How you came to unix world!

Flame war threads, and threads that become repetitive are always terminated. Everybody knows that. Other than that, there is no reason for this thread to become a Windows vs Linux vs FreeBSD thread at all. So don't try.
 
kpedersen said:
*I tried Mac OS X for a few weeks but realized that as soon as a new Mac OS X comes out, Apple and the rest of the world completely stops supporting the previous version making it useless for anyone other than children.
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Yeah, I got burned by that too. I bought one of the first Mac Mini's because I wanted to see what they were able to do with Unix under the hood. But now they've abandoned support for PowerPC CPU's and forced me to decide between buying an Intel Mac or switching to another OS altogether. More and more software for the Apple is for Snow Leopard only and won't run on my old machine.

So guess what, I've been buying little Intel Atom boards and putting FreeBSD on them. ;) Same small form-factor and low power requirements, but an OS that isn't going to leave me stranded after an "upgrade" designed to force me to replace everything and start over. BSD's continuity is a major "selling point" as far as I'm concerned.

I'm about 3/4 done migrating all the stuff I had on that Mac over to FreeBSD. Last week I finally got around to reformatting my iPod so it will work with gpodder and gtkpod (and I've been meaning to explore some commandline alternatives to these). I'd already moved my music library from iTunes over and have been using audio/mcplay and mpg123 with it. The only big task remaining is migrating some stuff I have stored in DevonThink; most of it is PDF's or easily converted to PDF's, but there are a few .weblocs and other Mac-specific things I'll have to figure out how to convert. I also need to decide what to do as far as indexing all this stuff. I'm inclined to just use the filesystem to implicitly sort and "tag" it, but I'm open to other ideas...

The only Mac app I'll sincerely miss is OmniOutliner. There simply isn't anything in the Unix free software world that compares.
 
My first contact with unix was installing an unix like OS on a Atari Falcon030. This OS was named MiNT and it was my first experience with Unix. After that I installed Redhat Linux 7.2 on a pc. Two months later I was experimenting with FreeBSD. I love Unix!!!!!
 
ckester said:
Yeah, I got burned by that too. I bought one of the first Mac Mini's because I wanted to see what they were able to do with Unix under the hood. But now they've abandoned support for PowerPC CPU's and forced me to decide between buying an Intel Mac or switching to another OS altogether. More and more software for the Apple is for Snow Leopard only and won't run on my old machine.

S

The only Mac app I'll sincerely miss is OmniOutliner. There simply isn't anything in the Unix free software world that compares.
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I have iMac (24" monitor) at work and I love it. Everything works.
 
ckester said:
So guess what, I've been buying little Intel Atom boards and putting FreeBSD on them.
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Hmm that is very interesting. Do they come with required things like vga out etc? Or do I need to be a hardware hacker to get most use out of them?

Could you please post some links of the places you get your hardware from?

Cheers!
 
For me I became fed up one night with Windows XP a couple of years ago, I had just finished setting up the system and almost immediately the system was crushingly slow but only while the internet was connected...:\. I had already been messing with Linux for the last 6 months at that point so I threw on Ubuntu and used that for a while till settling on Arch Linux and eventually migrating to FreeBSD after trying it and finding that it suited my needs much better.
 
kpedersen said:
Hmm that is very interesting. Do they come with required things like vga out etc? Or do I need to be a hardware hacker to get most use out of them?

Could you please post some links of the places you get your hardware from?

Cheers!
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I get mine from http://www.mini-box.com. If I were in the UK, I might go with http://www.mini-itx.com instead.

In previous threads about Atom-based boards, some people have expressed a preference for http://www.supermicro.com because their boards have more SATA ports.

These aren't the only and perhaps not even the best sources for Atoms. Try googling for "mini-itx" to find more.

Most of these sites give detailed specifications for their boards, which should answer your question about whether they come with "required things like vga". They certainly do -- or at least, they come with everything I require. As they say, your mileage may vary. Some people think the lack of support for ECC memory is a showstopper. Others might balk at the fact that the built-in video controller on the "Pine Trail" Atoms isn't supported by the Intel drivers in the current FreeBSD port of Xorg; you have to use the Vesa driver instead.

As I said, I'm buying these to replace Mac Mini's, which aren't exactly high-end or cutting-edge machines either.
 
Looking for a replacement for microsoft, with it's malware problems, it's ever increasingly rigid registration requirements, the inability to change hardware on my own machine without a re-register, and after installing a firewall with outbound port monitoring to see all the phoning home it and win software did, I started surfing through the various Penguin flavors in 2002. I settled for Centos for a while. That was 8 years ago. Windows has become worse since.

I did an install of Freebsd 5.1 and after a few months I knew that it was just what I was looking for. Stable, great documentation, knowledgeable user base, project maintained software repository, all the tools one needs to admin, code, study, build, learn etc.

I use BSD as my main desktop all the time. I don't really care about flash. I have cclive, wget, curl, tcpdump and all the tools to get the video if I want it. I also have Firefox in wine that works. Then there is great little Dillo to browse through pages in a jiffy and get things done.

