In 1989, I became a Unix user because I was in college. I had been a DOS user, not much of an Apple fan, Commodore lover with a VIC-20 and C=64, and even an Atari BASIC user before that. I knew systems and I knew architecture, and I easily adapted to the CLI.
I was immediately entranced by the simplicity and elegance of Unix. I got a sense of gigantic systems humming beneath (or above) the terminal room, because this was an OS capable of scaling massively. Yet it allowed the end-user to piece together simple building blocks, in shell scripts, pipelines, and C or Pascal programs.
So I grew and adapted to Unix, and I lived through the heady proprietary days with Sun Microsystems, HP and DEC. Then I saw that bubble burst as Linux and the Wintel architecture supplanted them and dominated the market. I used all sorts of GUIs, from OpenWindows, CDE, Cygwin, etc.
I ran Unix or Linux at home between 1991-2022. I loved to tinker! If a gearhead always has his hotrod up on blocks in the driveway, I always had the cover off my computer and I was poking it in some fashion. I loved to play with software and configuration, and play sysadmin to my home lab. Until a few years ago, this was OK.
However, my days of tinkering came to an end. My days of wanting to self-host services ended. I became even more of an end-user than a Power User, and as of 3 years ago, I needed systems that work and are supported. I would tinker no longer.
So I said farewell to Linux. Now don't get me wrong. I fully support Linux in all its forms, from Android to the data center to hyperscale supercomputers. I just don't find a space for Linux or Unix at home anymore. Thanks for all the lovely years.
I was immediately entranced by the simplicity and elegance of Unix. I got a sense of gigantic systems humming beneath (or above) the terminal room, because this was an OS capable of scaling massively. Yet it allowed the end-user to piece together simple building blocks, in shell scripts, pipelines, and C or Pascal programs.
So I grew and adapted to Unix, and I lived through the heady proprietary days with Sun Microsystems, HP and DEC. Then I saw that bubble burst as Linux and the Wintel architecture supplanted them and dominated the market. I used all sorts of GUIs, from OpenWindows, CDE, Cygwin, etc.
I ran Unix or Linux at home between 1991-2022. I loved to tinker! If a gearhead always has his hotrod up on blocks in the driveway, I always had the cover off my computer and I was poking it in some fashion. I loved to play with software and configuration, and play sysadmin to my home lab. Until a few years ago, this was OK.
However, my days of tinkering came to an end. My days of wanting to self-host services ended. I became even more of an end-user than a Power User, and as of 3 years ago, I needed systems that work and are supported. I would tinker no longer.
So I said farewell to Linux. Now don't get me wrong. I fully support Linux in all its forms, from Android to the data center to hyperscale supercomputers. I just don't find a space for Linux or Unix at home anymore. Thanks for all the lovely years.