Re: Introduction

[jfm2@club-internet.fr]

I am working in computers since 1981 but, except a three month work
for testing a software on AIX, my daylight activity always centered
around mainframes first as a programmer and since 1992 as a sysadmin.
Unix is a night work and a self-teached skill.  My exposure to Unix
was in 1991 with Minix in an XT.  My first task was to fix the disk
driver so I recompiled the kernel using a 360K floppy and leafing
through the book for activities as mundane as copying a file.  Having
the disk driver fixed I began looking at the commands source code to
understand what they were supposed to do.  Sensible people just read a
book, I did it but later.

I heard about Linux in 92 but at that time I remained in Minix: I was
happy using a system I was able to master entirely, besides I had no
possibility of downloading Linux.

A little later I heard of the GNU project and was fascinated about the
high-quality of their software and how it was often better than the
software of big corporations.

In 94 now equipped with a CD ROM reader I bought an Yggdrasyl
distribution and was soon a Linux fan.  At that time Internet access
was horribly expensive here in France but I heard of an ISP who used
UUCP for mail and news and was quite cheap.  Because at work we don't
use Unix I had nobody to ask about my networking problems and I needed
UUCP + mail + news for asking help about UUCP + mail + news :-).

In 95 my brother in law (a professor in Spanish litterature) needed a
computer to write his thesis.  Because he had a limited budget I beagn
dreaming about Linux+Andrew but I soon awakened when I
realized than my brother in law would never survive to kernel
recompiling.

I thought about it and found than the limiting factor in Linux
expansion was the technical knowledge needed by the user.  So I began
investigating distributions and thinking in the means to make Linux
easier in order to widen its base.

My background has made me highly conscious of the problems met by
present Linux beginners than have to self teach Unix, and of the
problems of home users in making work distributions targetted to
companies and universities.

While I have experience in building packages, however my programming
is rusty.

-- 
			Jean Francois Martinez

==================== The Linux.  Use the Linux, Luke! =======================