Linux turns 33! What's your Linux story?

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I know this story was more suitable yesterday but I forgot to send the draft…

33 years ago, on 25th August 1991, Linux Torvalds made the announcement stating that he is making an OS as a “hobby”. And the same “hobby” is now being used by worlds top 500 supercomputers, the ISS and the entire internet!

It is also being used by users like us, who just enjoy using linux and do some good work on it. So what’s your linux story?

Let me share mine.
I started using linux in March 2020. The first OS I was used was Ubuntu 18.04 lts on a HDD powered 4g ram laptop because windows was running slow on it. Then I upgraded it to 20.04 which was one of the best os updates in my life!

Then my father bought a pc from his office due to lockdown which had good specs with 8gigs of ram and i5 8th gen( Thats the same pc I use now). Although it had an HDD at that time so I used only Ubuntu and Mint on it.

Then I got a SSD for my birthday the next year and started trying different Oses. I tried Zorin, Neon, Kubuntu, Mint(xfce), Manjaro and finally Pop, which I used till last month.

Then I switched to Kali because I have started some ethical hacking courses and I still use Kali.

I really enjoy using linux. Its clean, minimal and main thing is that it’s FOSS. It lets you have full control on it. There are some tasks which are not so easy to do on linux but finding the way for it to work is the best thing ever!!

So that was my linux story. Now it’s your time to tell your linux story!

Regards,
Hrishikesh.

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My Linux story is not really a Linux story, it is a BSD story.
It started at work, in a research lab. We got a minicomputer running 4.2BSD… the first really capable Unix with virtual memory and networking. A single processor at 4MHz and we ran about 6 users.
It went on to Sun workatations with SunOS, and then Solaris.
When I retired I built a 486 PC with FreeBSD. A whole 66MHz with 128Mb of ram. It was so successful I build a second one .
That lasted till about 2005, then I needed something better. We had an XP Pentium laptop, and I converted it to Debian… my first Linux . I did hepas of programming on that laptop… mostly R.
Eventually I needed something with more compute capacity to run numerical analyses. I got a custom built tower desktop with a core i7 processor and 64Gb of ram. It ran Win7 and Debian. That was about 2011. I still have it today, but I have shunted Win7 to a VM and I multiboot several Linuxes (MV, Void, Devuan)
I shifted from Debian because of some graphics card support issues… but I have since become a non-systemd fan, so I am unlikely to go back.

Why do I use Unix and Linux? Because it provides the programming tools I need, without me having to buy expensive software. I really dont care whether I use Linux or BSD or whatever, what I appreciate is open source software. Sure Linux is leading the way at the moment, and I am happy to be part of it, but who knows what the future may bring.

I have experimented with Gentoo, in a spare desktop. It is just as usable as any other Linux, especially now that they have binary packages…
I still use BSD… not in the old 486… it went 10 years ago… but in a VM.
If anyone wants to try BSD, I suggest GhostBSD… a user-friendly derivative of FreeBSD.

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Your story is very long and interesting!! Your experience in this field literally amazing!

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It goes back further into Control Data and IBM mainframes, and before that some of the early computers in the 1960’s where the only tools available to the user were a Fortran compiler and an assembler.
The computer I learnt to program on ( IBM1620) did not have an operating system .
There was a small monitor program. It allowed you to compile a program from a card deck. Then when you executed your compiled program, it took over the whole computer and had to drive all peripherals itself.
This business of having driver modules loaded into Linux is new. What happened in the 1620 was you linked all the needed driver modules into your own program. It had to run independently… there was no OS to support it.

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Happy to be part of a community with people with such experience :pray: :man_bowing:

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My Linux story starts with a NAS. I needed one, but I could not afford to buy something factory-made.
It started with an intel-Atom based motherboard, which I got for free.
I had an old PSU already, and added a couple harddisks, and it was almost ready to go.
I did not want to purchase another Windows 7 licence (that time I used Windows 7), so I tried Linux. It was Ubuntu 10.04 with XRDP so I could connect to it from my Windows machines via RDP.
I don’t remember when I started to use Seafile beside the Samba on it, but it was soon…
After some time I found, that once I connect to my server on the GUI/RDP, just launch a terminal, and do the things there. So i reinstalled my server, but without GUI, dropped XRDP, and had only SSH to which I could connect with Putty.

I believe 2 years later I started to experiment with Linux on my laptop and desktop too, but kept Windows, because I could do my work on Windows only.

Some time passed, and more and more things I could do in Linux, and I found, that things in Linux work way much faster than in Winodows on the exact same machine. So I spent more and more time with Linux, and got more and more familiar with it. I found the cross-platform alternatives which work very-very similar under Linux as under Windows, so when rebooting to the other OS and continue to work on the same dataset was painless…

Then I made a hardware upgrade for my desktop in 2018, and the new motherboard just did not have properly working Windows 7 drivers, so I needed to upgrade to Windows 10. I still could do it for free, but I hated that very much.

That time only my video work tied me to Windows, I could do everything else in Linux.

I came across Davinci Resolve in early 2019, and that time I found the most effective tutorials about it from Daria Fissoun (Goats Eye View), and started to learn to use it.
After I finished a very few caritative (done for free :slight_smile: ) projects with Davinci, I found, that I can do my video work with Davinci too, and it works in Linux too…

It was april 2019 when I ditched Windows completely, and went to full-time Linux. Since then I did not boot Windows on bare metal, but kept an instance in a VM, just in case. (All my paid software are there in that VM installed and activated, ready to launch, but I needed it only very few times, when the job was to modify something on an older project).