I did an install of win7 just to look at it and keep up. All though it is more responsive that Vista, that thing can be shut off by microsoft any time you update if they don't like something. If you are not always up to date then you are vulnerable.

It made me even happier that I took some time to get to know Unix a little bit and familiar with a lot of OSS. In fact a lot of the OSS will make a windows box run better. Like mplayer for example. It is so much superior to any bloated heavy resource win software I have seen in use. I use windows versions of curl, wget, mplayer, audacity, etc.

Lot of hard working people making BSD happen. I appreciate this forum too.
 
I came to the "Unix World" a couple of weeks ago, and I have nothing but good things to say. The main reason I switched was that I wanted to try something new, and I had an 3 year old Dell pc just sitting around ever since I built my first computer a year ago. I wish I started using Fbsd a lot sooner because within the two days that it took to install and properly setup a working desktop I learned so much. It took 5 tries to get it right since I would end up breaking something after the install, but each time I would learn why it broke and what to do the next time. Before trying freebsd I was a debian lenny user, and I remember if something had gone horribly wrong I would get overwhelmed when seeing a black screen with all kinds of text and errors, that I would forget trying to fix it and just reinstall the entire os. After setting up my first freebsd install, I can feel comfortable editing config files and doing ANYTHING at a terminal without a gui. I can truly fix the problems I encounter, when I got an error after running "startx" a few days ago, I understood the error, edited xorg.conf and it worked! Switching to Fbsd has gotten rid of my dependency on big desktop environments in general. Since I use this as a main desktop I need some kind of graphical desktop so I can browse the web, watch movies etc., but I no longer HAVE to have gnome or kde installed to get things done (I really didn't want to bother compiling it either haha). I have the blackbox window manager, along with a nicely configured aterm...it's simple, blazing fast, and all I really need now :). Also, I'd like to say that the ports system is phenomenal.
 
Was working as a MS admin for the first two years of my IT career , as a junior i was asked to do AIX DR restores , since then have done everything in my power to never administer a windows box again !!
 
Hmm, I thought I had mentioned this before, but here it is again...

Many years ago, while visiting a friend in college (UCSB) I asked him about a big book he had. He responded, "nah, you wouldn't understand it. It's like windows." Well, that didn't go over very well with me lol. At that time I had been writing scripts for mIRC (YES I KNOW!) and needed a way to distribute them better than the free web hosts. So as I tell everyone, I literally did everything but provide the domain name and Internet service. I had a need and FreeBSD filled that need the best. I tried several linux's (debian, redhat, slackware) but fbsd was the best. I also tried OBSD, but it was a little too hard to move around in at the time.

But the experience was hard, but good and has served me to this day. The knowledge I gained is invaluable; configuring BIND for my own DNS needs (including rDNS), sendmail, apache, ftp servers, and wow, a lot really haha. But still, it's a lot!

As a matter of fact, about 4 months ago I just finished an AWESOME script (program) that does something in ~2-3 mins that would take 2 weeks before! Ah, the power of BSD!
 
I never really deleted Windows, since it's better for my desktop use.

My induction to FreeBSD began back in 2001 (I was 15 at the time). This was more of a "sneak-FreeBSD-isation" than anything else; I was chatting with a bunch of people who used FreeBSD for pretty much anything. After trying to run it on some spare hardware, to no avail, I was advised to install Linux as a starter. I was recommended to try Mandrake (Mandriva now), and so I did. I was overjoyed with the interface and how easy certain things were to do.
After feeling comfortable with this distribution, I asked 'so what do I do now?'. The answer was Slackware. That I did. I was guided along the way on setting it up, and was quite happy with it. After a couple of months, I was trying to install some software which was basically a PITA due to dependencies (I think.. I can't really remember). After certain people kept saying how easy this would be on FreeBSD, I wanted to try FreeBSD again. So I did.

The base system was up and running within 20 minutes, and... Looking at the command line, I felt lost, and were stuck. After some help, directions where to look for info, some examples... I was once again stuck. But this time, I was stuck on FreeBSD. I loved it. I've used it for home servers ever since; And it's my preferred server OS for anything which doesn't serve windows-specific applications (such as certain economic systems etc).

Right now, I'm handling three FreeBSD servers. One at home and two elsewhere. And I wouldn't have it any other way. (except maybe *more* FreeBSD servers :p)
 
For me running Windows as a desktop became a non option due to all the constant security issues, viruses, random breakage which would result in me having to move everything off the machine and reformat. Windows 7 has broken 3 times in the last year with only light use. Eventually I had to say enough was enough so I started using Linux as a desktop. Eventually the package manager begun to break repeatedly so I installed FreeBSD and have been using it for everything(including a desktop) other than games since.;). It has yet to fail me. I took it on a vacation and it worked 100% of the time.
 
kpedersen said:
Lol, that is a sure test for a robust operating system, because normally *EVERYTHING* breaks on holiday :p
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it is :). I did not expect the wireless to work as well as it did, but I had absolutely zero problems with it even with hotel wifi. Also when i got home i had discovered something has broken on Windows 7 so now I cannot surf the internet with it. It will have to be reinstalled since I really dont feel like trying to find out why. Also I recently discovered timidity works out of the box on FreeBSD whereas it would not play on Linux.
 
