The Computer Side of Me

GNU/Linux/BSD stuff have been part of my life for a time now. I enjoy it due to the liberty it gives me.

I remember installing Slackware, Conectiva Linux and FreeBSD in my old 486DX and Pentium I. The discovering era!

I remember a black screen telling me to login and realizing what should I do next? How can I run a program? Am I logged in? Where is the graphic windows and the mouse pointer?

Before I get engaged in the open source world, I had taken a course on computers. They tought me the great Windows 95 and Office 97. Then after finishing school I learnt about logic programming, VB6 and Delphi 5. My brother and I also got our first computer, a Gradiente MSX with a couple of manuals to play with. Good deal indeed, I learned the Basic language and the though way old computers worked. An old machine for that time, but it was what we got for free and that was great!

After getting my first job and saving some money, I finally could buy a Pentium I 133Mhz plus 64Mb and some disk space, just to realize that switching between Windows 98 and 95 in that machine bored me. Yet, I got expertise on tuning and reinstalling Windows. Then a brief course on computer hardware lead me to acquire an old 486DX and I think that was when I found a magazine in a newsstand that changed everything! (Nerd, wasn't it a Playboy?)

The funny part started with those CDs of *nix distros that came with the magazines. I already knew the tricks to install Microsoft's systems, but that thing was fucking new and challenging. For a young boy facing raw old machines, that fit perfectly and introduced me to a new world. I didn't have powerfull AMD, Intel 600+ Mhz to play games, yet I had enough processors to get the power of a bash terminal in my fingers and the expectation of a less resource consuming operating system.

What came next? That's a story for another post.