What got you into UNIX/Linux/BSD?

atmosx said:
Wow this one was a new one for me also! That's a bit strange because around 2002 I was part of a "crew" of sleaze little kids. I was making interviews for a website so, one of my virtual hosts was ESR. Other people I interviewed were mostly famous by nicknames...

Lame days, it was fun though. Thanks for the story!
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The original "Hacker's Dictionary" book was put out in the 80's which had the definitions based on students jargon used at MIT AI labs. The original authors where Guy Steel, RMS, et al. ESR picked it up later.

drhowarddrfine's definition is correct. I believe he might have been a part of that "crew" as you call it. Most certainly he's been programming and hacking longer than you and I. His definition is not "retarded"... It's not some film industry's fantasy definition nor a journalists over-sensationalized hype of the script kiddies and dilettante's which only pretend to be.

If you want to be a hacker. Start here. Even Raymond put a paper together which defines what a hacker is and is not. If I find that I'll post a link.
 
UNIXgod said:
The original "Hacker's Dictionary" book was put out in the 80's which had the definitions based on students jargon used at MIT AI labs. The original authors where Guy Steel, RMS, et al. ESR picked it up later.
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And the so-called jargon file was floating around in various places before the book came out. I can't remember when and where I first saw it (probably the 1981 DECUS version), but I remember being amused when I saw the book in a mall bookstore.
 
The topic is drifting, but I'll throw in my two bits.

I was a graduate student at Berkeley when 4.1BSD transitioned to 4.2, and then to 4.3 (late 1970s to mid 1980s). It was impossible to avoid. There was the IBM mainframe, of course, but nearly everyone used the VAX 11/780s and 11/785s that ran BSD. The philosophy students turned in papers formatted with nroff, and the campus actually had a C/A/T phototypesetter that turned out wonderful type with troff and friends. The development environment was wonderful too.

Though I was a student at Berkeley, I was employed through Lawrence Berkeley Labs (now LBNL) -- they had VAX 8600s and fast Imagen laser printers that largely were unknown outside the most geeky of circles.

I got used to the standard Berkeley file layout -- other than /home it has not changed -- and the standard utilities that come with BSD. Linux never seems to have those, and having a standard userland is important to me.

FreeBSD (and the other BSDs probably too) feel like home, and when vi, awk, sed and the standard utilities are hard-wired into you fingers without all of the weird and verbose options simply it feels comfortable and like it should be.
 
UNIXgod said:
...Of course your a real programmer if your name is Mel:
http://catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html
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UNIXgod said:
It really is a classic. I'm glad you enjoyed it. Here is the wikipedia page. It has the link to the original usenet posting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_Mel
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The story of Mel starts with:

A recent article devoted to the *macho* side of programming made the bald and unvarnished statement:

Real Programmers write in Fortran.

Maybe they do now, ...
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Some people do think that this is the reply on the other classic article about Real Programmers. And that one even gives us some deeper insights about Real Programmers and UNIX.

In 83, when both articles were written, I learned FOTRAN and Pascal in university courses. I bought my first computer in 1984, and it was a Mac 128k, and later on, I programmed for it in FORTRAN, Pascal, and C. I did the switch to Unix, together with Apple, switching from Mac OS Classic to Mac OS X in the early days of the new millennium.

I use Mac OS X on the clients and FreeBSD on the servers. Nowadays, I do every programming in C (client/server) and Objective-C (client).
 
UNIXgod said:
The original "Hacker's Dictionary" book was put out in the 80's which had the definitions based on students jargon used at MIT AI labs. The original authors where Guy Steel, RMS, et al. ESR picked it up later.

drhowarddrfine's definition is correct. I believe he might have been a part of that "crew" as you call it. Most certainly he's been programming and hacking longer than you and I. His definition is not "retarded"... It's not some film industry's fantasy definition nor a journalists over-sensationalized hype of the script kiddies and dilettante's which only pretend to be.

If you want to be a hacker. Start here. Even Raymond put a paper together which defines what a hacker is and is not. If I find that I'll post a link.
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I'll try not to rip off my face with a spoon(yet)… but this entire conversion seems utterly stupid to me because the definition as the jargon dictionary has it, is completely vague and can fill up a huge variety of totally different skillsets:

So apparently the FreeBSD developers core team are hackers, Linus Torvalds is a hacker and "spender" is a hacker also. Noir and aleph1 are also hackers, but nmav (gnuTLS dev) is also a hacker. Chris Demetriou is a hacker and ESR is a hacker also. Phrack author's are hackers(?), probably yes.. They are "computer enthusiasts" by all means...

