Mastodawn

Pittuhau May 12, 2024

Stefano Marinelli

25 years ago today, Google was founded.
On the same day, I wiped Windows 98 off my computer, believing that Debian Linux (which I had been using for a while but still kept Windows on another partition) could do everything I had been doing with Windows until then.

Since that day, many installations of Linux, *BSD, MacOS have graced my computers, but Windows has remained, on a few occasions, only an occasional (unwelcome) guest.

In the spirit of a typical support group phrase, I can joyfully say:
'Hello, I'm Stefano, and I haven't been using Windows as my primary operating system for 25 years.'

Please boost and share your experience!

#Linux #OpenSource #OperatingSystems #TechJourney #GoogleAnniversary #Debian #MacOS #BSD #WindowsJourney #Mastodon #TechLife #GeekLife #Google #Windows

nameisnotimportant Sep 4, 2023

I'm glad that worked well for you, can I ask you how do you edit your PDFs?

Jeremi M Gosney

@nameisnotimportant @stefano Master PDF Editor works great on Linux, it's not FOSS but the license is much more reasonable than paying Adobe

Juan Camós Sep 4, 2023

Hi,

I'm Juan and I've been a non-windows user for (not so many years as you @stefano 😆) 15+ years. Now (after a nice period of #Linux) proudly with more years using #FreeBSD as my main OS.

woot woot!

chimay Sep 4, 2023

@stefano I discovered the linux world in '95 : barebones X11, sparse doc (no arch or gentoo wiki, didn't even know about the handbook), internet was young. Back then, dependency-aware packages manager didn't exist, at least on linux. IIRC, Debian changed that a few years later with apt, then Mandrake (ancestor of Mageia) developed urpmi, and now you couldn't imagine a distro without this feature.

I heard of Freebsd in 2006, but unfortunetly didn't had the opportunity to use it as much.

IAintShootinMis Sep 4, 2023

@stefano in a similar vein, in seventh grade typing class the teacher saw that I could already touch type and asked if I spent a lot of time on computers at home? I replied in the affirmative.

The next day he gave me a Memorex Kool Kolors cherry red CD with Knoppix on it. That was 2002.

Because of that moment, I'm a Cybersecurity Engineer today!

alcinnz Sep 4, 2023

@stefano I think its about a decade now for me...

I grew up in an Apple family, and had been dabbling in Linux-based systems before then. But when I found elementary OS I loved it & didn't look back. Especially now.

Professionally I still use Macs (or occasionally Windows) some, but I've got elementary OS there too.

ArneBab Sep 4, 2023

@stefano 18 years ago I decided that Apple had gone too far with TPM and replaced it with Gentoo GNU Linux.

I fell back once — after a month, because of audio-problems. But January 2006 my CD writer broke and the seller said that’s not a product problem (more than 1 year old). Instead of buying a new one, I spent twice that and my flatmate helped me build my own computer. And iMac got Linux again.

It would take until 2008 with KDE 4 that I felt at home.
There’s a blog: http://basis.draketo.de/wordpress/

Broken Apple Heart

dsp Sep 4, 2023

@stefano "Hi i'm spiros and i haven't used windows since 1997" ;) After coming back home from school one day in 1996 i found that my mom had decided to pay _someone_ to reinstall my computer with windows 95 and a thing called drivespace that "increased the available space" by compressing all the data in the partition. As you can imagine this made everything slow af. I then spent one year typing things i had no idea about until i got linux, x11 and pppd working and have been happy ever since.

jhx Sep 4, 2023

@stefano
I started my #Linux and #BSD journey in 2009 - beginning of the year.
It was fresh, new, and all around a good time - fond memories 🙂
I still use #Windows to.
But I can say one thing:
Without #Linux #BSD and #FOSS I would have never grown as a person!
I owe so much to them... so much

I'm jhx (Julian) and I'm still loving #FOSS above everything else - since now almost 15 years 😎

Use #Linux and #BSD

Fun fact: First #BSD was #OpenBSD 4.5 (Games)

Howard Chu @ Symas Sep 4, 2023

@stefano Hi I'm hyc. I only used Windows on my work PC 1995-1999 because that's how that particular company did things. Prior to that I did BSDish kernel hacking on Suns, Vaxes, and Alliant FX. At home I used Atari STs from ~1987 on. In 1999 when we founded Symas I ran a SparcStation 20 at home along with a Linux PC but my primary machine was still the Atari TT I'd been using since 1994.

