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

I grew up with parents that used Unix and Linux, and so I probably heard about it at an earlier age than most would think about OSes. And that means hearing stories about punch cards and building basic computers too.

My first computer memories were using a TRS-80, DOS, and then Windows (from 3.11). But for Linux, it would be in that experimental college phase, building computers, getting compiz to work (and RAID, Wine, ...). I wrote about this recently (in the context of gaming as well) [1].

In short, I just like tinkering, hacking, making my computer my own. Linux is just fun for me, and I have been using exclusive that for several years now, having finally moved away from Windows for games (thanks to Steam and Proton especially, as well as more Linux indie games) and photo editing (thanks Darktable! [2]).

Now back to literate programming for my dotfiles with Emacs org-mode :-)

[1] https://boilingsteam.com/my-journey-to-finally-ditching-wind...

[2] https://9bladed.com/post/foss_photography/

Has the situation changed?

Interesting, I'm wondering if you can share your favorite tools? Photoshop is pretty much the only thing I miss from the proprietary OSes, never managed to match the workflow with Krita or Gimp.

Tried out Red Hat 5 from a CD in 1997 on the family Pentium 75 MHz. Couldn't get internet to work so it didn't get much use. Later when I was studying in 2005 the computer room in the school had these insanely restricted Windows computers where the only browser was IE, sessions got wiped when logged out.. so burned Knoppix to a CD and later some other similar "portable" distro (don't remember its name, something starting with "S" I think) on USB with persistence. That lead me to install Ubuntu on my home computer and haven't looked back, unless you count the fact that I've been using MacOS since 2015, but I do manage a large amount of Linux server in my job.

In the late 90s, my brother gave me his old 486 machine. Around the same time, the Seattle Weekly published an April fools article[1] which mentioned a free operating system called Linux. I thought it was part of the joke, but on further research, I discovered it was real. Fascinated, I bought a CD with the RedHat 5.0 installer and put it on my 486. I quickly decided the 486 was too slow, and the excitement of learning more about Linux prompted me to build myself a much better machine.

Then I discovered there were many free operating systems available, such as FreeBSD. I installed it on my machine and started going to the local BSD users group meetings. I met a guy there who hosted weekly programming classes at his house. One of the people that went to his classes worked for a small web hosting company and helped me to get an interview. I landed the job, and that is how I got my foot in the door as a professional.

1. https://www.seattleweekly.com/news/microsofts-new-brain-proj...