- Most of them know a couple of programming languages
- Love computers
- Think out of the box

Is Theo De Raadt a hacker probably yes. Are the guys behind countless open source projects hackers? Mplayer, awesome, X11, awk(?) … hell yes!

Also look at No6 definition, I'm a computer enthusiast, am I a hacker because I can type 3 commands on a terminal and crack WEP wifi networks? For you hardly, wanna ask my friend who's approach to computing is the toast machine what he thinks of me? That I'm a computer genius...

Let's fly over to the "cracker" thing: The word cracker: as "drhowarddrfine" user define it, probably from here is the one who breaks into a security system. But what if the guy who breaks into a computer system, has written his own exploit, is capable of hiding his traces much better than others because of his deep understanding of a specific system let's say FreeBSD, etc. Does that makes him a hacker or is he just a cracker?

So the entire security-wise computer community are crackers. And the guys who find computer vuln's and write exploit code are crackers or hackers? I wonder if you have to be a hacker in order to write an OpenSSH 3.x Challenge-Response Buffer Overflow. Maybe not, maybe you're just a lame cracker who gets an awful lot of money for what he do, which is technically 4 times harder.

Are the people who reverse engineer compiled binaries hackers? Of course their motivations are not always sane or purely intellectual. Some times huge amount of money are involved but are they hackers?

Is Mark Zuckemberg a hacker?

Are the people behind stuxnet hackers?

Is the guy behind the 1st 3D-printer a hacker?

Are the F1 Ferrari team engineers hackers?

Is Kevin Mitnick a hacker?


It all depends on the perspective you put it. The definitions of the Jargon file are vague and that's why people, mainstream people and count me in that block, dislike using them. Makes the conversation turn from interesting to pedantic/idiotic without any apparent gain.

I'm pretty sure you understood what I've meant when I wrote the word on my first post…
 
My first contact with computers was on DOS (IBM/PC and various clones) near 1987. I bought a x86 clone in college but the Win95 fiasco bit me hardly : I had to reinstall about 20 times Win95 on my 486 because of problems with drivers, instability, etc. I began to search for alternatives and I heard about this non-windows/free OS Linux! First contact was Redhat (near 1997). I like it but I was still too much "infected" with the Windows way of computing (interface/settings/etc.) to appreciate the beauty of UNIX-like systems.

In 2003, I had an opportunity at work to explore Linux and I dig more deeply into it. After installations of various distributions, I choose Debian for a couple of Web/files servers and everything went well. From time to time on sysadmin newgroups, I noticed mentions about the BSD family of OS and it caught my curiosity. I setup a FreeBSD test server and I immediately fall in love with the thing! That was exactly what I was searching for all the time : clean layout of filesystem, clean separation of base vs ports, extensive documentation, relatively conservative evolution and introduction of features, focus on server features, testbed for various research papers on OS, etc.

I think that having been exposed to various OS before being introduced to FreeBSD and OpenBSD have help me to fully appreciate the beauty of the BSD's.
 
atmosx said:
I'm pretty sure you understood what I've meant when I wrote the word on my first post…
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You still don't get it. You're insulting the people who don't break into stuff by lumping them into the same group as the people who do.

Cracker is a subset of hacker. The difference is one does things with those skills that are immoral/unethical.

When people can't tell the difference between the two, normal hackers start catching hell for the things crackers do.
 
ChalkBored said:
Cracker is a subset of hacker. The difference is one does things with those skills that are immoral/unethical.
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I enjoy cracking DRM software (I maintain devel/radare2 which is good for this type of thing). So I guess I am a cracker.

However, I don't think this is the same thing as a hacker (ethical or not).
Hackers often are required to analyze binaries to see if there is a flaw they can exploit to gain access to a running daemon etc... They probably wont modify the binary so perhaps this is where we can draw the line?

An ethical cracker... I guess I can't quite convince software studios that removing their DRM is for the good of the people but as long as I don't share or sell my "hackz" then I don't see anything wrong. I am simply customizing my software (to work on a desert island with no internet connection).

In other words, people can be arses regardless of their chosen profession / hobby lol.
 
ChalkBored said:
You still don't get it. You're insulting the people who don't break into stuff by lumping them into the same group as the people who do.
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I don't have the intention of insulting anyone. I'm really sorry if you or any other user/group feel offended, I can assure you that was not my intention.

