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My computing journey is a fairly standard one. I cut my teeth on Windows 3.11
running on a friend's 486DX. Then I went on to using Windows 98 at internet
cafes. My family finally bought a computer which came with the brand spanking
new Windows XP pre-installed. That lasted for about 3 months, until a
classmate gave me a RedHat 6 CD.
I proceeded to "brick" my computer by installing RedHat on it as soon as I got
home from school that day. I spent a few minutes typing various incantations on
the lines of "x start", "start x", "start", and promptly gave up. That was my
first encounter with Linux.
At about the same time, I happened to buy a magazine that came with a live
version of SuSE 7.2 (?). I was fascinated by all the window managers that came
pre-installed, and spent a good few days trying them all. That's a good part of
why I got into linux in the first place :).
I spent the next 10 years or so distro hopping, and going back and forth
between Windows and Linux. I used Slackware for a while in the early 2000s,
then jumped ship to Fedora Core, Gentoo--I still have a tar.bz2 dump of a
Gentoo root partition on a DVD somewhere, because that's how you backup, no?--
before finally settling on Ubuntu for a few years.
Around 2007, I started using Windows Vista. I used that as my primary operating
system until about 2009, when I gave Windows 7 a brief go. Then, because I
started making more money, I bought a macbook. And that's how I ended up using
OS X for 10 years.
For some reason--I think it's just how my brain is wired--I got really
interested in alternative OSes. It started when I read a fluff piece about
BeOS in a computing magazine. Then I happened to get my hands on a CD that
came with BeOS 4. I tried that for a bit, before finding out about BeOS
Dan0. I managed to track down an ISO on some obscure file sharing network, and
gave that a go too. I then continued to try whatever OSes I could get my hands
on. In more or less chronological order: SyllableOS, QNX, MenuetOS, AROS,
FreeBSD, Oberon, Plan9, Solaris.
I was a happy OS X (MacOS, and whatever they call it these days) user for
a good 10 years--I'm not counting the few months when I ran OS X on a
hackintosh in the late 200s. But as I got more security and privacy conscious,
I found myself going back to Linux more and more.
Modern Linux distros are much easier to use than "back in the day". I used
Ubuntu for work for about a year or so in 2018, and it was a great
experience. I'd say it was almost on par with MacOS.
But, as time passed, I got disenchanted with modern Linux--not necessarily
because of Linux, but because of how my brain is wired. I just disliked the
whole systemd business--I won't go into it, sufice it to say I strongly
dislike the politics behind it.
In any case, I found myself checking out OpenBSD more and more. After giving
it a few brief tries, I finally settled on using OpenBSD as my main OS. I'm
now a happy user of nightly OpenBSD snapshots. I find its simplicity
refreshing, and it actually helps my mental health--analysis paralysis,
creative constraints and all that stuff (btw, this Gemini capsule is running
on an openbsd.amsterdam instance).
To be fair, my computing needs are fairly modest, I use OpenBSD mostly for
programming, and browsing Gemini. I'm happy using WindowMaker. I'm happy using
Emacs and since I mostly use Common Lisp these days, I rarely feel the need to
use other apps. For everything else I use console apps, and Firefox when I have
to.
There isn't one. This is just a geeky, auto-biographical post I wrote by way of
introduction. So "hi" Gemini space. Nice to be here.
Until next time.
Alex