My Journey to Linux: Discovery (Part 1)
Since this is my first blog post, I figured that I would do something interesting that gives background on my life, passions, and the goals I have for using this platform. Since I mostly want to write about technology in my life, I decided that I would tell the story of my journey to finding Linux and how I have stuck with it as my main operating system despite the challenges/pressures of using Windows or macOS. The idea for this post is inspired by the “Linux Spotlight” series that can be found on any popular podcasting platform as well as on YouTube in video format here: https://linuxspotlight.fireside.fm/. Please check it out as well as the rest of the Destination Linux Network if you get a chance!
First off, a little background on me: I am a soon to be husband and father of one (so far) that enjoys many hobbies outside of work, including spending time with family, audio engineering/production, playing guitar, live music, hockey, traveling, and a multitude of outdoor activities. From a scholastic standpoint, I received an A.S. in Audio Technology in 2012, a B.S. in Environmental Science in 2018, and I am working toward a master’s degree in Computer Science.
I grew up in the suburbs of Detroit for most of my life through high school, however, I have lived in other cities for various amounts of time including East Lansing, MI, Knoxville, TN, Nashville, TN, and Atlanta, GA.
After reconnecting with my now fiancée at a music festival in Western Michigan, I decided to move back to my hometown to be with her as well as return to school to finish my Bachelor’s degree. Currently, I work at an engineering firm based out of Grand Rapids, Michigan as an Environmental Technician, where my main responsibilities include data engineering, GIS analysis, CAD design, and a little bit of database administration.
You could say that I was engrossed in technology from the very beginning. This is due to the fact that both of my parents had been working in the tech sector for decades. My mom was a Systems Analyst at Chrysler for over 35 years (now retired) and my dad was a Technical Support Technician for Cray Inc. where he worked on the supercomputers at General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler. That was how they met, my dad worked for the vendor and my mom worked for the customer. My dad has been with Cray for nearly 40 years now and he currently works as a District Service Manager out of Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) near Knoxville, Tennessee.
I also have an older brother who is tightly ingrained in the technology sector. He received his PhD in Particle Physics and now works at Google as a software engineer for the Advanced Solutions Lab, primarily working on machine learning in TensorFlow for the Google Cloud Platform. He influenced me to start learning how to program (with Python) and has been a huge inspiration in my goal to become a software engineer. But, that’s a story for another time.
Now that the stage is set, I’ll talk about my history with computers and operating systems. The first computer I ever touched was our home desktop that was a Dell tower of which I do not remember the model. My first memories of using this computer are around 1996 and it had Windows 95 installed. I remember enjoying playing games on the computer, but that was about all I used it for. Remember, at this point, the Internet had not quite achieved the worldwide domination it would experience through the new millennium.
In fact, my first memories of the Internet included going to indexing sites for information before search engines ruled the web. I remember the massive debates of Yahoo vs. Google and that I was fervently on the Google side. I enjoyed the simplicity of the website’s design compared to the overwhelming Yahoo homepage and thought the search results were curated much better. I also remember when Google Images was released and how much that changed my world. Oh, and YouTube, that was such an amazing platform that I spent hours upon hours on when it first came out. Ah, nostalgia!
Anyways, at our daycare we also had two Macintosh computers, with limited access to them. I only remember playing a rudimentary Wheel of Fortune game on those computers. I was also the first kid in my neighborhood friend group who had access to a laptop computer, which was my dad’s old work computer, which was also a Dell of some kind.
I never was really too interested in the hardware or software internals of computers growing up and mostly used them as a tool to get work done or for enjoyment. However, that would all change as I moved into high school.
During the economic hardships that the U.S. faced starting in 2004, the Detroit area was hit especially hard. My parents had difficulty selling the house I grew up in so that they could move to Knoxville following my dad’s impending job transfer. Eventually, my parents decided that they would let me finish out high school in Michigan with the caveat that I would live with my dad in our new house in Knoxville during the summer so that my mom could focus on selling our house up north.
