My First Linux Experience

Hello Everybody,

This is an old story. But since I have started blogging only few days back, I will share this experience.

The story dates back to March 2003. My sister was doing her third year engineering. We bought our computer system only some five or six months back. I was in my second year in college. My uncle was there with us for few months since he got a new job in Chennai. My sis spoke of installing and trying Linux. I haven't heard of such a thing then. She said that it is a UNIX like OS. Since I didn't know a bit about the UNIX type OSes, I was against installing it. I was afraid that it might corrupt my new system. So, I asked my uncle about it. He told that it is a very good OS.

After few days,

I was strolling one evening I saw a magazine, PCQuest in a newspaper mart. There was the caption on the front cover, PCQLinux 2003, 3 CDs. I got excited on seeing that. I was thinking whether to buy the magazine and try installing PCQLinux 2003 in system. Returned home and asked money from my father for buying that magazine. Since my uncle was there it gave me some confidence that even if something goes wrong with my computer he will rectify it.

I went to the shop, bought the magazine and came back home. I had some sort of thrill while coming back home. My uncle started installing it as I wished. The installation started around 10 p.m.

As the installation started it threw some text in the screen which I didn't understand a bit. After checking the installation CDs it started asking things I want to install and some initial configurations. My uncle gave all those things and proceeded. It created the partitions and started installing the packages. I was surprised to see a graphical progress bar (a three dimensional one) showing the packages that were being installed. I was surprised to see the graphics level too. It had excellent graphics. Whatever I heard from my sis was that UNIX OSes are command based and hard to work with.

I sat there and watched it as the installation continued. I had college next day; So, I had to go to bed. But I couldn't resist watching the beauty getting installed there. I went to bed with no mood to sleep. The excitement was even more. What will be the system like? Atlast I started sleeping, a disturbed one with all those excitement and expectations.

Woke up at around 12:30 in the midnight. I saw the installation still continuing. I asked my uncle the reason for it. He said that there was some problem with the installation and he is running it second time. I went back to sleep.

The next morning I checked with my uncle whether everything went right. He replied postively. Booted my system in morning to check what was there. It gave me login screen after booting. I logged in after asking the password from my uncle.

My God......., I didn't believe my eyes. I saw a superb desktop with a nice wallpaper and amazing resolution I have never seen before in Microsoft Windows. I had to shut down my system as I had to catch my college bus. I was very happy.

Came back from college that evening booted my system in PCQLinux. Don't know to work with Linux or UNIX OS but wanting to explore the new beauty, I logged in. First checked the applications one by one. It had most of the applications one might use. Right from text editor to office package (OpenOffice.org). Opened the terminal started typing some command that I saw my uncle type. The fun part was that I don't know the use of the command and also couldn't understand the output. The command I tried were ls and pwd. I understood a bit ls command that it listed the files in the directory. But still couldn't understand that drwxr_x_ _x and most other things. Anyway I kept on executing those to command some 4 or 5 times. It gave me a sense of advanced user. I still laugh at my innocence whenever I get reminded of executing those commands on that day.

Even now working with a terminal, be it Command Prompt in Windows or Console in Linux still gives me a feeling that I am working on some advanced thing, even if I am running the dir or ls command. I think most of us get that feeling.

I was introduced to Linux, open source and the Gnu world. I started liking it.

Ok buddies tats all for now.

Meet you all in my next blog.

Gud nite.

Sriram ;)