Uni Stories

How I got into GNU/Linux

I wasn’t really interested in computers growing up. As a kid, the only thing I cared about computers is if would do stuff like browsing the web, playing games, and occasionally writing essays and shit for school. I knew about viruses and stuff but I always figured stuff like botnet would only exist in stuff you would torrent or download from a shady website. I never really cared for the hardware or software that I ran from major corporations as long as it did the stuff I wanted to do. In a sense, I was a computer noob. Most people really are when they first got into computers. I guess right after hearing about the Snowden leaks, that was the time I started to take privacy seriously. For one thing, I always avoided social media sites like MySpace, Faceberg, and Instabum. Sure I used to have minor accounts on Tumblr, BZPower, and various other sites but they were always hobby related and I was very careful with personal details. Sometimes I’d never tell the truth about personal details that pretty much remains true even today. (Don’t worry, most of the stuff I mention on this specific page is all based on my real experiences, though I won’t give away specific locations and such unless it’s really important to the story). While I had better security practices even back then. I did suffer from one critical flaw. I still relied on Wangblows. One of the most dysfunctional and botnet ridden operating systems to ever plague the marketplace.

I knew about MacOS too but I never owned or used a Mac computer apart from way back in the 90s when my school had some of those iMac G3 computers with those cool transparent color cases. I’d did like those though that was the extent of my experience with Appleshit. They like to claim to be privacy respecting but in practice, they still fall under the same corporate lockdown bullshit like M$. Not to mention the premium price for anything Apple is far too expensive for a poorfag like myself. I never really liked Apple either. I was never a fan of their iPods nor iTunes (I was more of a RCA Lyra guy myself). There had to be an alternative somewhere, so I thought.

It wasn’t until I came into communication with an online friend from Quebec. Basically, we both were involved in trolling raids at the time, which were very popular with the 4chan crowd during that time. Most raids would be organized and held on IRC, Teamspeak, and/or later Skype when that was the hot shit before M$ got it’s claws on it. We’d raid various online games, or troll a livestream if one of those were ongoing. It was pure anarchy and it was a lot of fun looking back on it. Anyways, he was the one that introduced me into GNU/Linux and gave me the rundown about all the stuff you can do with it, the different distros, and of course, all the ricing possibilities. One of his favorite distros was Debian but he recommended me Kubuntu and Xubuntu first. I started off with Kubuntu by making my own bootable usb disk and using the auto partition tool to allow me to boot into Windows 7 and Linux on my old consumer grade HP craptop. I was impressed the moment I booted into kde and fell in love with all the features that Linux had to offer. Eventually, I settled with XFCE which still remains my favorite out of all the desktop environments, not including window managers (which I use primarily these days).

Overtime, I started learning from him as well as others from the 4chan board /g/. I researched into window managers like openbox and I3, I learned about various terminal commands, and I even begin improving my security measures to an even better standard than it was before. I found ways around using free and open source (FOSS) software in my daily uni work which got to the point where I could eventually run a GNU/Linux distro like Debian or Mint as my primary distro rather than dual booting. I eventually ditched my HP (in retrospect, it really wasn’t a bad laptop apart from the build quality) and got myself an X220. GNU/Linux has even resurrected some old laptops that I kept around and brought some new life into them like my old Dell Vostro 1510 that I used to use for my school days before Uni. In other words. I started becoming a bit more computer literate and learned to appreciate computers more than I had previously would had beforehand.

I haven’t spoken to my online friend in a while. Last I heard, he got into some legal trouble with the feds in his town. It must of had to do with his torrent hosting server that he used to run or it could have been hacking related. He didn’t go to prison though, just some fines here and there. In any case, I still have to give him credit for introducing me into the alternative operating systems. I still wouldn’t claim to be an expert when it comes to computer related topics, but I think I know a bit more than most normalfags these days. I am still learning new things about Linux, and computers in general. It’s kind of helped me even ease away from Vidya too thanks to the horrible gaming support that GNU/Linux has (although it’s much better than it used to be when I first started using GNU/Linux). Real talk though. I love GNU/Linux. I love the whole concept of FOSS software. Though I may still use Wangblows for muh vidya and music software from time to time, it now feels like a hassle to try to go back to a shitty operating system like windows.