Are You a Longtime LJ Subscriber?

I got into Linux in 1995 or 1996, with a 16-floppy distro (I skipped on diskettes 17-32; the app I was using didn't need X). It ran on a 40 MHz 386!

Why did I start using Linux? It's an interesting story. In the 80s, the FCC let amateur radio operators use digital protocols more advanced than the archaic Baudot they had been restricted to for decades. By the mid-80s, ham radio operators were running a variant of X.25 over the air called AX.25. It in turned transported TCP/IP.

Brian Lantz, KO4KS, authored a combination BBS and IP routing program he dubbed TNOS. This was in the early days of the Internet, which while primitive compared to today's 'net, allowed efficient distribution of the code and he soon had a dedicated group of users of his software.

He added features and bug fixes to it steadily, and soon it grew to the point to where his C compiler (Turbo C, I believe) could no longer compile it. [A side note - he sent it to Borland for them to look at, and he was told it was the most complicated C program they'd ever seen] As a result, he switched to Linux, compiling TNOS with GCC, and a large percentage of his users followed him (from DOS to Linux; talk about culture shock...). I was one of those followers, with my trusty 386/40 with 8 Megs of RAM.

Since then I've gone from Slackware to Red Hat Linux,then to Fedora (with occasional dalliances with Kubuntu and OpenSUSE). There's been no other operating systems but Linux in my house since about 2002. My wife's workstation was the last to convert - she runs Fedora 13, as I do. My server runs CentOS 5.5.

I participate in my local LUG (http://www.sclug.org) and am involved in the Southern California Linux Expo. Since I don't code, it's my way of giving back to the FOSS community (thanks for the great software!!)

I believe I started my subscription to Linux Journal around 1999, and it's one of two magazines I look forward to getting in the mail every month (the other? Scientific American), and read it cover to cover immediately after receiving it. I think the assortment of articles from beginning to advanced is excellent, as I get something from each and every one, and from each and every column. Keep up the great work!

Orv