Jkeyes0

My Contact Info

About Me

I am a 28 year old Programmer working for the State of Kentucky, developing and maintaining a website using Microsoft ASP.NET MVC (I was not allowed to use open source software). I also created and run http://www.thisweekinlinux.com and http://youtube.com/thisweekinlinux, a YouTube-based video series specializing in weekly Linux-related news updates, distribution reviews, and tutorials.

I started learning about Linux approximately in 2001, while still in college. My roommate at the time showed me Slackware. I was intrigued at something other than the traditional Microsoft, so I tried it for myself. Needless to say, I ended up back in Windows. Between then and now, I've worked with Mandrake, Red Hat, SuSE, and eventually, Ubuntu.

I found Ubuntu by browsing Distrowatch and noticing that some new version of Linux I hadn't tried was rapidly ascending to the most viewed version on their site, and decided to give it a try. This was sometime around October 2004 (version 4.10) and, to be quite honest, I wasn't floored by it then. It was fairly easy to install, but it still involved a lot of command line access, and I still wasn't comfortable with it, so I shelved it again.

Over the next 3 years, I used 5.04, 5.10, and 6.06 all to greater levels of success (more and more as the releases got higher). When 6.10 finally came out last year, I knew I had to give it a serious shot. I installed it on my laptop (in a removable hard drive) but just couldn't make myself make the switch until just after the new year, 2007. I switched my laptop one weekend, and started carrying it to work, to make myself use it and become more familiar. After working with it on the laptop and in Virtual PC, I discovered VMware Converter, which allowed me to make a VMware copy of my existing XP install to use in VMware in Linux. The main reason I hadn't switched until this point was due to the lack of support for certain Windows-based programs, such as World of Warcraft (which I stopped playing in the middle of February, 2007) and Nortel's Contivity VPN client, which is officially unsupported on Ubuntu. Using VMware, I was able to keep my VPN client in Windows, but use Linux for all my day-to-day activities, so I made the plunge.

On February 23rd, 2007, I took the plunge. I had backed up my Windows XP machine to VMware, and I formatted my hard drive to install Ubuntu 6.10. After only 45 minutes or so, I had a fully functional system, which needed only minor other tweaking (setting up the dual-head monitor configuration, webcam, etc.). Since then, I've only used my home Windows VMware machine one time, to VPN into my work, and my Windows workstation while at work (which will hopefully soon become an Ubuntu machine with a VMware XP session for domain maintenance very soon).

I've had my ups and downs since my switch, but none of them truly due to Ubuntu. I had a hard drive failure on February 26th, 2007, which lead to an entire reinstall, but that was mostly unavoidable. Luckily, with all the lessons I've learned by installing Ubuntu so many times lately, it was no big deal.

It is my hope that through this Ubuntu-Kentucky LoCo team, that we can grow as a community, and work to spread Ubuntu to our co-workers, families, friends, and all others we encounter while traveling through this great state.

Contributions To The Ubuntu Community

  • Creator of http://www.thisweekinlinux.com - I promote new Ubuntu releases through this avenue.

  • Passing out Ubuntu CDs to any and all that are interested.

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Jkeyes0 (last edited 2010-12-08 01:39:14 by host-063-131-205-044)