Introductions

[ncweber]

Hello, since I just joined, I thought I would introduce myself. My name is Nathan, and I actually live in the Takoma area (on the DC side). While I'm not exactly new to Linux in general, I'm still something of a novice.

I actually started working with Caldera Linux (mostly unsuccessfully since the blasted thing wouldn't work on the laptop I had at the time). Then I moved on to Lindows, which later became Linspire. That one was actually pretty good until Michael Robertson sold it to Xandros (there was a big stink about that because he allegedly had done it without shareholders even knowing about it).

So, believe me, Ubuntu was certainly a breath of fresh air when I discovered it. Actually, it was Linspire that brought Ubuntu to my attention when the Linspire 4.0 started using the Ubuntu 6.04 code base. These days, I have a netbook with UNE 10.10 (I started out at 9.04 and upgraded with each release). I'm finding the more I use it, the more dependent I'm becoming on it. Much moreso than Windows, which I still use to play MMORPG games.

I don't know if the team still meets, but I certainly hope I can meet members at some point.

[jbicha]

Thanks for posting. (I think you already figured this out, but this way there's a record for anyone else wanting to contact us.)

As you can see, we don't really use this forum. You can stop by IRC at #ubuntu-us-dc . We may not say much but there's often some of us lurking. We do also use our mailing list which basically serves the same purpose for us as this forum would. We have meetings most Saturday evenings at Taste of India. Just ping us on email or chat to confirm the time and if others are planning on going.

[GNURo]

Hello Folks!

My name is Robert, but my friends call me Ro. I'm from Maryland, and had considered forming a LoCo when I found out about them, and discovered that there's already a DC LoCo so a Maryland one would be fairly redundant. Though I live pretty far from DC, and likely won't make it out for many events, I do intend to at least be present on the internet.

I've been using computers for 21 years (Family got one when I was 8, and since I used an Apple IIGS at school, it was my job to learn how our 286 worked and teach the whole family.) and GNU/Linux for 16 of those 21. In late 1993/early 1994 I was a beta tester for Windows 95 because I registered with the "Microsoft Network" tester program under my Father's name (we have the same name, actually.) and switched to this "Lie-nux" thing I kept hearing about because all of the applications I used in Windows 3.11 didn't work with Windows 95, and with it being a Beta Test, there weren't any 32-bit versions of the software I used on a daily basis yet. Most companies were unsure of Windows 95 and a lot of them were fairly vocal about their plans to not produce 32-bit software until a large share of the IBM-Compatible market adopted the OS.

Lo and behold, this "Lie-nux" had lots of alternatives to all of the software I used, and I could even modify them if a feature I wanted wasn't present! It was pure bliss! So, after a year or so of using SLS, I tried Caldera (Ugh. Horrible) then Red Hat for a while until a friend introduced me to Slackware. I used Slackware until 2003 when I heard about Mepis Linux on an IRC Channel, and since then I've been hooked on Debian-based distributions. I've been using Ubuntu on at least two-three of my systems since 2005.

Anywho, that's me in a nutshell. I'm a linux nerd, a trekkie, a mudder, and a video gamer. I'm also planning an Ubuntu-based distro of my own called "Oneiros", meant to run on portable systems (laptops, netbooks, etc) for research, e-text books, and writing. It'll have lots of stuff like word processors, dictionaries, a thesaurus, etc.

Oh yeah... and I don't still call it "Lie-nux" like I did in the 90s.