My Linux Journey

I started using Linux back in 1999. This was back in my university days, when I was a computer science student and looking around for a good programming environment. Linux offered me a no-frills environment for C programming. I had tried to look for a free C programming tool on Windows, being the poor university student. Sad to say, most Windows C programming tools require you to install this and that and if you wanted GUI, it gets even more complicated.

Linux? Linux comes with a C programming environment in-built. GUI? I was spoilt for choices. I could of course stick with the basic X Windows. There was TK and TCL. KDE was available too, though it wasn't 100% open source. GNOME, using GTK, was yet another choice. Since most of these came as part of the standard Linux distribution, I didn't really need to download and install them separately. All I had to do was install them as part of the initial set-up.

My first Linux distribution was Debian. It sounded all so powerful and mighty back then. Back in 1999, installing Linux on a laptop was a pain. Hardware support for laptops was lacking, and getting X Windows to work was a challenge. But I managed to do it anyway, playing with configuration files and spending hours troubleshooting. However, I soon hit a wall with Debian. It was language support. Being in Japan at that time, I needed Japanese language support, which somehow I was unable to get to work with Debian.

In the end, I installed a Japanese version of Turbolinux. It offered me language support, and at the same time still providing the basic Linux programming environment that I needed. Gaming support was primitive, as Wine wasn't working that well yet, but I was not a game person anymore at that time, since I was busy studying! It was also at this time that I switched to playing MUDs, which worked well enough on Tintin++ running in a terminal window. Limitations with Wine meant that I couldn't run MS Office, though, and thus I started looking for an alternative. I came across StarOffice, which later became OpenOffice.org.

By the time I finished my university studies, I had become a Linux person. I no longer needed native Japanese language support, so I started to look for something else. And found Fedora Core. It had the things I was looking for. The in-built programming environment. The GUI (GNOME and KDE are both available). OpenOffice.org was there, and I needed it since most of the people at work still used MS Office. Support for running Windows games was still laggy, but I didn't play much games by then. Instead, I switched to playing old DOS games on DOSBox, which ran well in Fedora Core.

Over the years, installing Linux has become easier. My first installation of Linux back in 1999 required me to do manual partitioning of my harddisk, and some tweaking to allow dual-booting of Linux and Windows. Running on a laptop, I had to configure X Windows manually too. Now, Fedora Core allows you to partition your harddisk during installation and set up dual-booting easily. X Windows can easily be configured for desktops and laptops without having to go down to writing your own configuration files. Upgrading software is as easy as running yum. And upgrading the whole distribution is easy too. Just boot up using the new distribution CD-ROM or DVD, and select the upgrade option.

For those who think that Linux belongs to the geeks, think again. The geeks have made Linux so easy to use, the average home user no longer has any challenges installing and using Linux at home. And best of all, Linux is free!