I gave my son Interactive 386/ix Unix back in 1994, but that did not
work out too well for him.  A friend came in and helped him install
Slackware.  I wasn't paying close attention, but I think that must have
been in 1994 or 1995.  (The conventional wisdom at that time was that
nobody could install Linux for the first time unless accompanied by
someone who had already succeeded.  A sort of apostolic succession ...)

His next installation -- I went along for this -- was at the offices of
Indirect.com (Michael March, are you still out there?), one of *the* first
ISP startups in the world and most famous for having hosted the first
spammers, Cantor & Siegal.  (Indirect.com went to its knees for hours
due to the flood of outraged emails from that incident.)  The slick way
to install Linux in those days was to get hold of a Thin Ethernet card (we
had one, woohoo!) and cable yourself to another box that had the packages.
Downloading across the desk at megabit speeds, Wow!  I remember going
to some PLUG stammtisch events in the later 90's where folks were doing
the same thing.  This was before everybody had CD equipment. 

I tried to bring up Linux a number of times, most seriously in the
2000-2001 timeframe, but my old equipment and problems with X
configurations got me pretty discouraged.  Still, I kept it handy because
I am a Unix programmer and it was nice having even command-line
*nix at my disposal.

The real breakthrough was when I installed CentOS 3 and it worked.
Shortly after that my Windows 98 system was dying and a friend gave
me XP Pro.  I set up Thunderbird on a FAT32 volume so I could share
the files with Tbird on Linux, and over a few weeks my whole life
smoothly transitioned to Linux ... oh well, except for once a month
when I still need to do some chores with MS Word.

I also installed CentOS on a box at work, since we use a number of
RHEL systems there alongside our Solaris "Big Iron".  Our desktops
are Windows-centric (Outlook, Word, Excel, Project) so I keep my
CentOS box in a server closet; but I use freeNX to bring up the KDE
desktop in a corner of my XP monitor.

I was just handed two more big ol' IBM eServer P3 boxes (heavy
suckahs they are) that I'll be putting RHEL onto:  why?  The company
is standardizing on MS SharePoint Portal, but that's not where we
developers are doing our collaborating!    :-)

Major regression:  Spent $700 for a hot new WinXP box for my wife.
She uses Word 97 and MS Money, and ... The Sims 2, which I don't
think runs too well under Wine.  But I'm watching for my opportunity
to get her converted.  :-)   I sized it in anticipation of Vista, but I 
don't
think that'll ever happen.

I would like to second Alan's comments on the helpfulness and
fellowship of PLUG.  Y'all'd see more of me if I were not teaching
ESL every Thursday evening, so we meet mainly online.

Vic

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