Drew Kwashnak

1754 points
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New England, CT

I have always been interested in computers, and would find myself hanging out with the Computer Science students instead of the Aviation Management or Business Management students I was a part of. At home and at work I have been largely self-teaching myself using computers starting with Excel and Access with VBA through ASP and SQL at work. Thankfully my current employer values education, and so I have been taking classes and not only learning the technology, but un-learning what I have been doing wrong over the years. At home, though, I have been teaching myself Linux, system administration, networking and the overall method of migrating our system from Windows to Linux. I am involved in the Danbury Area Computer Society (DACS.org) I have the opportunity to take what I've learned the hard way and hopefully help others.. I have been enjoying Open Source for a while now, and I am hoping to get a better understanding of the entire model and application.

Authored Comments

Yeah, financial issues got me started with Linux. Now, even if I could buy a computer I would prefer Linux on usability and philosophical grounds (this Windows 10 thing and failing updates is really pushing me away).

When friends ask for help with their Windows-based systems, I am reminded how much easier things usually are with Linux, especially when it comes to licenses and product keys!

I love the diversity! The different forums are fun because of talking with people around the world and usually politics are not an issue between their CoC and that we are all in there because of our interest in Linux and Open Source.

And as for phases, I wonder if I am entering a new one with my son. Recently the Minecraft server was giving problems and ultimately crashed and wouldn't start up again. After checking with his friends (the users) he rebuilt the Minecraft server.

I came home last night and he had the old server copied over and a new one up and running and he didn't *sniff* need me at all! He even implemented some settings he found online for it to restart if it crashes again!

He's rather comfortable logging into the headless Ubuntu server by SSH (using PuTTY), editing config files in Nano. I think the next thing to do is set up a cron job to routinely back things up.