when / where / how did you GROK "Linux / Ubuntu"?

[woodsmoke]

Without getting into the weeds of why I began to muse on this today I'll just mention when I..."later" realized that I kind of GROK Linux / Ubuntu.

It was working on the old XMMS music daemon ...not XMMS2, and fiddling with it while using #! kind of also mixed into the old Conky and....surprisingly gKrellm! lol maybe 9 years go.

so...you?

woodpeoplewithnothingelsetodostartthesethreadssmok e lol

[oldgeek]

I think the first time I really grokked Linux was when I was able to repeat a process to get my network connection operating properly in an old Ubuntu Gnome, around 2008 or 2009. Perhaps the most important step was when I was able to partition my desk without help and even erase partitions I no longer needed. Now it's Windows 10 I don't grok--and don't care to.

[GreyGeek]

Around 1999 when I started writing Bash and Python scripts to create a turnkey stand-a-lone system to roll between two phone lines to create a BBS system.

[woodsmoke]

GREAT REPLIES!!

More responses needed!!

woodsmoke

[oldgeek]

Maybe not everyone understands what GROK means (Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein).

[GreyGeek]

Wikipedia:

Grok

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses, see Grok (disambiguation).
Grok /ˈɡrɒk/ is a word coined by Robert A. Heinlein for his 1961 science-fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land. While the Oxford English Dictionary summarizes the meaning of grok as "to understand intuitively or by empathy, to establish rapport with" and "to empathize or communicate sympathetically (with); also, to experience enjoyment",^[1] Heinlein's concept is far more nuanced, with critic Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr. observing that "the book's major theme can be seen as an extended definition of the term."^[2] The concept of grok garnered significant critical scrutiny in the years after the book's initial publication. The term and aspects of the underlying concept have become part of communities as diverse as polyamory (in particular the Church of All Worlds) and computer science.

[wizard10000]

I think I only have about intermediate skills but the time I finally decided I kinda sorta maybe knew what I was doing was about a year after the last time I reinstalled Linux because I'd broken something. It's now been eight or nine years since the last time I broke something badly enough that I couldn't recover from it (with help at first, of course).

I started with a distribuion called Yggdrasil Linux in the mid-'90s. The folks here who are Real Old Like Me can remember when compiling your own kernel was *not* a choice, it was a requirement - and that kernel had to fit on a 1.44MB floppy. You didn't have to boot from the floppy, but large or modular kernels were still a bit in the future.

Maybe I mentioned it in this forum but I used to be a Microsoft MVP in desktop operating systems, which is a fairly high honor as there are only 600 MVPs worldwide and maybe 50 of us specialized in Windows desktops. Every year we got wined and dined in Redmond for a couple days, got a couple hundred bucks credit in the company store (i still have an MS-logo magic 8-ball) and your choice of either a technet or MSDN universal subscription, which was pretty cool if you ask me.

That story is kinda relevant, believe me

Anyway, after Yggdrasil I did some Slack, Debian, RedHat, Gentoo, Fedora, Kubuntu and back to Debian. Somewhere in the middle of this adventure (think Vista and Office 2007) I decided I was sick of paying for stuff that didn't quite meet my needs and switched to Linux full-time and haven't looked back.

I work in Windows so my Windows skills are still fairly sharp, but it's Linux that's caught my attention.

Sorry for the long post

edit: Forgot to stick Crunchbang between Kubuntu and Debian - that distribution taught me more about what I *could* do with Linux than any other. I ran openbox for a couple months, switched to fluxbox and stayed there for almost four years. During this time I also converted a #! installation to pure Debian - and would not recommend that choice to anyone. Getting rid of the #! packages and replacing them with Debian equivalents is not a job for the fainthearted - if I ever did it again I'd preserve the settings I wanted and reinstall

[Qqmike]

Sorry for the long post

I found your post interesting -- as far as I'm concerned, it could be longer!

[GreyGeek]

I second Qqmike's suggestion!
Wiz, were you around here when one of our admin's, Steve Riley, was regularly posting? He worked for MS for about a decade as a network security expert and traveled a lot giving talks about it. He rarely posts here now because of his new job at Gartners. The guy is a genius.

I remember yag, and compiling kernels. Actually it was lots of fun customizing config file and then compiling the kernel to suit my needs. Today's pre-compiled modules are a lot easier to install, but setting parms can be a pita at times.

When I first started running Win95 MS had a giveaway: a blue T-shirt with the IE icon on it to the first 10,000 who emailed and asked for it. It's been hanging in my closet for 18 years! But, after 5 reinstalls in four months and multiple crashes per day, I left MS for RH 5.0. Rock solid on the same box, not a single crash in four months, when I switched to SuSE 5.3 and stayed with SuSE for five years, till Novell bought them.


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[wizard10000]

Hi, GG - yeah, I do remember Steve but don't remember if it was from here or another forum he frequented. There's a name I haven't heard in a really long time

[Qqmike]

SteveR got us started here on UEFI/GPT/GRUB2-EFI/reFind. He shamed me into doing some work and basic how-to's on it, and glad he did,
https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showth...l=1#post379977
I was dragging a**, complacent with the older BIOS/MBR/GRUB2, not motivated to learn the new stuff.

Is Steve still an admin here, available if someone needed him? Still doing Linux/Kubuntu? probably getting settled into his new job.

[Snowhog]

Is Steve still an admin here, available if someone needed him? Still doing Linux/Kubuntu? probably getting settled into his new job.

Yes, he is still an Admin, although he isn't active in that role for several reasons. He hasn't asked to be relieved of the role, and we aren't inclined to do so unless he informs us otherwise. He still frequents us.

[sasha]

This post got me to lookup http://sourcemage.org/ I cannot believe that is still going. I was really into it about 15 years ago (my name should still be somewhere in credits). That and E17, both since they started. I used to spend a few days just doing the basic install. We used no binary package, other then the ones for the initial kernel compile, but then they would be recompiled themselves and then kernel would be comiled again - by the time you could say that everything on that PC was compiled using compiler compiled on that PC. Seems like a huge waste of time now, but then, it was fun.

[soundchaser59]

when / where / how did you GROK "Linux / Ubuntu"?

When I had to fix a friend's laptop that had Windows 10 on it. 10 minutes on 10 and I suddenly "got it" and told myself "I have to go check out Linux again.....this sucks!"

That was about 6 or 8 weeks ago. Even though I can get Windows from my employer for like $20 or $30 bucks, and Office Pro for maybe $20 bucks, I just don't want to keep that ball and chain on my ankle any more. Enough..... I want an OS that doesn't mind if I drive.....

[GreyGeek]

A friend of mine, who is a psychologist, called yesterday. His Win7 computer automatically upgraded itself to Win10 a couple weeks ago without asking him. I had cautioned him about this possibility so he was aware of Microsoft's tricks. The day before yesterday, when he turned his computer on, an 800+ apps upgrade came down the pipe. It started at 10AM. At 3PM yesterday it still wasn't done. Almost 30 hours. He assumed it was hung and rebooted his computer. Now it won't boot. He called me to ask for my help in recovering. Sadly, I had to inform him that I know almost nothing about Win10, certainly not enough to recover it. I gave him the phone numbers of several local computer shops.

I considered offering to install Kubuntu on his box but he needs several apps that run only on Windows. Also, bringing his hardware to my place to work on it wouldn't work because his network connection is a TW business class and it is controlled entirely by TW from their end.


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