User:Abderrahman

My name is Abderrahman Najjar.

I don't know how to write introductions about myself. So I'll talk about Linux and computers instead!

In school I read about Linux as a name among operating systems. It included Unix, OS/2, Macintosh and others. We were told it was an OS used for servers. I first discovered Linux in 2002 on a tech forum. I copied a friend's copy of SuSE Linux which came with his computer (which I think was v9.0), but never did anything with it (I was just really excited to have found such a glorious piece of software that's allowed to be copied and distributed, the GNU and FOSS philosophy was revolutionary to me). I started downloading distros, like Red Hat or Debian, and burning them (they were HUGE in size compared to the internet & HDDs of that time... remember those humongous 80GiB HDDs that made everyone with a 40GiB space cry blood? Remember the time when 6GiB was plenty of space AND you partitioned it in half?). I never installed them because I didn't have my own computer (family computer), and didn't know much outside of the lines of "different exciting OS". But having them made me feel ahead of everybody I knew!

About a year or two later I started downloading LiveCDs (I would run the download manager in the background whenever someone was using the internet, because back in those days computer was only for the weekends =D Sweet, simple times!). My first LiveCD was PCLinuxOS. The KDE interface was miles ahead of WinXP, and everyone at school was amazed (and confused. They didn't know that other OSes existed). LiveCD distros were an amazing solution; I could have a complete OS, do whatever I want and never affect a thing on the Windows installed.

I was really into technology from a very young age. I remember my father had either an Apple II or a Minitel (I was too young to remember) which he had to hide from me (put it on the highest shelf). I grew a bit older, he bought a PC which he had to fit with a radial lock for the power button, because I kept powering it to stare at the marvelous invention that is a computer! One day the PC of one of my relatives broke down and it needed servicing. They had the Win95 floppies lying around so I decided to give it a shot (how much more a broken OS could get?), and it was madly easy! The fdisk was very understandable if you knew what a partition was or a filesystem. I still miss the days of the CLI when you had to prepare everything before entering the setup. I found out about HTML in a magazine, then bought a CD which explained the basics. I signed up for a free space (which still haunts my old email with spam) and set up a page in code with the times when HTML ran wild (i.e. full of various "under construction" images). I got into Visual Basic 6, but never really stuck. It was messy, and the nice GUIs that I saw and tried to achieve were actually built with the help of other languages (which no one bothered to tell me!).

My first personal computer was a gift from my parents just before high school, and I assembled my first PC in high school. I saved my summer job's money and bought all the components. That computer is still up and running.

Technology is awesome. Virtualization software enabled me to experiment with Linux without limitation or fear. My first official move to Linux was in 2007 when I got sick of WinXP breaking down. I installed Ubuntu 7.04, but soon reverted to Windows because I discovered Wine was very limited in terms of gaming (and one of the main reasons I assembled the PC was to game), and because frankly Ubuntu (Linux in general back then) wasn't perfect either. It broke down more. Finally, last year I've decided that my main uses were just internet surfing, music, and movies which can be done on any modern OS. I removed Win7 for good and installed Fedora 17 or 18 (I don't remember).

My decision to land on Fedora was largely fueled with the fact that the Ubuntu community (or rather, Canonical Ltd.) decided to move in a direction that's clearly against the FOSS philosophy and goals. I was a big GNOME fan, until they released GNOME 3. So I lost a distro, and an environment. I tried to keep holding to GNOME 2, but it was clear it was going obsolete. First I went to Xfce, which was nice, but didn't function as I hoped and was a bit buggy. I gave MATE a look later, and was taken with it, it almost became my home... but I decided to give KDE a chance at the last moment when I knew it had the Folder View (when I first tried KDE 4 I hated it because of the Default Desktop view). Then I knew I've found a new home. KDE became my default environment. I still find its visual design to be a bit 2008 when 3D was the big thing. Nevertheless, I love the deep levels of customization, and the KDE culture that has its own apps and way of function.

I wandered between distros after Ubuntu. I wanted one that had a firm philosophy, strong community, and could appeal to the power user as well as the regular user. I liked Arch Linux, but didn't like the attitude of the community (which was basically "RTFM"), I also didn't like the process of reinventing the wheel every time I installed it (it was fun the first couple times, but then it becomes a chore, especially when the decided to ditch the text-based installer and rely on CLI scripts instead) and so was the case with Gentoo (the wheel thing, not the community). Debian was nice and I love Debian, but it had a slow release cycle. Fedora was the right balance between all those factors.

Like millions around the globe, I have to say "thank you internet", for without it I would have never became the knowledgeable person that I am today. And "thank you open source and open knowledge", for without Wikipedia, Linux, and countless other rich sources and software the world wouldn't be as close together and open as it's today. Thank you people, whoever you are, wherever you are, writing code and releasing it for free. Spreading knowledge and wisdom without asking for something in return.

I'm on Twitter (but don't I use it anymore). I also have a personal blog, and a Wikipedia user page.