My journey with computers
The laptop I am currently using is a second-hand Lenovo ThinkPad X220, released in 2011. I think it originally came with Windows 7, but I had Windows 10 installed on it when I purchased it second-hand. However, given its outdated specifications, I heard that ThinkPads have good compatibility with Linux. Since it only had a 256 GB SSD instead of the original HDD, I’ve been using only Linux since I first purchased it.
For my own computer knowledge, I first saw a PC when I was about 4 years old. In my 2nd year of kindergarten, I had my first computer class in the school computer room. My impression when I saw the strange object with lots of buttons and the strange mouse-shaped object with a screen displaying movements in response to them was so frightening that I cried, still be vividly remembered to this day. Nevertheless, after about a year I got used to it and was able to type when someone opened a program such as Microsoft Word for me.
I didn’t have a PC at home until I was in the 5th grade at primary school. My first PC was a Windows ME model that I received from my uncle. In the 6th grade however, my mother bought me a new XP PC with an LED monitor as a gift. I didn’t have broadband internet until my 3rd year of middle school, but I was still able to play Gamehouse games and CS 1.6 against bots during that time. When I was at primary school, we were fortunate enough to have internet access in the computer room, so I was able to experience popular websites and flash games (as there was very little computer education content, about 70% of class time was spent playing on computers and using the internet). There was also a book on how to write HTML in my 6th-grade textbook. Even though there were no classes on it, I read the book and tried writing HTML on my PC, and eventually learnt how to do it.
The first OS I ever used on a computer was Windows 98. I helped my teacher repair computers in the middle school computer room, which taught me how to install operating systems, starting with XP. During middle and high school, I gained experience by participating in computer contests such as creating e-books and digital room designs, which led me to enrol on a computer engineering department after graduating from high school.
The most important factor that sparked my interest in Linux was Minecraft. In my 1st year of high school, there’s a YouTuber whose Minecraft videos I watched. I thought it looked like a fun game, even though it was just about placing and destroying blocks. There was a survival mode in which you could cut down trees, collect wood, make tools, build houses and fight monsters. I downloaded the game (of course, it was a pirated version) onto my laptop and played it with friends using Hamachi.
One day, I heard that the YouTuber had a personal server, so I looked into setting up my own. I also found a video on his channel teaching how to create a Minecraft server using a Linux distribution called Ubuntu. At the time, despite being a high school student, I saved up money to rent a server for a month and experimented with various setups until I finally got my own server up and running. One of these days, I started tinkering with my own laptop, installing Ubuntu and, occasionally other distributions such as Linux Mint (although I reinstalled Windows several times because the games I played with my classmates only worked on Windows)
While studying computer engineering at university, I learnt to code in Python, Java and C++, and also took courses in PHP programming, circuit board design and algorithms. During my free time, I studied other Linux distributions besides Ubuntu on my own and finally learnt how to install Arch Linux. However, due to difficulties with relationships with classmates and time management, I was unable to graduate from that department. But in the end, I graduated from another department in a different place, so if I’m asked now I can say I have no regrets.
After trying out the software available on Linux, such as LibreOffice, GIMP and Chromium, I became captivated by free and open-source software (FOSS). I can’t yet call myself a FOSS enthusiast, as I still occasionally use closed-source software, like certain drivers and Discord, on my everyday computer. However, I think it would be good to create an opportunity to share any stable and convenient software that I have used before.
Thanks for taking your time to read this lengthy and tedious text