ChalkBored said:
Cracker is a subset of hacker. The difference is one does things with those skills that are immoral/unethical.

When people can't tell the difference between the two, normal hackers start catching hell for the things crackers do.
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Personally, I can not imagine any real case scenario where a person would be in the position which you describe. Usually people who are in (really small in numbers) fields or groups who could be insulted by such distinction have the culture (and the good sense I guess) to use the terms a bit more strictly. But not necessarily in the way you mention.

Read here. The definition you give of the word, doesn't comply with wikipedia or even with theJargon dic.

In point '8' there's a description of a cracker which goes much closer to what most people would call "script kiddie" (or used to call, can't tell for sure anymore).

I don't think anyone would call Stealth a 'cracker' because Brad Spencer disclosed that he was able to "get root" in to a SELinux system.

Oh wait, there we're again, is this guy a hacker or a cracker?
 
Engineering School

In 1996 I had a Gateway 2000 that I had bought the previous year. I was working full time as a tradesman and going to school part time for mechanical engineering. I had learned over that year enough about Windows 3.11 (and Microsoft Bob :) )to get email from AOL, write papers, play games, but still had the feeling that I was basically computer-illiterate. I was 32 and even teenagers typically knew more than I did about all this computer stuff.
In my school's engineering labs, all the work was being done on UNIX. If I wanted to become an engineer, UNIX was what I needed to learn. I was a little miffed that my expensive PC was useless for this purpose. Until another student told me that there was a version of UNIX that ran on PC's called "Lynex or something like that". This comment led me to get the Slackware '96 CD's from Walnut Creek. (I still have them :)) Soon after I was using Linux as my desktop and laptop operating system. Maybe it was just because I enjoyed the challenge of it that I stuck with it. (Setting up a printer for the first time in Linux in '96 as a newcomer, I found that ghostscript was about as user-friendly as a rabid bear, but Hey it Works!).
Since then I've used Suse, Redhat, Debian, several flavors of Ubuntu, and several times built Linux from Scratch systems.
Only a few months ago I thought I'd dive into FreeBSD and see what this is all about. I installed FreeBSD Release 9.0. It feels a little bit like Slackware did back then. Most things work fine, but a few things are just enough of a challenge to keep it interesting.

P.S. I'm now a Professional Engineer and at work all day everything is done on machines running Microsoft Windows. It's good enough for work, but I don't use it on any of my personal computers.
 
Long story made short, I'm old Amiga user and liked system quite much, after my trusty old A-500 got a little bit old, I changed to PC-compatibles. Used Dos/Win9x/WinXP/WinVista/Win7 (still use that one for gaming), but I never felt comfortable with MS products, and longed for something different. Then in 2008 local computer magazine, MikroBitti had Ubuntu on itsubsriber DVD, and I tried it, used only little with my old Athlon machine. After getting new machine, I went on with Vista, until 2010 I installed Ubuntu 10.04 and started using it as my main os. Early in 2012 I tried FreeBSD 9.0 with virtual machine, and then with real install, but did not like workload needed to make it as usable desktop system. Little after first experiments with FreeBSD I found PC-BSD, and installed it, nowadays I'm using it as my main os, make some experiments with it and try learning about underlying FreeBSD. Maybe some time in future I try the real thing again, as PC-BSD shallowed the needed learning curve quite much.
 
After being away from the Linux world for almost ten years it wasn't easy going back in yearly 2011. Compared to what I was used to, most major distributions now seem to have a strong desktop orientation, graphical installers, Gnome as the default dm, a multitude of unnecessary components installed by default (PulseAudio!), lacking documentation and more than anything a development pace that is so high that you can't be sure that anything will stay the same for any period of time. I actually found FreeBSD by googling for something like "stable unix alternative to linux" and have in every aspect been impressed. :)
 
It just works so well, since everything is consistent and well documented, I've actually been able to learn this system.
 
When I was 14, a friends cousin called him self a hacker. He typed fast in some sort of command shell (Linux I think) read about C programming in bed. He didn't really tell me anything, but inspired my to search for information on my own.
I've never been the gamer kind of type, although my brother invited me to play different amiga games at the time we had one at home. I have a great history of destroying my fathers computers though, mostly by removing different files and see what happened :D
It's interesting to think about why in the first place. I think structure and knowledge has always made a big impression on me.
I've been taking a vacation for a couple of years to get in depth knowledge about horticulture and sustainability. But it cannot really replace this world for me, so I'm back and inspired. Next project is to look up on python and re-learn funny mathematics by using C and ncurses/SDL.
 
