Oct 19, 2003
The Path to GNU/Linux
By Timothy R Butler | Posted at 10:27 PM
On CS-FSLUG, someone started a thread on how people got started using GNU/Linux. My story got a bit carried away, length-wise, so I thought I would post it here instead. If you'd like to know how I went from a Pro-Microsoft kind of guy to a staunch supporter of GNU/Linux, read on!
Seriously, it was mostly curiosity, as well as my desire at the time (in late 1997 and early 1998) for a good Perl development environment, since WinPerl left something to be desired. I do not believe ActivePerl was available at the time; if it had been, I may not have ventured into the exciting territory of the penguins.
At any rate, I had read in early-1998 in Byte Magazine about GNU/Linux becoming friendlier with the new "GNU Network Object Model Environment" (that'd be GNOME), and I thought that sounded really interesting. GNOME stayed in the back of my mind, but for a number of months I didn't look into it anymore.
It was about this time I noticed that Best Buy had several different distributions — SuSE, Red Hat and Caldera. I knew my previous web host had used Red Hat (at the time I was using a FreeBSD powered web host; these days I'm back to an RH-powered hosting provider) and I'd heard good things about it, so I decided to give it a try.
Red Hat still had a deal with MacMillan Software at the time, and BestBuy carried this special version rather than the "official" boxed set. For some reason (I can't remember what), I decided to do a big search for an "official" pack (I was told this was the best way to get started), and found an Official Red Hat Linux 5.1 boxed set for $40 at a small computer shop. I didn't know anything about LILO, etc., so I also went and bought System Commander Deluxe for handling switching between Windows and GNU/Linux.
At any rate, after three attempts I finally got Red Hat installed onto my 500 meg hard disk and tried to figure out what to do with it. My modem wasn't configured, my printer wouldn't print and the pre-installed FVWM95 desktop wasn't anything like the "friendly" system I had read about.
So I rebooted into Windows, wondering if I'd just tossed a hundred bucks out the window (heh), and started reading. I got some tips on modems, although it took me awhile to get that going, but I also located some GNOME rpm's on the second CD of the Red Hat distribution. Red Hat didn't install GNOME at the time because it was at something like version 0.16 (alpha quality).
I fought with GNOME for hours, but couldn't get the silly thing to install. Worse, and here is where I should have "read the fine manual," I couldn't figure out why "del" wouldn't delete files and why "move" wouldn't move them (I was pretty good at getting around MS-DOS, so I was comfortable at the GNU/Linux prompt, but…). All of this made me wonder exactly what I was even hoping to accomplish.
At about this time, two things happen that set me on a collision course with using GNU/Linux seriously. First, while looking for documentation, I ran across the Free Software Foundation and thought this "GPL" thingy sounded kinda neat. So I fired off an e-mail to ask about using the license on my own code. Just a short time later Richard M. Stallman wrote back, which got my attention, since I had read enough of the GNU.org site to realize that he had founded it. I didn't appreciate just how important the Free Software Foundation was, nor all that Stallman had done, but it was still kind of neat.
The second key, ironically, since it was non-free at the time, was that I ran into the KDE Project. I had found a site with all kinds of window managers, and had tried some, but none of them worked that well. Then I stopped by KDE's site. They had just hit 1.0 a few days before and they had this really nice looking desktop. So, I downloaded some src.rpm's (since there weren't any pre-compiled rpm's for Red Hat 5.1), and then went into GNU/Linux and copied them onto my Linux partition from Windows' partition.
The next week or two, I almost went crazy. I had never compiled anything more complex than a Visual Basic application before, and so this whole "./configure; make; make install;" process mystified me somewhat. The real problem, however, was dependencies. Configure couldn't find qt-devel and so I went and searched for that. But then that wouldn't install due to some x11 "header" files missing. I said to myself, "Self, what is that?" Unfortunately, I couldn't answer myself, even after many hours.
Well, I finally gave up and asked, and once someone explained what I needed to get off my Red Hat CD, I finally started the long, arduous process of compiling KDE on a Pentium 100. Finally, it got done, and… it didn't work. It turned out I needed to set the PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH for /opt/kde.
Finally, the KDE wallpaper appeared, then the desktop icons, and then the kpanel (the thing that kicker replaced in KDE 2.0). It was something to behold. Perhaps not so much because of how wonderful KDE 1.0 was, but after hours and hours of fighting with it, it felt like I'd accomplished something pretty good.
However, I quickly ended up leaving the GNU/Linux community. It was about this time that I bought a new system — a Dell Dimension XPS 450. At the time the Pentium II 450 had just come out and so I was pretty nervous about fooling with the system too much. The Dell techs really didn't know much about Linux but noted that repartitioning my hard disk for it would erase the restore partition. So I just gave up on Linux; I didn't want to mess up my restore partition, and it still wasn't working that well for me.
Then, in November of 1998, Windows 98 died. You know how Windows is, it was just hopelessly messed up. So I fired up the restore utility, only to find the restore partition missing. Sigh. That was bad news, but after I thought about it for a bit, it was also good news — I finally felt free to repartition and get GNU/Linux back on.
