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| - There was this Suse 6.3 CD in CHIP magazine when I was in the 9th standard (2000). Since I had read about this Linux thingy and had acquired a book (Linux unleashed), I installed it onto my computer, fiddled around, learnt stuff, right from how to shut down the machine safely to configuring X. In my 11th and 12th, there was a brief break. Then, I had the good fortune of coming to IIT Madras, where several machines ran GNU/Linux. I learnt as much as I could in my free time, and became familiar with the various tools present on the system, especially those which helped with my studies.
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| abstract
| - There was this Suse 6.3 CD in CHIP magazine when I was in the 9th standard (2000). Since I had read about this Linux thingy and had acquired a book (Linux unleashed), I installed it onto my computer, fiddled around, learnt stuff, right from how to shut down the machine safely to configuring X. In my 11th and 12th, there was a brief break. Then, I had the good fortune of coming to IIT Madras, where several machines ran GNU/Linux. I learnt as much as I could in my free time, and became familiar with the various tools present on the system, especially those which helped with my studies. Gradually, when the network in IIT Madras started expanding, I found that IIT Madras has a mirror of Debian. I read about it, learnt the network install, and there was once a time when I did several installs on all computer possessing people's computers over the network, for fun. When I acquired my own machine, I decided that it was time to participate more actively, and learnt packaging for Debian. I moved on to bug fixing for Debian packages as well some minor patch submissions for some other software I use (IT++ and SciPy). After being egged by my close friend Varun Hiremath (he's a Debian developer as well), I applied to the Debian New Maintainer process, and completed the tasks assigned to me. I became a Debian developer recently, and hope to resume my contributions to the Universal Operating System.
* Share your first encounter with FOSS (Installation, setup, etc.) SuSe Linux 6.3 in 2001. I did not know how to use that black screen with a flickering cursor. Heavens I didn't even know how to shut down that thing safely!
* What lead to a sustained continuity in FOSS after you stepped in? Several factors, but notably the fact that nifty little tools gave me power. Tools like sed, awk etc. have saved me hours of effort on several occasions. Also, rock solid stability, variety of software and the freedom to actually see the source. Believe me, having the source code helps even if you aren't close to being a hacker!
* A funny instance during your initial days of computing with FOSS / computers complimentary to second question) This is dedicated to a close friend of mine, whom I convinced/forced to try out GNU/Linux with me. He became so accustomed to it that one fine day, he sits on a Windows computer and says "Hey, what's the equivalent of ls here?"! :-)
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