-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 > Q: What features or attributes of Linux led you to start using it > and/or influence you to continue using it? Please be specific and > descriptive as possible and as technical as you would like. > > Feel free to write as much (Halcrow) or as little as you want... > > -Evan
My first introduction to Unix (not Linux, it didn't exist yet) was in 1988, when I took a C programming class in the EE department at BYU. Even though their poor old computer (spock, if anyone remembers that machine) was fairly heavily overloaded with students all trying to compile their stuff at the same time, I was still highly impressed with how much *better* Unix was than anything else I had tried (DOS, Apple II, Atari, etc). Jump ahead to 1994. By then, I'd been back from my mission for a few years and had switched majors from EE to CS. I still liked Unix better than anything else around (which, at the time, meant DOS, Windows 3.1 and OS/2). And, I finally got around to buying a PC. Unfortunately, I didn't know of any Unix I could get for the PC (Novell Unixware was far too expensive, and so was SCO.) Within the next year or so, though, someone mentioned "Linux", and I ended up with a book and a Slackware CD. Linux wasn't very far along yet for "general desktop" use, but I was glad to have it anyway. For the next while, I was triple-booting (DOS, OS/2 Warp and Slackware, later replacing DOS with NT 4 and eventually dropping OS/2 altogether.) As Linux has gotten better, I've had less and less reason to use anything else. My laptop still dual-boots because my scout troop management software only works in Windows and I haven't gotten Wine to do Starcraft well enough yet. My desktop has been exclusively Linux for, oh, about three years now. My server has been Linux-only since the day it was built (it's still on RH 7.3, I haven't seen a need to upgrade it yet, though it may become OpenBSD sometime soon). I've never bought XP, and I intend not to. "Free" in the sense of money is really nice, of course, and the fact that Linux was cheaper than Unixware way back when was a major factor. "Free" in the sense of RMS is nice, too, but I'm more in the "Open Source" camp than the "Free Software". Mostly I stick with Linux because it Just Works Better. Gary -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 8.0.2 iQA/AwUBP2YQSfEriEoHGxc9EQLJlwCfR+y92EUOnVZJwrJwterCN8195VcAmwU1 N81LkmZhj0z+LjARkSNrW01b =aOBJ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ____________________ BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