Hello Folks,

I maintain a XP partition for a few games.
I use sidux, a Debian sid based distro. MyBook 1T is formatted with ext3 fs for now.
FreeBSD is coming along. I just finished my KDE4, Firefox35, flac, pacpl, and a few other ports.
Firefox35 with IPv6 disabled is smoking fast. :D
I am slow to migrate.

Win - 3.1 with DOS, 3.1 w/MSDOS 6.22, Win95UG, WinNTWS, WinNT Server, Win98, WinXP Pro, VistaHE... Currently XP Pro + SP3
linux - Slackware 1st 1998... various but always back to Debian... *buntu makes for great coasters. Currently sidux
FreeBSD - didn't want KDE from a "blob", thus FreeBSD was the easiest *BSD.
 
I was 13. I had been using RedHat Linux for about a year, so for my birthday I ordered a Slackware CD along with FreeBSD from Cheapbytes. Everybody talked about how hard those two were, so of course I had to try them out. In those days it took a week to download an iso, so paying for shipping was very much worth it, and often times faster. I installed Slackware first, and that was my first real experience with the command line. A few days later, I sucked it up and installed FreeBSD and found the ports management system superior to anything else at the time. I think it was version 2.2.

I had a 486 DX4 that I took to 100MHz, maxed out RAM at 40MB, and ran KDE 1.0. I may have gotten WordPerfect working through Linux emulation, I can't remember. In those days there was some commercial software for FreeBSD since a lot of big name companies used it. Applixware had an office suite, and you could even get CDE for FreeBSD from a couple of places.
 
My first UNIX-like OS was Mandriva Linux in 2007. Before that I was a Windows XP user.
I switched to Linux because I wanted to learn more about computer science and I thought trying to learn Linux could be a good idea (and I think I was right). Also, of course, I was tired of using Windows XP, because it is bloated and was running slow on my then-old computer.
I stayed on Mandriva only for a few months and then switched to Ubuntu, which I used for about a year. After that I switched again to Debian and finally to Arch Linux which I still use today as my daily OS for my desktop computer.
I am now experimenting with FreeBSD on a eeePC 701 someone gave me, at the present time I only intent to use it as a toy and learn it, but it's possible that someday I'll switch to *BSD for my everyday OS.
 
For a long time i wanted to be a Windows System Administrator, I had a mate who works in the business and was keen to get my Windows Certifications done. After a long love hate relationship with nix/Linux (i'd never seem to understand it and would never know how to fix problems) i left it for a while until a while later i came back and i started doing some basic installs and finding my way around.

Once i got to University it became a very important OS due to most of our work requiring either Linux or Sun Solaris environment for code. After a while in this space and learning a lot about it i started to loose my interest in the way of Windows and started to love how flexible, modular, how roll your sleeves up and down to earth nix/linux way of doing things was.

Currently i'm looking for a stable platform to learn and become highly proficient in which i can see after research is the BSD family. This is what i will want to hone my skills using. I've come here to learn and become a real sys Admin. Not one of those point/click jokers.

PS. I've worked with Windows, Linux, Mac and my opinion professionally is that they all are good tools for certain people for certain tasks. If your view is anything else (Windows vs. Linux) etc your just not experienced enough of an I.T. person. If i see a good version of Mac OS X and it suits my needs i will use it. Windows or Linux/Unix alike. If you want to live in a cave and only love one OS you will really limit yourself.

Just like a race car Driver or Tennis player... Do you think if there was a better brand of Car or Ball/Racket that a player would be so stubborn not to utilize it? The skill is playing tennis not who has the better racket.

Let your skills talk. Not your OS.
 
kinda sad in NETW class in college the professor was going on about how Windows Server was more secure than Linux because the gui will crash the server if someone tries to mess with it...:stud. But I seem to remember on FreeBSD you can choose to compile xorg without the suid bit so it does not run as root ;) Windows Server was alright but id rather have *BSD/UNIX any day.
 
zspider said:
kinda sad in NETW class in college the professor was going on about how Windows Server was more secure than Linux because the gui will crash the server if someone tries to mess with it...:stud. But I seem to remember on FreeBSD you can choose to compile xorg without the suid bit so it does not run as root ;) Windows Server was alright but id rather have *BSD/UNIX any day.
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Even with suid unset X must run as root. It just gets root privileges by some other means...

As for your professor's argument, you should tell him that unlike windows, Linux/Unix doesn't need (and shouldn't have) a GUI to be a fully functional server.
 
aragon said:
Even with suid unset X must run as root. It just gets root privileges by some other means...

As for your professor's argument, you should tell him that unlike windows, Linux/Unix doesn't need (and shouldn't have) a GUI to be a fully functional server.
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Yeah the gui on the thing can be really annoying to put up with. I guess running xwrapper is better than running x directly as root no?
 
I was using windows 7 and couldn't get the damned os to stop forcing a driver install, even after editing group policies. That and someone once said "It's a sad day when you tell your to allow, instead of what not to allow." I just wanted more control and security.
 
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