First I used Linux Mint, then hopped to Debian (10) Buster, since then I use Debian everywhere.
On my servers (a VPS and a home server running on Odroid HC4), as well as on my desktop/laptop computers.

My family uses the same Debian system, as I do, my wife can do her job with it, even homeoffice works flawlessly for her. My kids could do all school related stuff during the covid lockdown, and 2 of them use Debian since then…
The youngest needs Windows on his machine just to be able to play LOL.

The funny thing is, that if had the money for a Qnap or something alike, I wouldn’t be here…
:slight_smile:

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Nice…!

The drivers problem happened with me too…

Man I tried to get Davinci resolve working on my computer but it just never works. Do you know how to make it work on kali?(Cuz kali is just debian based so the solution might be similar)

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I use now Davinci REsolve 18.6, so not the newest possible.

Képernyőkép ekkor: 2024-08-26 15-33-18
Képernyőkép ekkor: 2024-08-26 15-33-181920×1080 134 KB

To make it work a videocard is needed, nvidia, or AMD.
My laptop has a GTX1050 as dedicated card, my desktop has now AMD XFX 6600 XT.
Both need some proprietary drivers installed.

If you have only integrated GPU, probably you need to forget Davinci, but I saw signs, that it has some progress with intel GPU’s, still I could not make it work.
I’ve read some reports about Davinci workin with a newer intel compute module, but I myself could not get it to work.

As for installing, I used Daniel Tufvessons work.
So tell me, on what hardware would you like to run it?
I’ll tell you about how to get working drivers :slight_smile:

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These are the specs!

image
image864×507 60.5 KB

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My story is about the same length as Neville’s. In high school (62-65), our local college held a series of introductory classes for students. Along with some of my friends, I tried computers. We wrote simple Fortran programs, punched them on cards, and then dropped the decks. And trouble-shot. And repunched. And dropped them again.

One friend and I knew where the local phone office dumpster was. We scored an old dial assembly and a handful of sealed relays (on-off-lock) and as much wire and stuff as we could carry. We built a small counting machine.

I followed the computer trail but strayed in college. Girls, you know. Picked up some of the early magazines later, in the Navy. Returned to Oregon in the 70s and discovered a busy scene in Eugene, at the U of O. Mimeographed magazines, parallel to the Silicon Valley stuff. Early calculator-inspired hardware (Sinclair?). Went to Radio Shack, the only game in town. Color 6809, TRS-80, CPM.
Joined the Air National Guard to feed the family, learned their 80-column ASCII supply system–cards, paper listings–teletype terminals. Mid-80s we got video terminals and Windows 3.1. Some of us discovered the beginnings of Mozilla and dial-up chat boards. Found an early magazine about 1992 with a CD containing live Linux distros.
Sent two kids to college with HP desktops and all the heavy hardware. Ever think about how much systems weigh? Try schlepping all of it to third floor dorm rooms. Got a system myself, began the Linux experimentation phase at home. Still Windows at work, learning Office, Excel, and Access. Imported the ASCII files (column-based) and helped transition older folks from cards and paper to screen-based improvement.
Got frustrated at home with Windows (mostly about the cost!) and phased in FOSS to save money (used the money to feed the kids). Retired in 2005, went to dual-booting. Acquired another machine to scrub and dedicate to Linux.
Scratch-built a Windows gamer–it ran Linux like lightning! Became a fan of Ubuntu.
Now the Windows machine is newer, and only contains games. All real work and valuable data goes through the Linux machine. Trying to settle on a daily driver–Fedora is fighting with Debian–and trying all kinds of live distros in Gnome Boxes. And all valuable data is immediately moved to an external HDD or a NAS.
I’m not nearly as knowledgeable or skilled as Neville or Rosika, but I enjoy assisting the new folks. Helping people avoid the problems and mistakes of my past is quite a lot of fun. So is associating with the ItsFOSS community!

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Nvidia…
Well…

Install the propriteary drivers:
apt install nvidia-driver libcuda1 libnvidia-encode1 nvidia-opencl-icd

Fusion needs libcuda explicitly there:
ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcuda.so /usr/lib64/libcuda.so

Install Davinci via the .deb created by the makeresolvdeb script
(dpkg -i davinci-resolve#####.deb)

Reboot.

Run Davinci explicitely on the dsicrete card:
__NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD=1 __GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=nvidia /opt/resolve/bin/resolve

That should work.
Note that the free version does not accept usual h264 encoded files, you need to transcode them, for that I use MJPEG 35/50/70Mbps, the bitrate I choose depends on quality requirement, and content.

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From Punch cards to modern PCs, you have truly seen the revolution of computers similar to @nevj !

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Will try in a couple of hours and surely convey how it went!

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The recype is for Debian :wink: Hopefully Kali does not differ that much and it will work…

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@kovacslt

Screenshot_2024-08-26_20_17_30
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I just closed the terminal window…

EDIT: Got some errors after that so I tried to fix broken packages and eventually clicked no.
Check this if you need:
image

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Seems your card is not supported by the prop. driver.
No milk today :frowning:

In that case I can’t help, sorry :frowning:

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Wait I have put 470-tesla for installation. Can it work after that?

Cuz I had nvidia-driver-470 installed on my previous mint and pop os desktops

EDIT: Got same error :sob:

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Try it!

You’ll still need the cuda and the opencl-icd pcakages. The nvidia encode is optional, if you want use nvenc.

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Shit :frowning:

That card is too old.
It lost support from nvidia, and nouvesu still lacks.

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Bur are you sure Nvidia stopped its support?

Cause I remember running 470-nvidia -driver with it on pop and mint and did get frequent updates.

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