Re: Why are you on a *nix desktop?

On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 1:27 PM, Aaron Bartell <aaronbartell@xxxxxxxxx>wrote:

What is your *nix story? (FYI, Using an asterisk in place of the L in
Linux is a way to reference both Unix and Linux which are very similar in
nature as I understand it. I also understand that Mac OSX is more based on
Unix than Linux. )

I've been using Linux on and off since the mid 90's. At first just as a box
to serve as file storage, and before everything was locked down, my own
email server. My first project to get the iSeries and linux playing together
was when I converted some expensive dial in work station controllers with
9600 baud modems (which we only had 2 of) into a mini ISP where you could
dial in and we had 6 whole 33.6k modems that answered and passed you through
to sessions on the iSeries. Going into work for nightly fixes almost became
a thing of the past. At some point in the late 90's early 2000's, I ran
through my first attempt at a Linux desktop. I was functional as a
programmer doing green screen work, but not more efficient. I moved to the
company I'm with now in 2001, and the first 5 years I used a windows desktop
again. In 2006 I became more involved in doing data conversion into our
system than actual green screen programming, and switched back to Linux full
time. I've been using Gentoo as a desktop ever since. All the printers I
use are networked attached and just work (Cannon's and HP's mostly) I don't
really have any other peripherals that need drivers so I don't have issues
with that. I use a Virtualbox session running WinXP for RDi, Client Access
is the native client running in a 32 bit environment (my system is fully 64
bit). I use Crossover to run Outlook. I use the native linux Zend client for
PHP. Right now my main work is directing the rewrite of a RPG medical
billing system into completely native PHP so this is working nicely for me.
I have my own test environment right on my desk. I write specs for the other
programmers in Openoffice, and I can do any of the development work I need
on either the iSeries, Linux or Windows servers that we have hosting the
various pieces.