Hey, my name is Chris!
So, you wanna know more about my experience and what my statements are based on, huh? Ok, so let’s see.
I’m looking back at more than 2 decades of experience with computers. I got my first one back in 1996 during my high school time. My uncle gave me an old 486 of his with 66MHz. The first thing I saw, was him putting in the final parts and then installing DOS and Windows 3.11. That’s where the journey began.
Well, more or less. We had a few lessons in school before. I think it was in the last or last 2 years before high school, when we used the computer every other week. Excel still in DOS and Word already in Windows 3.11.
I’ve spend a lot of time with this thing. Which affected my school time negatively. Nonetheless I started learning about the operating system itself. And given I had two classmates that already had a computer and were into coding, I did learn the basics too. Back then, the name of the game was Turbo Pascal and a little bit of C++. I’ve heard about Lisp but didn’t get into it.
Given one of my two already small hard disks soon kicked the bucket, I had to learn about performance optimization and minimalism. So, looking deeper into the operating system’s inner workings was not only interesting, but a necessity too. On the other hand, a new hard disk, an upgrade to a 133MHz Pentium and Windows 95 followed.
Actually, a lot of people hated Windows 95 back then. But given I was not afraid of the new and quite curious, I just gave it a try and played around until I got what I needed. Next to school I had a job too. Working with an IT student, I got to know her. Turned out, my 133MHz Pentium booted faster (28 seconds) than her 600 or 650MHz PC (58 seconds) back then.
In 1997, barely a year after my start with the 486, I had a new classmate, who lived in a student residence, together with some IT students. Visiting him, I came across Linux for the first time. So, he gave me a copy of SuSE 5 (5.1 I think?). He said, he’s gonna bring me the manual tomorrow, since I’m not gonna make it through the installation without it. Well, he was wrong. To his suprise, the very next day I had it on my PC. Dual booting with Windows. No Internet. No manual. No prior experience. Just a bit of common sense and trial and error.
On the other hand, to get the GUI up and running, I not only needed the manual. It has also cost me like 3 days to find the according settings. That was the beginning of my Linux journey.
At that time I was kind of a student. My father just shook his head, coming home and seeing me once again installing Windows 95, for the third time this day. But years later that should lead to me maintaining pretty much all the PCs around, with only few exceptions.
SuSE back then was actually very stable and more reliable then Windows. A friend tried and liked it too back then. But there were quite some things missing. So, dual booting and using Windows next to it was a necessity. Nevertheless, I used Linux more then Windows at that time and for some years.
Unfortunately, after that I needed tools in Windows more and also had some trouble with my hard disks. Along with that came the lack of spare time and the usual problems. So, I had to can Linux for the upcoming years to spare some time.
Moving on with Windows only, at some point I’ve installed Windows from scratch on the notebook of a regional director of the company I worked for back then. Of course in my own style. Impressed with the setup, in a meeting in front of all employees he stated, that his notebook is now running better than new.
Also back in 1996 I created the first website. Back then with framesets. So, in the upcoming years I learned a lot about business, online marketing, SEO and about creating websites. Around 2010 I’ve sold used car parts. I just had a few cars for spare parts for my own car. But the according website was well known and I had customers coming from the other side of the country to pick up parts. Soon ranking at the top of the Google index and in some cases even higher than Wikipedia, it easily went ahead of all competition. I did the same for a former friend and specialized mechanic. His website did almost as well and he too had quite some success and customers from it. Together with one regular customer he even created a business.
Creating websites also required a local WAMP stack. I also installed my first server, to access it not only from my home network, but also from the residence where I lived, while I became a certified machinist. The server back then was based on Windows XP and primarily a FTP server. It also has a WAMP stack on it and simple file/directory access options. I also attended a computer aided design class for AutoCAD and Inventor. I’ve put together a new PC, which after more than 10 years is still up and running with still the first setup and Windows 7. After almost 30,000 operating hours on the system hard disk.
Some years back I decided, it’s time to go back and try Linux once more. By that time, Linux had evolved a lot since the 90’s. After testing more than 20 distros, Ubuntu Mate came out as a clear winner. Next to that, I though I could try Arch for the learning experience.
Well, Ubuntu Mate was ok for a while and a few friends switched too. However, after a while it showed some problems with upgrades. Also, Arch turned out to be the better option. Better performance, more options, not changing the system every few months.
Coming back in a time of broadband and multimedia, within less than a year I’ve learned way more about Linux than I’ve ever known before. I created 3 separated home networks. Four actually. Also, part of the learning experience was the transition to tiling window managers. Awesome first, followed by I3. Which is what I use daily today.
Next to that I also got a number of Raspberries. In the beginning I barely knew, where I was going with them. But after testing a few, the ideas came pooring. Meanwhile I have like 10 of them in regular use and some running day in and day out. I use one as a media player, next to many headless servers for all kinds of stuff, like print server, DNS caching, NextCloud and so forth. And I still have many ideas and always a few spare devices lying around to build the next stuff. And of course I’m always in search of more 😉 Based on that I’ve set up a remote server. And I’ve also installed Arch on a bay trail device. A few months back I’ve set up a home network with no less than 9 devices, including a data server with backup.
Being back in Linux, I also went back to my interest in coding. So, for some time I did look deeper into Python. I’m also interested in learning about C, Lisp and similar. However, so far that didn’t happen, since it would get me nowhere at this point. However, Recently I started learning about cross-platform development. And that’s the path I’m following right now.
I did look into Java briefly. However, I’ve never been a fan of Java. After freshing up my knowledge on HTML, I did look into creating plugins for Chrome. Sadly, that implies JavaScript. Again, not much of a fan. But same for cross-platform development. so, JavaScript is what I’m looking into right now. Or ES6 right now, to be precise. Followed by Node.js, likely Express, certainly React and ReactNative and intended, also ClojureScript. That’s the current plan anyway.
A while ago I started answering questions on Quora. After only a few months I was most viewed writer in the categories Linux, Linux Distributions, Ubuntu and Arch Linux at the same time. And huge part of this was an answer of mine on “How to spot a beginner Linux user”, which received more than 50,000 views. Pretty much all of them in less than a month.
At some point another user thanked me for another one of my answers and asked if I had a blog or a Youtube channel. I though about creating both for a few years. In fact, I prepared this domain back in 2016. So, given my former experience, the blog was the more likely. And here we are right now. I decided to finally move on with the idea. So, I hope it will help you and answer a few questions for you 😉
See you around!
Chris