudice?) I let him sell me Win 3.0 as well as DOS 5.
I only ever used Windows for Paintbrush, and then only until I found a much better program that ran in DOS. Blowed if I can unforget what it was called...
Later, a 486 DX4-100 was bought, Win 98 installed in one tray, and FT was installed in another. Our ISP hosted a Debian mirror, so I added that to the quiver, but only having two trays for the caddy, dispensed with the FT, temporarily, I told myself.
There is nothing quite so permanent as the temporary...
Later went on to use Win 2000 Pro instead of the (upgraded) Win 98 SE.
Fairly recently bought an Asus Eee on which was Tellytubbies Linux (I think it prefers to be called XanDROSS) and a refurbished old Acer laptop, on which was XP Home. HDD partitioned, an up-to-date Debian (Squeeze) went on, but as I can't do without Irfanview, and I dislike the Gimp with a passion, I have added a few Windozy graphics programs. With what is in Squeeze and in the XP partition I can do most of what I want.
I say 'most' - one day, when the getting-home-afterwards problem is solved, what isn't covered by 'most' will find its way to the Coach and Horses...
OK, I was going to give up there and send, but somebody said CP/M. I used to use that on my Amstrad CPC 6128 with Supercalc and Borland Turbo Pascal - the latter transferred onto the 3" disk format. I supported Windows for some time, but it was never my primary OS. Back then I was mainly and Amiga user, but OS/2 made the PC hardware usable where Windows was just a toy (to me anyway, I couldn't see how anyone could take it seriously and do real work with it it was so primitive!). Linux saved me from Windows when OS/2 started fading, as well as getting me work as an AIX admin on the early Netscape suite.
The job I do now has nothing to do with Linux or computers. I neither am IT professional nor a geek. (OK, maybe a very little one:))
That's OK then. (Beware of Geeks bearing gifts)
Definitely giving up here, I've deleted the rest to ensure I do. I'm IT through and through though, thankfully working significantly with Linux as my day job :)
** end quote [Anthony Anson]