How did you get into *nix?

[seemingly random]

Originally posted by: PhaZe
how does the asterisk work as an abbreviation for *nix?

I believe unix appears in non-at&t documentation as *nix as a result of the copyright/trademark at&t had on unix. They had it locked down legally and jealously guarded it.

 

[Netopia]

As a strange aside, I've got a BSD machine and an AT&T Zenix machine, and on both there is a "Copyright Microsoft Corp" during the OS boot screens. Kinda weird, eh?

Joe

[CORRECTION]: It was Zenix and SCO Unix, not BSD. skriefal's post (below) made me realize I typed the wrong thing!

 

[skriefal]

Xenix was a Microsoft product, until it was purchased by SCO and became SCO UNIX.

 

[sourceninja]

I first got into linux for a simple reason, the small company I worked for had almost no money, and needed a server, we took a risk and used debian to setup a small samba server on a extra desktop we had. I had previous unix experience from working at an ISP, so the commands and structure were familiar. We went on to eventually buy a real server and decided to still stay with linux. Eventually our website, email, and just about everything else except desktops were linux.

I use linux at home because I like it. Also, I do not like the direction microsoft is going and as of yet, can not justify the purchase of a mac. I have windows vista on a partition and I feel it is a step in the wrong direction for my needs, the more I read about the next windows OS, the more I feel it's moving even further from what I need. My linux setup is exactly how I like it with great tools to get the jobs I want done. I wish there was more gaming support, but that is not a deal breaker for me, actually it makes me get the things I normally push off to game done. To put it this way, windows runs on a 250 gig drive with nothing installed except games. Ubuntu runs on a 500 gig drive, has some games and all the apps I use for day to day work. And while a lot of the tools I use exist on windows as well (firefox, openoffice, pidgin, netbeans, eclipse, awesome shell scripting (cygwin) etc) a lot of them don't (transmission, bluefish, Anjuta, evolution, gnome (god I love gnome for some sick reason), etc) I also feel that ubuntu looks cleaner and is more usable then windows.

I've tried to go back to my roots with debian and gentoo, but I've found ubuntu actually does everything for the most part the way I want it anyways, so I end up wasting my time. Plus it's easier to find packages for ubuntu that are not in the repos then it is debian (I've never needed a package not in gentoo's package manager). It's also easier to find documentation on more complex stuff for ubuntu (and easier to find bad advice, but that is another story). Plus the release schedule means more up to date software without the worry of something breaking in sid.

I've tried a few times to go back to windows full time. I even bought some software to help fill my gaps. I'm trying to get into cross platform programing now, and so I got a copy of visual studio.net 2008, but I find I like monodevelop a lot more. I tried dreamweaver, but because I never really use the design mode, I really found bluefish to meet my needs a lot better (my job is 75% php/javascript, 20% java, and the rest server management). I guess I'm just used to linux now, and I can't see paying for an OS (although my vista copy was free from work), and almost all the software I love is open source, so why not go all the way.

 

[kamper]

I had to use linux first for programming in c at university. To be honest, I'd never even heard of it and had to go to an install-fest to get my windows partition shrunk and a dual-boot set up. I bombed the first assignment because I didn't know how to get a network connection from the linux side and didn't do too well trying to move files across with a floppy

n0cmonkey first got me interested in openbsd which has been my primary non-desktop operating system for a couple of years but I use os x as my current desktop at home. At work I mostly support a freebsd-based appliance so it's way easier for me to use a *nix desktop than windows for shell scripting and ssh and such. I'd use freebsd as much for the experience as anything else, but I need to use vmware from time to time so I use debian which I certainly can't complain about. I have a windows machine for webex and another proprietary app but the apparent memory leak in the company-mandated antivirus software makes it almost unusable for day to day tasks.

 

[Netopia]

DOES ANYONE KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO n0cmonkey? I've posted this question before, but seeing references to him has made me question again... where is he?... what happened?

Joe

 

[Markbnj]

His last post here seems to have been about January 5.

 

[IEC]

Originally posted by: drebo

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Oh, PS: I HATE LINUX.

Then you're doing something wrong. =)

On the contrary, I simply prefer my dealings with computers to be intuitive, and linux at its most basic level is anything but intuitive. To try and argue otherwise would simply paint you as someone who has only ever used it as a GUI-based consumer operating system.

Actually, for a complete newbie to computers I think Windows would be less intuitive.

For example, take updates/drivers/etc... most modern Linux distros have a package manager/installer (think Ubuntu) which handles checking for updates and installs 'em all with one click. A hell of a lot simpler than hunting down crap for Windows from about 10 different sites...

 

[Markbnj]

Linux package management is sweet, and a ton more cohesive and reliable than the ad hoc approach in Windows. But to be fair, the developers who build commercial apps for Windows don't have the same allegiance to a common goal that open source software people do. It's a chaotic, capitalist market, and some do a better job than others. From what I know MS has tried to get more vendors on board the Windows Update bandwagon, without much success other than for a few drivers.