As you have guessed, I’m a linux geek. I used to be of the bearded kind even.

So here is a bit of my history with linux for those who are interested.

It all started back in the day with my old Compaq laptop somewhere around 1999, ’t was the eve before Win2k. A Mandrake disk came with a computer magazine, my laptop was broken so I though I’d give it a try. Most things worked, aside from X11. Due to it being a laptop, it had bad support back in the day.

I’ve gradually used linux more and more to the point I now use it nearly exclusive for all my servers. I use it most other hardware too. My macbook pro excluded.

I’ve seen the 2.2, 2.4,2.6 and 3.0 kernel release and it was a delight to see the hardware support grow with each one of them! I’ve also switched distributions a lot over the years, here is a list:

  1. Mandrake (My first steps with linux, console only)
  2. Debian (Yay… some form of X11! Oh what is this KDE you speak of… I don’t like it though)
  3. Gentoo (Freedom! control, bleeding edge and mostly the cursing at broken systems)
  4. Ubuntu (My first netbook. Great selection of packages, but too little control.)
  5. RHEL (54+) / CentOS 5+ / Fedora (I’ll lump them together, mostly for work.)
  6. Arch (Simplicity, control, still fairly bleeding edge, just less bleeding and cursing than Gentoo)

Believe it or not, blackdot.be ran on Gentoo until the last migration. Now it runs on CentOS.
I’ve come to value my time more lately. Stability is good.

Zimbra works fine on CentOS 6. I only had to compile httpd 2.4 branch. Oh boy the joys of rpmbuild! Expect an article on this in the future.

Why this nostalgia all of a sudden, well it’s good to know ones roots. Most new linux users have always known GUI’s. But I’m a CLI man. This will explain my upcoming post!

Arch, you have a special place in my live. You are perfect! But, for now CentOS will run on my servers.

Hopefully you have enjoyed this bit of trivia and nostalgia!