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I rented out my CP/M machine to a computer dealer in exchange for a fully commented copy of the UNIX kernel code with annotations from the University of New South Wales in 1980. The first time I got my hands on a real UNIX system was a 3B20 at Pacific Telephone on a network shared with Bjarne Stroustrup in August 1983. The Bell System machines had full source code installed for everything. It was a perfect way to learn by reading all of the source to every command line utility, the kernel and having access to early versions of C++. I never looked back. Since 1983 I've worked as deep as kernel device drivers in HP-UX and as broad as networks of 12000 UNIX machines for the Army Corps of Engineers. Linux is something I can run at my home and build technology that my employer and customers needs. Fedora and Ubuntu are my distros of choice. For embedded systems, I used Debian to leverage the slower pace of patching.

I used to be a big Fedora and Ubuntu user for years. Loved the stability and maturity of Fedora and the driver support and package manager of Ubuntu - made learning new projects a snap. Now that Fedora is expensive and Ubuntu has embraced gathering telemetric data from it’s users I’ve fallen out of love with both distros - Not a fan of Fedora core. I’ve moved back to Debian - 3rd time now. Each distro has pros and cons and I wish there was an industry standard for driver and package managers as that would make adoption of Linux so much wider for general users. I know why this standardization will likely never occur, but I can dream.