Hello everyone. I became a member today and I am very happy to be here. I am
a recent convert to libre software and hardware.
I started out at age 15 in 1983 with a Sinclair ZX Spectrum and until the mid
90s I thought computers were the most exciting things in the world. However
since the mid 90s I thought the whole scene got more and more boring. Faster
and faster boxes running boring OSes and apps. Even though I have been
working in IT since the mid 90s I haven't experienced the same excitement I
had during the Sinclair/Amstrad/Amiga days. I have been using Windows since
the late 80s but it was always all about convenience. I remember running
Minix from a 360 kb floppy disc around 1990 and since the late 90s I would
also install a Linux distro (which I now of course would refer to as
GNU/Linux) about once a year to try it out. However there would always be
something that didn’t immediately work out of the box and I would scrap it
after a few hours and install Windows again. Luckily I (re)discovered Richard
Stallman last year and understood what I didn't understand (and didn't really
read) about GNU in the 80s and 90s. Now I am again super excited and I am
trying to learn and implement as much as I can for freedom both in the
digital world and the analog world. There are so many things I previously
took for granted and it was all about convenience at the expense of freedom
and happiness.
My new journey started at the end of 2015. I am trying to be as Libre as I
can both concerning software and hardware. Some of the things I have done so
far:
- Got an Lenovo X200 (without Libreboot), a Penguin Wireless N USB Adapter,
installed Trisquel 7.0
- Bought a Lenovo T400 (with Libreboot) from Minifree
- Got the ThinkPenguin VPN mini-router
- Deleted my google account that I had been using heavily since 2007 (email,
gdrive, calendar, search etc etc). Switched to Protonmail, DuckDuckGo and
OwnCloud. I also deleted my Facebook account. Getting rid of Google and
Facebook was a very interesting process.
- Stopped using my Galaxy S6 smart phone and get a dumb phone instead. Will
possibly install Cyanogenmod at a later stage.
- Got rid of my Xbox One
- Supported the EOMA68 crowdfunding project. This is a very exciting project.
- Started buying/reading the «Linux Voice» magazine
- Got involved in the Norwegian Unix User Group and I am getting to know some
great people. They hosted Bradley Kuhn in Oslo in June and his talk «Tales
from 20 Years of Copyleft Enforcement" was great.
I am looking forward to participating on the forum. I have read lots of great
threads and I have already found answers to several questions I’ve had
during the last 6 months.