I first installed a PC version BSD back in the pre-FreeBSD era, I think it was called 386BSD. I also used early Linux 0.98 distributions like "Yggdrasil".

My first Unix experience was IBM AIX and other Unix mini/mainframe/workstation Unix versions when I was at University, in 1989. I immediately loved Unix, and Usenet. I spent hours in news-reader programs reading and posting on "comp.*" newsgroups, and in those days, there was no "Web" but the Internet was already awesome. I discovered FTP and open source, and I spent a huge amount of time logged into Unix systems from my 80386sx-based computer running DOS. I used a terminal program (Telix) and a modem to dial into the Unix systems at the university. It was amazing.

I'm a professional Windows developer these days. I don't hate Windows, and I don't hate Linux, but I do like FreeBSD a lot. I like the Ports collection. I like the fact that if the world were to be set back to the stone-age, one person with a computer and a complete Ports collection would have the complete power of the computer-age all present on their computer. Please remember to back up a complete copy of your favorite FreeBSD release onto your own local mirror, before the world ends and the internet melts, please. :) Just kidding.

But seriously. FreeBSD is really, really amazing. When you realize what you've got in your hands, it's a fantastic feeling.

Warren
 
wpostma said:
I like the Ports collection. I like the fact that if the world were to be set back to the stone-age, one person with a computer and a complete Ports collection would have the complete power of the computer-age all present on their computer.
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This is almost my number one reason for using FreeBSD. The software lifecycle is managed independently to a large central repository such as the Apple app store, Fedora's yum, Solaris 11's IPS. These are all examples of bad solutions.

So when the nuclear bombs start falling, I can retire to my fallout shelter whilst still compiling all my favourite software (after archiving the distfiles of course ;)
 
kpedersen said:
This is almost my number one reason for using FreeBSD. The software lifecycle is managed independently to a large central repository such as the Apple app store, Fedora's yum, Solaris 11's IPS. These are all examples of bad solutions.

So when the nuclear bombs start falling, I can retire to my fallout shelter whilst still compiling all my favourite software (after archiving the distfiles of course ;)
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Make sure its EMP proof.;)
 
It was, primarily, being fed up with Windows. I wanted to get rid of it, so I got a Mac. While using OS X i developed a big interest for hard- and software, and soon I knew, the Mac was a bad idea. I sold it and bought me a new PC, on which i soon installed Ubuntu. And some months later, I migrated to FreeBSD. :> Nothing special, I'd say.
 
I'm eighteen now, I used Linux since I were fourteen or fifteen so really not that long ago although it feels I have been on BSD for years. I've only been on FreeBSD for just over a year and Debian for all the time beforehand. My dearest mother bought me a computer magazine once because there was no Karrang ones which is usually my preference. It's about the rock/indie rock and heavy metal music channel on television. This was back when I used to watch television but anyway, there was a double sided disk in this magazine with mint on one side and ubuntu on the other.
 
Started off with Ubuntu in 2006 and then went to Fedora then Arch Linux and now I am curious about freebsd FreeBSD :)

Reading up on Linux based distributions vs freebsd FreeBSD and wondering if I should make a switch :)
 
Awesome stories.

My dream programming environment has always been unix systems.

However as to why BSD I would say the major reason I made the leap to FreeBSD was Slashdot. Years of reading that site has shown me what a nauseating ideology GNU was and what a bunch of monumental douchebags adhere to it.

I should have tried out FreeBSD years ago. So far the worst I can say about the FreeBSD community and developers is that it is obviously focused more on the server side of computing and that there simply aren't large numbers of people doing work on making FreeBSD a straight from default install desktop workstation. The BSD philosophy of focusing on writing well engineered code that is useful for yourself and hopefully others is very appealing over the 'demand you kiss my ass' GNU mindset and its Orewellian doublespeak about 'freedom'.

Now that I have a tablet for the past year a good deal of the things I use to do on my workstation I do on my tablet. That has made sticking with FreeBSD much easier since all my workstation needs to do is provide good development tools. Which FreeBSD does better than any other unix system right now. Having clang/llvm as the default compiler is the best part. It is amazing to see the clang/llvm community absolutely explode in development thanks to the modern and modular design all free from crippling ideology. And it just reinforces just how badly open source compiler development was held back by poisonous ideology with gcc.
 
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