My Linux Story...

The first time I heard about Linux I was in High School, but I can't remember how I knew about it's existence. I remember the first time I read something about Linux. It was on a GamePro magazine. They were comparing the PS2, GameCube and Xbox, they were still fresh on the market by that time. I remember that I was reading about the PS2 and the article said that you could install Linux on the HDD (yes, the PS2 had an HDD addon that 3 people bought).

In college I met a guy that was freaky and still is freaky, he's the typical nerd that you avoid. One day I heard him talk about Linux and I sat down with him to talk about this "AWESOME" Operating System, of course, he was talking about Ubuntu! I was curious of this Ubuntu thing but never gave it a try.

One evening XP starts going crazy and I was willing to get rid of it, then I remembered Linux and googled it and the first result was this site http://www.linux.org/, I clicked it. Then the site loads and my Linux perception went to the floor, because the site looked and still looks like crap. I quit my Linux research there I never went back to see the other results google gave me. Maybe I wasn't ready for Linux or Linux wasn't ready for me but what the heck did I knew about computing those days?

A few years after that event my PC died a very mysterious death, maybe the motherboard died but no one knew what happened. One day a friend of mine calls me to tell me that he was using Linux (he was an anti Linux until he saw Compiz) and that I had to check it out. So I him running PCLinuxOS with Compiz and KDE 3.5. I was mesmerized by PCLos. He told me that he was going to switch to Ubuntu. I asked him for the PCLos CD, went to my house and started to research on a PC that my cousin borrowed me about PClinux and Live CDs, Ubuntu and derivatives and my life changed forever.

I got an old used PC for $50 I popped up PCLos and I installed it without second thoughts. (To my surprise the day I started with Linux was the day KDE 4.0 was released) I knew that I was never going back to Windows and that I had to learn the ways of Linux all alone. I loved PCLos (and it still a great distro) but my curiosity grew on me and I gave Ubuntu a shot on a separate HDD. When I started running Ubuntu I had to switch immediately.

Until now I've ran PCLinuxOS, Ubuntu, openSUSE, Fedora, Knoppix, Debian, Mandriva, Simply Mepis, Mint, Linpus Linux Lite and Arch Linux. But the best is Ubuntu Hands Down, it almost aways performs as expected on every computer I've tried it on.

The best part about using Linux is that you learn so much in the process, you learn about stuff that every other OS has but you never knew about them like Desktop Environment, Graphical Server, Kernel, File systems, Boot loaders, configuration files etc. etc.

I'll never forget my first Linux baby steps and I know neither of you will forget them.

If you haven't tried using Linux and want to give it a try, start using Ubuntu.