Scott --sidewalking-- wrote:
All, I am new to the Linux world and have settled on Debian as my winning horse for learning Linux, to the best of my abilities. The talk on this list is a little out of my comprehension now, as I am so new, but I am still taking general ed classes in college, and am hoping I can survive the math classes to pursue a CS degree. There is aclass or two on Unix essentials or Unix internals, but that is all. Some programming, of course, is involved.I wonder if all (or most) of you are in similar careers and that is why you are so proficient with compiling and testing and tweaking all of this stuff. Or is it just a hobby that has gone on for so long that you have advanced your knowledge of Linux/Debian to these levels that all of you are at? Just curious...
I first encountered computers during my Physics degree in the early seventies. This was in the days of teletype and punched cards. I was hooked! Eventually I became a Science teacher but ill health caused by stress forced me out a couple of years ago. (My concentration still suffers, but people on the list are very tolerant of my more confused contributions!) At the time I was also managing the school's network, building Novell servers and i386 PCs running windows 3.0, NT3.5, NT4 and eventually 2000.
I put Debian on my home PC just over a year ago and I have never looked back. It was a bit of a challenge but very rewarding. It gets easier and more interesting as experience increases with time. I am not a hacker but I can read documentation. I got some useful help from the Newbiedoc project (http://newbiedoc.sourceforge.net/) so I have made a few contributions there.
I think that history will see free software as one of the great human endeavours. Free software development is under threat though. For instance, the European Commission is being led towards US-style software patenting by the BSA (of which Microsoft is a member). Linux users in Europe are beginning to make their voices heard - hopefully not too late. There are a number of campaigns. The Free Software Foundation (Europe) has a UK mailing list at http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/fsfe-uk.
Glad you are enjoying Debian. Cheers, -- Chris Lale <ctlale@coolscience.co.uk>