Over the next few years I'd go into GNU/Linux and play around, but I still wasn't happy with it. Netscape 4.7 was horrible, KMail wasn't very good compared to Outlook at the time (not considering worm vulnerability, of course), etc. I tried SuSE Linux 6.1 in May of 1999, and liked it, but it was still buggy and it was really hard to get X11 working. I did help beta test KDE 2.0 over the summer of 2000, but things still weren't quite right. Over the early spring of 1999, I also spent endless hours fighting with xfstt to get TrueType fonts to work (finally did, then lost how I did it and had to relearn it two or three months later).
I bought SuSE 6.4 and it had a nice new GUI installer, but KDE 1.2.1 still didn't meet my needs and I still didn't get this whole "freedom" concept. So I got it all working but barely ever used it.
Finally, in early 2001, I bought SuSE 7.1 Professional. It was great. KDE 2.0.1 was still kinda clunky, but KDE 2.1 had just come out and it was, in my opinion, the release that made the GNU/Linux desktop a serious reality. It was stunning. Konqueror's web browser worked well. KMail was multithreaded. Everything worked beautifully. I knew I should switch and get away from the bug-infested Windows operating system. But, inertia is a powerful force, and everything was still working alright in my new Windows 2000 install, so I just stuck to the status quo.
Then it hit. Outlook died for the second time in three months at about 9:00 p.m. one Tuesday after Bible Study Fellowship and I knew a complete reinstall of Windows was the only way I was going to get it fixed easily. I was tired. I was cranky. I just wanted to check my e-mail.
So I did the most logical thing: I exported my Outlook mail to Outlook Express, rebooted the computer into GNU/Linux and imported everything into KMail. That was that, I had made the first major step toward actually jumping over to the GNU/Linux desktop.
Since then, I've learned to stop calling GNU/Linux just "Linux." I also learned to say Linux correctly and not just the Americanized way — it's properly pronounced Lynn-ucks not Lie-nicks (the confusion enters in that the American pronunciation of Linus is different than the Scandinavian pronunciation that Linus Torvalds uses). But, that's another story.
Later in November of 2001 I got tired of SuSE's non-free installer/configurator and some bugginess in it and made the jump to Mandrake Linux 8.1. After a brief jump to Debian 3.0 "Woody" in February 2002, I went back to Mandrake Linux for 8.2, then 9.0, 9.1, and I'm getting ready to switch to 9.2 (which is great, but I haven't had time to move my main stuff to it yet). After using Debian, I was able to appreciate not only apt-get but also the power of Mandrake's apt-get clone, urpmi, and now I can't imagine how anyone lives without powerful dependency resolution and software upgrade tools like these.
It was on October 5, 2001 that I launched Open for Business (www.ofb.biz), and since then I've had the opportunity to try pretty much every major distribution.
In all, I've used:
Red Hat 5.1*, 8.0, 9.0
SuSE 6.1*, 6.4*, 7.1*, 8.0, 8.1, 8.2
Caldera Linux Technology Preview (2001)
Lycoris Desktop/LX Amethyst
LindowsOS 3.0
Debian GNU/Linux "Woody" (pre* and post release)
KNOPPIX 3.0 (and KNOPPIX KDE 3.1 Edition)
Libranet GNU/Linux 2.8
Xandros Linux 1.0
Mandrake Linux 8.1 (DL)*, 8.2 Betas, 8.2 (DL* and PowerPack), 9.0 Betas, 9.0 (DL)*, 9.1 Betas, 9.1 (DL* and ProSuite), 9.2 Betas, 9.2(Discovery Edition).
FVWM95*
KDE 1.0*, 1.1*, 1.2.1*, 1.9x*, 2.0*, 2.0.1*, 2.1.x*, 2.2.x*, 3.0*, 3.1.x*.
GNOME 0.16, 0.90, 1.0, 1.2, 1.4, 2.0, 2.2
And numerous others, though not as seriously
[A * denotes a distribution or desktop I used as my default in GNU/Linux for a period of time.]
Tags:
Comp/Tech
Article Path: Home: Computers and Technology: The Path to GNU/Linux
Join the Conversation
RE: The Path to GNU/Linux
My head is spinning!
RE: The Path to GNU/Linux
I can believe it! I need to turn off my long winded mode… I know I’m being long winded when I can write a four page entry like that in about thirty minutes.
RE: The Path to GNU/Linux
Don’t worry about the long winded (it’s not). I found it very informative. Someday I would like to try GNU/Linux, just not yet.
RE: The Path to GNU/Linux
Mmmm… I loved those days when everything had to be worked for, but it is exciting to see the development. I think I started with the same version of Redhat and FVWM did indeed take some getting used to.
That felt like a trip down memory lane for me. Perhaps the reason I go with Gentoo is the tweakability factor. You just can’t replace that. I had my kernel weaned down to the bare needs and keep having to add stuff in. I’d never have learned about the kernel like I have if it weren’t for Gentoo. Everybody else makes it so easy these days. Even back then there wasn’t much need to mess with the Redhat kernel.
RE: The Path to GNU/Linux
That’s why I bought a Mac. After a couple years using Linux and not being able to get Warcraft to run, I found an OS that is *nix based but just works.
RE: The Path to GNU/Linux
Heheh… funny, funny Kevin.