#Our Introductions to Unix
We had four speakers and everyone had a different story about the first
encounter with a Unix system.
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One of them was introduced at school during a C development course where they
had to compile programs using the GCC on a Xubuntu box.
At the time, this user was playing an online video game that had a console where you
could input commands, it was impressive.
The resemblance with the system attracted him, it felt surprisingly cool and
powerful.
It gives you full control.
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Another user was also introduced in an academic environment.
The campus computer labs were running Linux and that grabbed his interest.
A friend of his that wanted to help tried installing Crunchbang on his laptop.
However he messed up the installation and erased/overwrote the other partition.
Now he had to stick with it and gradually got interested in how customizable
the system is.
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Before starting university this user was part of the hacking community.
He heard of a distribution that came with a bunch of tools pre-installed so
he doesn't have to download them one by one.
After getting it installed he tinkers with the system and finds how it's
easier to write automation scripts in it.
Gradually, switching from distro to distro because of the lesser need for
pre-installed softwares and more for a programming environment.
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Back to 2000 when dinosaurs roamed the earth this user had to write a school paper.
He had to write it on his slow (relatively) hardware running Windows.
Unfortunately, one day it couldn't boot anymore.
In search for a free OS and fast solution and having heard of Unix before, he downloaded a
Unix distro and installed in on the machine.
Once running he was impressed that this could do way more than what he had
imagined. He tried a lot of things on the system and got hooked.
#Our Current Reasons
Once the transition to Unix is made it's hard to go back.
You don't feel at ease. You're imprisoned in systems where you have zero control
over your system.
This is because we are administrators and developers. We are tied to it.
The power of the command line, the friendliness to developers,
the availability of choices and resources, the amount of control, have tainted on us.
Also, because we are in the field and that trying those OS doesn't require you
to invest anything other than your time, we can fill our curiosity for our
passion of computing. It's fun, it's a hobby!
The community mindsets have changed some of our ways of life and work.
Namely, the Unix philosophy and minimalism.
The dichotomy of communities inspires freedom.
Everybody can find a community that suits their mindset.
It's different people using the same system.
The idea of freedom has inspired us as human beings.
It's our way to boycott big markets and help bring access to technology to poor countries.
By using this system we are supporting this movement.
#Conclusion
It was an interesting podcast.
Our introductions were all pretty much random.
We came from different backgrounds and we all arrived in the same place.
