## Time Line

- 1996 PC (Windows95, just public access)
- 1998 TI Calc (Got interested in its Basic)
- 2003 VAX at university, PC (Windows XP, with full access)
- 2006 Debian at university
- 2007 Ubuntu till now. Still trying some other distributions from time to time.

At work, company endorsed some systems:

- 2008-2012 OpenBSD server (Replaced later with FreeBSD, ~2014)
- 2012-2013 Debian KDE Desktop (Kind of legacy from an acquired product line, Migrated to Windows ~2015)

## Long Story

I heard about PC's but couldn't have access to one till 1996, when cybercafes appear to the public which were using only 56Kbps phone modem.

I'm still remembering the fun when we had lost connection, and everyone lift their heads up and looked at the admin waiting for the reconnecting tone like [this one](https://soundcloud.com/jerry-berg/56k-dialup-model-connection-sound). If it failed we looked at each other, who has patient to wait next trial! Few people left .. for the best to get better bandwidth share.
 
I was 9 and my country was in a civil war, empty pocket and 1 hour was very expensive. I didn't care much about system, all i do is 15-30min per week downloading electronics related stuff for hobby circuits.

My head was still in a box regarding OS's, only when I joined university on 2nd year, 2003. For Pascal lab sessions, I faced that octopus machine called VAX with that 80x25 orange text terminal, wow... so there existed some other systems other than Windows. Then I met a teacher who was a Free Software enthusiastic, teaching C++ and Data Structures for 4th year class, 2006. He setup all lab machines himself, Dual boot with Debian, one machine was including a local repository. I was impressed, Debian was around 9 or 10 CD's. He was also able to convince manager of central library to install Debian on ~40 PC's, they were facing Windows viruses and couldn't afford anti-virus license.

My teacher advised me to use Ubuntu because it was easier to install, configure and get basic things working on vanilla install with 1st boot. Or try Live CD to check hardware compatibility, because it was really a down point for GNU and Linux at that period.

2003, my sister got a PC home as prize for high school achievement. From that time, I was reinstalling Windows XP every 2~6 months, due to Viruses and Abnormalities, Lost of control.  I received Ubuntu 7.04 CD in 2007 and started making dual boot on every machine I had some control on it, single boot on my own.

2008, Back to dual boot due to limited software support related to work and weak support of 3D graphic adapters.

I kept installing Ubuntu even on the company machine till VirtualBox and CPU's got enough power around 2014.

## What interest me much

FLOSS philosophy because it does agree with my religious POV (knowledge should be free & gratis for everyone with a good will) as I was also interested in OpenHW, Tools on the click from repository, Quick development environment setup, Scripting routine tasks, Quick Server Setup, KDE also was away far beautiful than Windows XP, Live CD and PXE Boot were too powerful, It was and still is an environment that force you to learn new things.