Slashdot Mirror
Debian Founder: How I Came To Find Linux
An anonymous reader writes: Ian Murdock has pretty solid open source cred: in 1993 he founded Debian, he was the CTO of Progeny and the Linux Foundation, and he helped pave the way for OpenSolaris. He has published a post about how he initially joined the Linux ecosystem. Quoting: "[In 1992], I spent most evenings in the basement of the MATH building basking in the green phosphorescent glow of the Z-29 terminals, exploring every nook and cranny of the UNIX system upstairs. ... I was also accessing UNIX from home via my Intel 80286-based PC and a 2400-baud modem, which saved me the trek across campus to the computer lab on particularly cold days. Being able to get to the Sequent from home was great, but I wanted to replicate the experience of the ENAD building's X terminals, so one day, in January 1993, I set out to find an X server that would run on my PC. As I searched for such a thing on Usenet, I stumbled across something called 'Linux.'"
How did you come to find Linux?
I knew some FreeBSD guys but nobody wanted to help me install it and back then it was horribly confusing. Then I saw slackware, downloaded the A, N, and D floppy sets, and followed the prompts... and I was running Linux on my 386DX25 with 8MB of DIP DRAM, and 120MB IDE disk.
Today, Linux still wins out over BSD because it's easier.
BSD fans will tell you that this is a feature, and then five minutes later bitch about something they don't have because BSD is less popular
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"