Ahhh Linux.
I got into Linux in 1997, with RedHat 5.0. I started mainly out of curiosity, and I was a little more mischevious in those days, so I was concidering the idea of being a little more of a hacker, and everyone knows that Hackers dont Hack from mainstream, commercial OS's. ;) Seriously, it was more curiosity than anything.
I tried to convince everyone around me to convert to Linux too, but no one listened, of course. So I ended up learning it on my own, eventually a friend of mine switched too, but somehow he ended up passing me in skill, and now he's a sysadmin. I hate when that happens. He probably doesn't even remember that I showed him the way to enlightenment.
Currently, I'm studying for my RHCE certification. Once I get that I should have a better shot at a decent linux related job. Which is what i'd love to do.
I've stuck with RedHat for the duration really, been upgrading steadily along with their releases. Started at 5, went to 5.1, then 5.2, then 6.. and so on. I've tried other distributions, but for whatever reason I just stuck with RedHat. I've also tried other server OS's, but i keep going back to Linux for the flexibility.
The server that houses this very website runs RedHat Linux 8. I run web, ftp, ssh, DNS and a sort of functioning mail server, my ISP has some port blocking in place, which is why i have a dificult time running things like mail service. Due to a recent HDD failure, you're lucky you're able to see this website! I've since setup a pretty elaborate cron job that backs everyting of any importance up to a spare HDD once a week. It even keeps two levels of backups, one of the previous week, and the other the current week. If the main drive fails again, i can just copy the data back off of the other drive and ill be back up in the time it takes to reinstall the OS and copy the data.
