Free and Open Source Software

For me it was Python and C development on Linux. (So Anaconda.) I was pretty impressed by how much you can do with free software. Before I would have thought scientists would use expensive proprietary software for calculations. Later I learned that they sometimes still do, but many write their own code using work from others in the field who released open source software.

Crostini (The Chromebook Linux solution)

The very first FOSS software I used was red hat Linux. My dad brought home a copy of it and left it laying next to our copy of windows. Next time I had to install an OS I found it and tried it. It was terrible. Didn't do anything I wanted to do. Put windows in the computer.

Emacs.

No really, it was like 1989 and I had to learn Unix systems for classes, and this white haired Emacs advocate convinced me to try it.

I just really wish I could answer 'Obsidian' 😓

Vim and GCC.

I think it was Okular. I was looking for a way of editing PDFs without ads, invasive software, or subscription based payments.

WWIV

For me ist was FreeCAD. From there to Linux and down the Rabbithole

OpenTTD. Sure, I had used android, but it was the first thing I consciously knew was open source and enjoyed.

Xournal++

DDWRT technically came first for me, and m0n0wall, but OpenSolaris is where I really started to use it.

Suse in 1999.

Linux and godot

Linux

Wow. I honestly can’t tell. I think it was ChromOS? Indirectly of course.

Years and years ago, I was really frustrated with windows on my tiny laptop, and I wanted something different. And I loved ChromeOS back then, but I couldn’t afford a Chromebook, and I was looking for something that had a similar interface.

So I looked online, and people were recommending Linux, but I already knew of Linux, as I had a terrible experience with Ubuntu a while before (it was using Unity, to give you a timeframe). But eventually, I found something, it was a post on Reddit by someone looking for something like me, something that would look like what chromous looked like at the time, that was as simple, and one of the best suggestion there was a distribution by the name of “SolusOS”, Specifically, the Budgie variant.

So, I installed it on my little laptop. I fell in love with it, the whole thing, the desktop, the project, Linux as a whole, And then they just kind of snowballed from there. Solus was my go to distro for years.

Now I’m stuck on a MacBook Air, on Mac OS, for many reasons, and I want something new. But even before that, when I had to give up on that laptop and Solus for various reasons, I used many others distros. And I really loved some. But I still miss my tiny laptop and Solus on it…

I miss this simple joy of just using my machine and it just working. I feel like, every piece of tech that is in my life, right now, to try and simplify it, to help me do things, is only making my life worse, and bothering me with stupid stuff at every turn…

Or maybe it’s because I just grew up, I became an adult, lots of things happened in my life, and I just miss how simpler things used to feel back then, maybe I just reflect that in my technology. I don’t know. But I miss it… a lot.

Fedora Linux, tbh

First used Linux mint in 2007, was fascinated and frustrated at the same time with why things didnt work like on my windows PC, I now have a dedicated Linux Laptop (linux mint)

I don't remember exactly anymore, but I guess... Firefox? And then Ubuntu after I got "serious" about it.

Oh god, it must be from the 80s-90s, I'd say BSD, it was incredible to have sources at the time. I remember it was BSD4.3

It started with Fedora for me, then Firefox but OpenOffice was the first that made me think "hey, that's good for everyone, not just geeks like me, I gotta show it to my friends and clients"

I had used plenty of open source products in the past, but the first one I truly learned the "why it's important" is home assistant. Seeing the strong community and reading more about open source projects and why it's to everyone's benefit.

We can make a far superior, safer, and community first product.

For me, the gateway was via palm pilot careware. My dad had a PDA when I was a kid, and he let me learn how to program it. Then I learned that there were websites to download software for it, and some of that software was "careware", ie pay only if you're able. Something clicked in my head that I could both write and access software without cost being a barrier, and that got me reading about FLOSS philosophy as I entered high school and suddenly I was dual booting ubuntu on the intel iBook I had saved up for and then it was too late for me: FLOSS had me.

My buddy’s mom took his pc as punishment for some nonsense. We cobbled together some parts so he could secretly play an online flash game with me. His frames were seconds behind mine. But we installed Ubuntu on it since we couldn’t afford windows in high school. So I learned about Linux.

Teeworlds. When I was a kid I searched up "free online multiplayer games on pc" and it actually led me to this Wikipedia article full of open source games. I tried out teeworlds and I was hooked on it and it led me to playing other open source games like cube 2 and open arena. In my head, the term open source meant "free stuff". Searching for open source stuff led me to discovering Linux and trying it though the Wubi installer and eventually moving to it a few years later.

I've used a few open source programs before studying CS without knowing what FOSS was, but the time when I really got into it and started diving deeper is probably after installing Arch Linux