5 years as a GNU Linux user, is it a different experience in North Africa ?
GNU Linux gave me a great social experience, and i want to share it with you.
DataSeries highlight:
- A brief story of the usage of GNU Linux and the discovery of its true potential.
In this story, i am NOT going to introduce Linux, GNU or any GNU/Linux products or services. I am going to focus on the actual social experience for users, especially teenagers and young programmers [ 17 .. 27 ], in North Africa.
For those who are not born in this region, ‘Linux’ is a synonym of ‘Hacking’ at the time (2014) for young geeks and teenagers who didn’t really know, studied or understood the magic behind GNU Linux.
How it all started ?
Tunisia In 2014, Sitting in front of my old Versus desktop computer, it had 1Gb of Ram and an Intel Pentium E2140 processor (1.60 GHZ). A friend came to my place with a 8 Gb USB and a Kali linux burned within :
This ‘Program’ can actually hack facebook accounts ! Let’s give it a try. — he said.
We were not aware at the time of the true potential, nor the reality (in technology perspective) behind GNU Linux, watched together a tutorial in youtube, it was a demo on how to start Kali linux in Live mode.
It was a strange land, as i was mainly a windows user since my first interaction with a Pc, Kali was weird and amazing in the same time. After we knew that ‘Hacking Facebook’ was a lie, i gave up on it, but that was not the end..
Computer Sciences bachelor in college, going deeper.
As i chose to take a fundamental computer sciences degree, i studied how OS works, and to do so, starting my first year in college, i needed to install a fresh Ubuntu 16.04. This is where things were starting to be more interesting.
I first learned how to use basic terminal commands, then i started asking questions while comparing it (ubuntu) to Windows. Looking for similarities and especially how to make this ‘new’ OS familiar to my old Windows 7 (which is not very useful by the way), and therefore getting used to it.
The awkward thing about it at the time was my colleges complaining about Ubuntu and how they were describing it :
Why my games can’t be installed ?
Old piece of software, no one is using by now.
We are in 2017 ! Why using terminal, it s so hard.
Where are the .exe files, C: directory and why can’t i install Microsoft office ?
My colleges questions were not valid to me at the time because i already wanted to customize Ubuntu to look like my old windows 7, but that’s it ! I was telling them hundreds of times, it was not supposed to behave like windows. Try exploring it, look for forums, documentations and explore their great community.
The common belief was divided in two opinions : young geeks thought of it as an only-pen-testing tool which can satisfy their purpose to hack social media accounts, and others similar ideas saying it’s an ‘Old piece of software’ comparing to Microsoft’s OS.
Ubuntu variations and MX Linux: GUI is the entrance.
After hearing my colleagues reviews, and not being convinced by them, i decided to start a lonely road with some colleagues to discover Gnu Linux starting by a close look-up on different desktop GUI environments (Xcfe, KDE, GNOME ..) then we installed every package we faced online, we understood some of its purposes, others were not that clear.
To solve some of the gaming problems we faced WINE, which is a great tool to install and run some windows tools and packages into Ubuntu environment, which we needed to install games (DirectX ..etc). By then, Steam launched its Gnu Linux based version and all our problems disappeared.
Meanwhile, we met some other friends who believed in Gnu Linux potentials and exchanged experiences, which was the core for an idea.
Free Software Club: University of sciences Monastir, Tunisia.
My colleagues, who became friends, and i founded a new club in college called “Free Software club — FSM’’ in order to promote free software disciplines and spirits, Gnu / Linux included.
We managed to make an install party in university for Ubuntu 18.04, Python workshops, Gimp workshop and exchanged a lot of knowledge between all 51 different members.
Today, our club contains some of brightest students and professors in the university. Also some ex-students are helping us reach our goals which one of them is showing young pupils and students the great potential of Gnu Linux.
About the author : Ghazi Tozri student at FS Monastir university, president of free software club Monastir and junior mobile developer.
For donation : ko-fi.com/ghazitozri OR patreon.com/ghazitozri