I've had to run Windows on VMs when porting/testing stuff, but it's never been my primary system.

Acceleration Shark Sep 4, 2023

@stefano I've been a Linux user for around a decade, but I started off with macOS, and have sometimes used FreeBSD or OpenBSD.

Tony Finch Sep 4, 2023

@stefano when i was a teenager in ~1992 my fantasy computer was an ARM-based unix workstation … not counting raspberry pi (never my daily driver) my wish came true 30 years later with an M1 Mac, which would have been a BIG surprise to teenaged me

in between i have enjoyed using FreeBSD and Debian Linux among other free and open source unixes

and only i used windows in dire circumstances 🤓

@stefano in June this year I had 10. anniversary of full switch to Linux. I only used Windows on work machine in my previous job (2019-2022) and was shocked how much it enshittified since Windows 7 (my last before switch).

Graham Perrin May 11, 2024

Hello, I'm Graham.

I don't recall Windows being my primary operating system at any time during my three decades with an organisation where the thousands of staff do, mostly, have Windows as the primary OS.

Ludovic :Firefox: :FreeBSD:May 11, 2024

@stefano so Dos 3.3 and Prodos user until 1991.Then macos7 and atari gem then beos Slackware and os/2. Windows at works. Macosx until 2015 linux fedora since then. Considering switching nomadbsd.

Nsca mosaic on mac, then Netscape then mozilla nightly.

Paul Wilde 😺 (snac2 acct)May 11, 2024

@[email protected] probably about 20-25 years ago I started looking into using Linux, and tinkered with a few distros (Debian, Fedora, Arch, openSUSE) in dual boot set up or as VMs, to test the waters of having a system I could configure for me, not configure myself for it.
Ultimately I made the absolute switch about 15 or so years ago (Arch...btw, and servers set up with RHEL based, Debian or FreeBSD) and haven't looked back.
I still have a Windows VM which I can spin up for those times I need it, but it's pretty much just 2 uses I have for it, I can do everything else on Linux or BSD.

Of course, I still have to support windows as part of my daily work... But of course I provide solutions via Linux or BSD

Zeki Çatav 🤔 ☕ 🕯️🎶May 11, 2024

@stefano https://mastodon.social/@catavz/111265903906069265

lopta May 11, 2024

@stefano I used to triple-boot my PC but Windows wasn't one of the options: NetBSD/i386, CP/M-86 and Oberon.

Daniel Kochanowicz May 11, 2024

@stefano I had been with Windows since 3.0 at work and with my first home PC. I was at CompUSA at midnight to buy Win 95. Built servers at work installing Windows NT during the maverick days. Suffered trying to work on web applications with the endless updates of Windows XP.
In 2014, I bought myself a Macbook Pro for video editing. This machine has not crashed once in ten years. I’m retired now and will never get a Windows machine again.

François Galea May 11, 2024

@stefano I've been using Linux since 1996, even before owning my own PC.
Never used windows as my primary OS.

PunBoleh May 11, 2024

@stefano In the early 90s I used DOS on a 286, and kept trying Windows 3.x. At first I liked it, as it was a glimpse into the future... A vaguely useable technical demo of what the future might bring...
Until I saw OS/2. It was everything I thought Windows might be one day. I upgraded to a 486 and switched to OS/2 full time. Never looked back.
(Since switching to Linux I keep looking back to OS/2, though, as no desktop ever caught up with the Workplace Shell.)

@stefano I switched to Linux after having enough with windows 95 and 98. This was in the summer of ‘98