Enter the OSS trail
In July 2001, I was a student in between my first and second year. I spend a month of this vacation at the university working on what could have been called a one-man web design team. I was at the time developing the website for the Uganda Martyrs University Students’ Union. Being almost the only student on campus at that time, I had MANY MANY hours free outside of the working time and just as it so happens, I came across a redhat linux 6 (codenamed Hedwig) CD. Out of curiosity I started on what was then a curious game and has now turned out to be a journey. This first installaton was all command line and had a lot of configuration to do versus the installers that are present these days. Definitely comparing that installation to the SuSE linux 10.1 installation that I performed today (11th October) on a quite recent Acer Aspire laptop, things have changed a lot.
The reason for this blog therefore is because of these experiences and my desire to try and put into cyberspace some of the experiences I have had with linux and open source (software and other things.) I decided this after I had quite a nice expericence over the past weekend with a partitioning issue. (but that is for another article.)
After that installation I did not have too much to do with Linux again as there was a shortage of computers at the university and therefore nothing for experiments that could have helped with learning more. At the same time I was short on documentation that would have helped me setup a dual boot system (now a normal thing at the university) back then and avoid the computer technicians in the lab from erasing my linux partition to make sure all computers were running windows.
Two years later, enter a policy in the university about open source software that requires that it be installed on all computers. I remember the first time I actually started the move towards using OSS as a desktop on a more serious note. I had just finished courses at the university for the final year, handed in my project and gone to see my supervisor Victor. I was trying to get into the university to do some work and when I walked into his office he mentioned something about open office. I took a brief look at it on his computer. It looked pretty intuitive but it was only a month later that I actually went ahead and made an installation on my laptop. Being attached to Redhat for sentimental reasons, I installed Redhat 9 but for some reason, after sometime I was captured by the KDE desktop and never looked back.
Just two weeks ago I updated my computers installation to openSuSE 10.1 and had a hell of a time with hustling with broken dependencies etc. That is pretty annoying but now that I have it running smoothly it is such a joy to use. I had a friend from Persia visit my room and asked, “How come your computer responds so fast Mulo?” “LINUX!” was my proud answer!
Now five years since that first installation, I find myself comfortable on the command line and look back at the things I have been involved in; co-authoring a linux computer literacy book, helping to convert anybody who is interested, linux training, organising OSS promotional events in my country. They seem so few and yet it also seems like a lot has happened. Hopefully this blog can keep a better record of events and activities than my mind. Who knows what I shall have to say in retrospect 10 years from now?