1. I was new to Linux.
2. I made a leaflet for presentation for university non academic staff.
3. I found a bright guy who was in the minor staff.
4. I trained him for hardware stuff.
The guy who occupied the official technical slot was an idiot.
5. Numbers allowed for my presentation was deliberately limited.
6. A formal certificate was awarded.
7. This was long time ago.
8. One of the non technical (clerical and she was assigned to me) girl was allowed to attend on the request made by the chief technician. I could not refuse.
9. She went to Canada within a month.
She did not tell me that she was leaving.
My grouse was she took the place which somebody else deserved.
She only typed a single letter (by this time I was doing my stuff myself, including my Thesis) for me in nearly five months.
10. I called her and said, she cannot put me as a referee for her work in Canada.
I would give bad reference, in fact the real reference.
After this incident nobody asked any reference from me.
Outside the University, I identified three and guided them in Linux.
Two (asked them not to come back) went abroad on their own accord and the third guy Indika, now holds an executive post in MobiTel.
That is a long preamble.
Coming to Microsoft, at about the same time, I met a young (tiny) guy in Kandy who was running a computer outlet in his home coveted to sales outlet.
He used to go to Singapore and bring stuff which I used to buy at exorbitant price.
None of them (Window based) are in working order now.
I vandalized them for hardware parts.
1. He organized an exhibition in Kandy for schools so that he can dish out all shoddy Microsoft stuff.
2. He gave me an invitation.
3. He did not know, I was an Amateur Linux Guy.
I asked him to reserve a stall for me with 3 computers.
He said OK.
4. I went there on the opening day with a friend of mine.
Invited a few others none came.
There not coming save me huge embarrassment.
We could not get in until all the students were allowed.
Thinking that I have stall inside, I did not bother.
5. We went in and there was no stall for me and the guy was hiding, unable face me.
6. This was hosted in Queen's Hotel ballroom.
This is were we had the last Medical Dance.
So I went with my friend for a beer (I never take the stuff in the morning only after working hours well past 4.30PM).
7. Then we saw a few, may be six, school children ordering beer.
We chased them away.
They were bribed by this guy.
We got to know Rs.500,000/= was dished out by Microsoft to hold the exhibition.
8. Immediately, I posted a Web Piece exposing this sordid affair.
9. I became a full time Linux Guy on that day.
10. The booklet revised became my first book on Linux on Amazon Books.
It is available for purchase but there are more than five more books on Linux by me, there.
My next book "Linux Essentials" is ready for publication.
This piece is a pre-publication advertisement.
I think I would insinuate this piece in that book.
My First Computer to Intel's NUC
My basic NUC with WiFi and Bluetooth is cute.
My first computer was huge, heavy and was beast (a behemoth).
I cannot lift it BUT it's RAM is only 4MB.
It boots up with only a Floppy Drive and I cannot believe all my research work was done on it.
This may be the first research work done on a computer (earlier it was done on paper and a typewriter) in my Faculty in the University did not have a computer.
I did the some pioneering work on the network of computers (only 5 computers)
having RAM of 16MB, computers discarded from America).
By the way network does not need lot of memory and the server did provide the workload.
For my research work I used Windows 95 and Office.
For my research work I used Windows 95 and Office.
The office with bad macros could not get my paper output for publication of the research thesis and the full print out (I bought a dot mat printer and later Cannon Large printer
and still later a digital scanner from my pocket saving from UK). University had none.
They all are in working order except the dot max printer (which I threw, to the junk yard) and filling my bedroom.
This piece is about my entry into Linux distributions.
Since my paper out put was bad I used Sun Solaris OpenOffice 1 for my research work. It removed all the Microsoft Macros and I got the paper layout of my research thesis in A4 papers amounting to about 180 pages.
Then I did some research and found Debian, Suse, Mandriva, XandrOS and Redhat Boot CDs and booted them on a 10 GB hard disk.
That is my Linux beginning without a GURU but with lot of books.
I still have those Boot CDS but the computer is dead.
Multiple distributions in one PC with only 4MB Video RAM and 128RAM.
I never looked back on Microsoft again after my research work was accepted by the University.
Original hard disk was only 2GB.
I revived the computer and stuck a 80 GB hard disk and would try to install Debian on it today (only one CD) and others need at least 3 CDs for installation.
Windows had about 40 odd floppies.
Migration from HDD
(Parallel) to serial SATA was a long journey and I love the NUC with
8GB RAM and 320 SATA inside and another 320GB on an external case.
In my NUC, I have Mint (Ubuntu replacement), Debian, Emmabantus and Ubuntu installed and they are running smoothly on 18 Watts out put and without noise.
Currently it has 4 instances of Debian ONLY.
Endless OS is on my OLD ACER Laptop.
What a turn around in my life with Linux.
Beauty of Linux is Linux run on any old hardware and new hardware, too.
I tend to do this just before Christmas BUT I did it by 3rd of October, 2023.
I have three month holiday from Linux.
No comments:
Post a Comment