Ask HN: How did you get started in tech and/or Linux?

Friend's had ZX spectrums, Amstrad CPCs, Commodore 64s .. but my family didn't have the cash to buy any of these.

My Dad did have access to an Amstrad PCW, which was basically a word processor with green screen CRT built in. He'd bring it home for school holidays, and I was fascinated by it.

I'd borrow books from the library that aimed to teach kids how to program. This was the late 80s, and the books were written a while before and referenced earlier computers which weren't so common at the time .. TRS-80s .. VIC-20s.

The books had program code that you could type in to create simple games and demos. I'd spend hours typing in the code, only to learn the version of basic used wasn't compatible with the green screen word-processor my dad brought home.

As an introverted kid, I found the possibilities provided by a computer incredibly exciting and exotic.

Once I'd got the bug, I'd spend pocket money on computer magazines for years. The first time I encountered Linux was in the 90s, when I bought a magazine with a CD-ROM containing a slackware distribution. After installing it, there wasn't much I could do with it .. and I didn't really understand it's importance at the time.

I eventually saved up for a 486DX2 PC which cost me a small fortune at the time .. about £1600.

I switched to Linux full-time in about 2005.

At my school, which was actually a "social project" of a school for rich people, they lent us the computers they no longer used for us to learn how a computer worked - at that time they were old b&w Macs and some years after Win95 pcs (they had the then-new iMacs but lent us only for one class; I recall the "wow" factor was so much I even thought the round mouse was cool).

After school I went to try to study electronic engineering but was a total failure, I ended at graphic design that is what I do for a living now. But at that time on a little show the cool kids were toying with PCs running several flavors of Linux, and showing off Compiz and that stuff. They gave us an (original!) Ubuntu 5.10 CD, which was the thing actually blew my mind off - a whole free OS! How that was possible?

Tried to install it in my PC at home (I could afford a crappy clonic when I got into uni) but, as usual, deleted all my stuff I had in my hard disk. That didn't put me off, though - we hadn't internet at home at that time, until some years after, but eventually I could manage to install it. Some years after using Ubuntu, pulled the trigger and installed Gentoo. That was in Jan. 2009 and hadn't distrohopped ever since, did my whole graphic design degree using FOSS and now in what I do for a living. Can't see myself using privative software.

Later on I got into programming because I wanted to impress my teacher with my visual basic.NET skills. (I had no prior programming experience at all and that course was in VB.NET). and then I discovered C++, C# (and what .NET actually is) and python. now I am a year away from graduating with a computer engineering degree.

I was introduced to linux through a friend. and used it for a bit and had it on some machines. and wrote some shell scripts to automate stuff. but I never fully embraced it. as I would only install it on machines struggling with Windows. either due to aging or faulty hardware. I know about what makes linux "better" and how one customize it to the kernel level. but Windows is simply a better workstation OS regardless of the great amounts of bazinga we hear nowadays. linux on server/embedded systems is greatness however.

One of the bands - Elastica - wanted to shoot a music video and needed 100 fans to be in London in 2 weeks time... the band asked me if I could send a letter, I had 2,000 names and addresses and I got a few friends to volunteer and we hand-wrote 2k envelopes in 5 days and posted them with a phone number to call if you wanted to be in the video... then we went to the management company and manned the phone. They got their 100 fans and had a waiting list of another 200.

The band management company asked how we did this and whether they could put us on a retainer to do it in future as they had big plans for another band - Blur - and I pointed out that it was infeasible to write so many envelopes so often. But I believed a computer could do this, so if they bought me a computer and covered postage and packing, I would build a way to keep in touch with the fans of their acts.

They bought me an IBM 30386 and I had it in the upstairs of the squat. There was a hole in the roof so this part of the room was covered in tarp, and we stole the power from another loft as the hole in the roof granted crawlway access to other lofts. I had never used a computer before as I came from poverty, but I got a book from a library, a reference book on basic, and used that to programme a simple database based on text files, with index text files that I could then mail merge into envelope labels. Scaled that slowly up to be a full database (single user of course), and then a stock control system as staying in touch with fans meant we expanded into selling T-shirts mail order - which produced a surprising amount of revenue.

That was the start... and by then it was 1994 and a lot of the bands that were nothing were about to be something.