First up: Linux.

I figured an appropriate way to get my blog started would be to go over each project separately, and discuss why it’s on the list, where I stand and what my end goal is.  First up, is Linux.

I have always been fascinated with Linux.  As a high school student in the late nineties, I installed countless Linux servers.  I can’t even remember all of the different distributions that I tried, but Mandrake, Red Hat and Corel Linux were definitely in the mix. 

The big draw the Linux had for me, is that it could be configured as a server.  I setup Apache, Bind, Samba, SMTP, POP3 and IMAP as well as configuring Linux as a DHPC server, hub and firewall.  I installed, or tried to install pretty much whatever I could get my hands on.  I was just so happy that I could do all of this, and being a broke teenager, the fact that all of this was free for the taking, made it even more of a draw.

There were really three main issues that I ran into.  I think all of these played a part in why I’m not a Linux developer today.

The first was that I didn’t really have much of a reason to setup most of the things that I had.  I was most interested to just to see if I could get it to work.  Much of my tinkering  happened before we had broadband access so the meaningfulness of a DNS or SMTP server on a local network of 4 computers was almost zero.  After it was setup, there wasn’t anything to do, but tear it down and try something else.  This sounds very obvious now, but at the time, after working with it for months and months and really years on and off, I expected there to be more of a “light at the end of the tunnel.”

Later after we got broadband access, I did end up setting a web server running apache and an Email server.  The problem was the connection was so slow and sometimes intermittent that it was a pretty futile effort.

The second issue was that Linux hardware support (at that time) was worse than Windows 95 hardware support.  I remember having literally stacks of PCI cards that I would swap in and out.  Some that worked with Windows and some that worked with Linux.  I seem to recall that NetGear had one of the better supported NICs for Linux, or at least a card that would run under the generic Linux NIC driver.  Video support was also lacking.  Most of the time I ended up using generic drivers and the end result was a desktop that was less “pretty” than Windows 95.  This definitely detracted from the experience.  I felt like I wasn’t getting my money’s worth out of the hardware I had.

The third issue was that I was interested in getting more into programming.  All I had really done was QBASIC on DOS and was interested in programming real live windows applications.  I didn’t care greatly if it was Windows or Linux (although Windows did seem a bit cooler) but I needed something that was easy  to get started in.  I didn’t find that with Linux.  From what I found C or C++ was the way you had to go (I think python was in there too).  Make files and headers and such were a bit confusing to me.  At the end of the day you had to even take it a step further to make an app that would run in XWindows instead of just through the shell.  After a few tries, I gave up and instead learned to program in Visual Basic 5.

Ever since I made that jump and gave up on my Linux dreams I have in a way regretted it.  I always wished that I could use Linux to accomplish tasks and produce business solutions.

My goal is to pick up from where I left off and configure a Linux Server that will be used for a business purpose.  I’m currently still toying with ideas as to what the business purpose will be, but for now I’m going with the idea of setting up a LAMP server, and possibly starting a Web Proxy service.