My Thanks to GNU/Linux and Free Software | Hacker News Reader

My Thanks to GNU/Linux and Free Software

5 pointsvoodoochilo7 comments

i am working with gnu/linux and therefore with free software since about 1996 and during this 16 years i miserably failed to express my feelings and thoughts about that fact properly. this will change now.

easy, easy! go on reading! i am not going to write pages over pages about my personal history with gnu/linux or some awesome and funny anecdotes about how i came to gnu/linux in the first place.

after so many years of performance, community and "it-simply-works" there's only one occupying thought in my mind left gaining more and more mental ground every day:

"what if gnu/linux or the idea it represents would have never existed?"

i think that the sheer amount of pure panic this simple question is able to produce in me is my kind of humbly saying: "thank you very much all you people! i owe you one...or two". (especially you, richard;)

thank you for giving me the possibility to own an operating system which had a 40,0000 dollar price tag on it 30 years ago and would have needed some kind of nasa-highend-rig to run it and to work with it today on my crappy dell notebook FOR FREE. Imagine that sh*t!

... and thank you for all the fun!

"what if gnu/linux or the idea it represents would have never existed?"

Then we would most likely be using some BSD variant. Oh, wait .. I am!

Can agree with all of this. I'm only 19 and have been programming professionally for 2 years now (and as a hobby for 4-5 more). I know that without free software, I wouldn't be where I am right now as I simply wouldn't have had the tools available that I did as I was growing up and as I was learning to program.

Just out of curiosity, what was your turnaround at age 17? (When you started professionally, I mean.)

I started out at quite a small firm, turning PSDs into HTML then adding functionality with PHP. A website there would take roughly 3-5 days. Now I'm at a big firm where projects can take 6 months or so. I've gotten faster, as I'm sure everyone does, but when I started professionally I already had quite a bit of experience developing little projects, some open-source stuff, etc.

I'd love to know which type of company is willing to hire someone so young. I know someone around your age that's competent (for his age) but is finding it difficult to find anyone to take him seriously.

I've suggested to him to build up his portfolio and github profile, but that takes time.

The firm I started at was tiny, just me and 2 other guys. I found a list of website development companies in my local area and sent emails to all of them, asking if they were taking anyone on. Only got a reply back from one of them, went to the interview and completed their little test quickly so they took me on. I was paid very little for my efforts, mind, but without that job I don't think I would have gotten my current one (where I'm working alongside university graduates for a decent salary).

I think something that definitely worked in my favour is that I brought along my laptop and showed them a design of a website I had been working on.

I sure enjoy playing all the free games dotdeb.com offers for linux. Wish I would have switched to it sooner.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com