Luckily, my dad was able to get me temporary work every summer with him at ORNL so that I wasn’t sitting around bored at an empty house all day. Little did I know how much of an impact this first job would have on my malleable fifteen-year-old self.
I vividly remember walking into the ORNL Leadership Computing Facility for the first time and seeing the orange and white Cray XT4 supercomputer (code-named “Jaguar”) that we would be upgrading to XT5 architecture. My jaw dropped to the floor as I had never seen a machine of that magnitude before in all my life. I finally realized just how cool my dad actually was! Here was this massive machine that was being used by the top scientific minds in the country to tackle some of the most overwhelming problems in our world and beyond. I felt incredibly lucky to have the privilege to work on it and learn about it. It was a very fulfilling feeling to work on that machine in 2007 and those machines that followed in the summers after (most notably, “Titan”, “Kraken”, and “Gaea”).
In addition to upgrading “Jaguar”, the latter half of the summer was devoted to installing a new Cray XT5 machine that was named “Jaguar PF” (for Petaflop). At the time, it was speculated to be the fastest open science supercomputer in the world. Spoiler alert, it did indeed achieve the #1 spot in the TOP500 rankings when it debuted.
That summer in 2007 at ORNL is where I first remember seeing Linux in action. My dad would often sit at the terminal in the computer room making nonsense looking queries to the system and then come back with a sheet of failing hardware that needed to be replaced. At that point, I thought Linux was just a lightweight operating system consisting of multiple terminals and a rudimentary desktop component resembling an extremely stripped down Windows GUI. I remember thinking that it was extraordinarily boring compared to the full-featured Windows XP or Mac OS X and impossible to learn the commands in the terminal as they looked like garbled pieces of words and random letters, with all kinds of symbols strewn throughout. It appeared that there was no rhyme or reason to the commands being used and this made me realize just how smart and talented my father actually was.
However, one day my dad was troubleshooting a software issue related to the “Jaguar PF” installation along with one of his coworkers and we were at the site pretty late. Everyone had left except for us three (which meant pizza/pop was ordered for dinner!) and eventually my dad ended up telling me to go play around on the Internet via his personal work computer in his office so that I wouldn’t be completely bored.
When I got to his office, I opened up his silver Dell laptop (which would later become my own) and typed in his password. As the screen unlocked, I was greeted with something completely foreign. A dull blue wallpaper, strange, cartoonish-looking icons on the screen, a clean and semi-intuitive UI all greeted my eyes…was this some experimental version of Windows that was specifically made for Cray? How have I never seen a computer like this before?
After my dad finished up and returned to the office, I had a million questions for him after exploring this new, uncharted territory for quite a while. He told me that it was a Linux desktop called SuSE. Much later on, I would realize that I was using the K Desktop Environment, or KDE (I believe this was version 3). It’s incredible to think just how far all of the major desktop environments have come in the last 15 years when looking back at screenshots of this Linux desktop.
After he had sequestered my constant barrage of questions, I started digging into Linux the same way my possessed teenage self did with anything I found interesting, unique, or different. I began scouring the Internet, soaking up anything and everything that I could. Most of the information I found was way over my head, but I was starting to learn bit by bit. I frequented forums (though never gained the courage to post!) often and read through comments, fascinated by this alternate (and somewhat nerdy) reality.
However, after reading about quite a few people having issues dual booting their computers with Windows and Linux, I decided to stay away so that I wouldn’t lose my personal data to any weird glitches. After all, I needed Windows for school and couldn’t possibly give it up.
As normal high school life resumed, my interest in Linux waned and I almost completely forgot about it for a while. That is until…
Well, I think that this is becoming much longer than I had originally planned. So, if you would like to find out how I regained interest in Linux check out Part 2 when it arrives!
Thanks for reading! Please comment about your first experiences with Linux if you so wish, I would love to hear about them!
