Aaron wrote:
What is your *nix story?
Here's mine: During the 1990's, being a dedicated IBMer, I used OS/2 on my
home computer. But of course, as good as OS/2 was, it was clearly not
going anywhere. I had heard lots of stuff about Linux, so when it came
time to look for an alternative to OS/2, I decided to give Linux a try.
This was Spring of 1998.
I believe my first Linux was RedHat 5.2. At the time, it was quite a
shock. My first reaction on booting up Linux was: "What the heck did I get
myself into?!?" I stuck with the steep learning curve though, and a couple
of weeks later, KDE 1.0 was released. That made a big difference. But
still, at the time, it was quite an effort to maintain a Linux desktop.
For example, to get a scanner recognized, I had to rebuild the kernel.
Fast forward to September 2007. My home computer was old, in need of
replacement, and I was still using an old version of RedHat (7.2, I
believe). I bought a new computer and signed up for high speed internet
(finally). And I installed OpenSUSE. Wow! What a difference a few years
made! I think if anyone says that Linux is not yet ready for the desktop,
they just haven't been paying attention.
Why do I prefer Linux? Like most of you, I'm a computer geek. I like all
the software development tools that come included. I like how they all
work. I like all the documentation that comes with them. And I like how
they're all available for free. The choice of software is awesome, and
trying them out is very easy.
I use Windows at work, and I occasionally use my wife's Windows machine.
Sometimes, in comparison, using Windows feels like I'm wearing boxing
gloves while using the computer. I feel that limited by Windows.
I know some iSeries people like to complain about the cryptic commands on
the command line shell, but in practice, one learns how to use them pretty
quickly. Especially the "man" command. ;-)
Regarding Ubuntu, I've played with it a bit. It is certainly the easiest
Linux to install and use. A non-computer-geek friend of mine installed it
this past Spring, and was suitably impressed. A few days ago, he told me
that he installed the Karmic Koala release. He couldn't stop gushing over
how great that release is! So no one can tell me that Linux is not
suitable for the average person!
Anyways, I don't think I have much to say about how to use Linux in
conjunction with the iSeries. Certainly, when I was involved with iSeries
development (up until 2003), there wasn't much interest in supporting
anything other than Windows clients. I don't know if anything has changed
there since in that respect.
Cheers! Hans
midrange.com
