A Linux Story

“My dad brought a copy of BSD home with him, and we sat down
together. The installation process wasn’t easy, and he didn’t want
me to try it alone. It ran! I had a window! There were little games
on it! I had this new modem thing, and I could talk to people! It
was amazing.

“I was on a BBS in 1995 and I saw this post about Linux. I had
heard about Linux before. I had seen it on other BBSs. I even heard
about it from a distant cousin. It was really popular. My 8 year
old brain didn’t really realize the importance until I was informed
that in Linux, only the kernel is maintained and controlled by
Linux developers, and that I could play with everything else to my
heart’s content. I was intrigued as I enjoyed (and still do)
tinkering with things. That was that. I downloaded Slackware and
installed it (and unfortunately forgot to back up my journal that I
had kept for 3 years [though going from 5 to 8 it wasn’t too
intriguing, but it was the first thing I ever did on a
computer]).”

Complete
Story