11.06.05

Is Tomas enough of a geek?

Posted in Personal Topics, World at 7:30 pm by Tomas

I have seen interesting stories on how various people arrived at the F/OSS (Free/open source software) supporter outlook they now have. A very typical end-user path is from Microsoft Windows to Linux; Microsoft Office to Open Office; and Microsoft Internet Exploiter, er, Explorer to Firefox.

I didn’t follow that path.

I’d guess I was lucky in that I never used Microsoft Windows either at work or at home.

That’s right, not once in over thirty years of using computers…

Work Computers

For years, both in the military and in my later civilian jobs, I was just a low-life end-user, neither knowing nor caring what operating system the computer was running, just worrying about remembering how to talk to the doggone thing.

Then, because I was an engineer familiar with the jobs our new massive “TIRKS” (Trunks Integrated Record Keeping System) application would have to handle, I was put into the beta testing and user-support team for TIRKS for my state (along with about 15 others).

TIRKS ran on IBM and Amdahl mainframes under AIX and UTS (the UNIX flavors those big pieces of iron ran) and kept track of millions of designed service circuits in our region and all the bits and pieces that made them up.

After about a year or so of sorting out user problems, Bell Telephone Labs came calling, wanting someone to write a series of manuals for use when installing and testing Analog Data Services in the Bell System. I was one of three people recommended in our four state area (because of some user manuals I wrote for TIRKS), and ended up being chosen by the evaluation team that came out from New Jersey from AT&T and BTL.

The time I spent at the Labs was my REAL introduction to computers, as all of the BSPs (Bell System Practices) were written using the ‘ed’ or ‘vi’ editors and the ‘nroff’ and ‘troff’ formatters in UNIX.

When I walked into my newly built office in New Jersey I was given a slip of paper with my user_ID and Password, handed the UNIX III manuals, and given a quick overview of my HP terminal with built-in thermal printer.

I learned what I needed to know about UNIX and it’s built-in utilities fairly quickly, and found ample information and experts scattered about to learn some other things, too. Actually, the usual mix of folks at the Labs, mostly uber-geeks, were always playing tricks on each other, so learning many of the ins and outs of UNIX was just self-preservation. 🙂

When I finished researching and writing that series of manuals I went on to help develop and then write some of the documentation required for the breakup of the Bell System by the Federal Court under Judge Harold H. Greene.

When I returned to what was left of the telephone company, I went back to engineering, and ended up developing, engineering, and directing installation of high-speed digital services equipment at customer’s premises (we installed some of the very first T-1 lines to customers). My engineering district got it’s computer support from three mainframes running specialized applications under AIX, and our 219 Apple Macintosh desktops.

During the years that I was an engineer, project manager, and engineering manager in that group I ended up writing quite a few simple shell scripts I and others used throughout the day, and a couple of very minor “C” programs for our use.

When I left that company, I and a friend started a small consulting and design firm – he was the people person and I was the techie – and up until I had a stroke and could no longer do that we and our employees used Macs.

Home Computers

At home, when I returned from Bell Labs, I bought my first “home computer.” Since all I knew was UNIX I bought a UNIX based machine – a Radio Shack TRS 16B+ running Xenix 1.0…

That machine not only was my “home desktop computer” but also was a mail and USENET server for myself and a few friends I gave dial-up accounts to. It was a happy little machine with a few Hayes modems, and a full load of RAM – all 768K of it…

Over the years I added a TRS Model 100 laptop and assorted Macs. Until recently I still had that original UNIX engine, and the laptop, but I shipped the UNIX engine off to a small ‘puter museum in Illinois this year.


Here’s a pic of Boris in the back of my Scion xB getting ready for the ride to the shipping company.



These days I just run a small wireless LAN with four machines on it, three desktop Macs and a Mac laptop. All four machines access the world via a high-speed cable internet connection.

Sufficiently Geeky?

As you can see, I’m not really a computer geek, merely a computer user. I’ve never had formal computer training. I view my computers as tools that make it easier for me to do other things, not as ends in themselves. I certainly am not a programmer.

As you may have noticed, I didn’t mention Linux.

I remember when I was still a serious UNIX end-user hearing about some guys trying to put together a UNIX-like kernel while blindfolded and wearing earplugs (OK, that’s an exaggeration, but not by much), but I didn’t really give them much chance for real success.

I really did appreciate the idea of “GNU” and “GPL” and, eventually, “Linux” but never got involved in any real way. I was a BTL UNIX and BSD UNIX and Mac OS type.

Over the years, I pretty much wandered away from UNIX as other end-user, GUI oriented operating systems became more and more useful. I’ll admit, though, I was quite pleased when Apple decided to base their latest OS versions on a flavor of good old freeBSD.

While using Mac OS X I’ve acquired quite a fair assortment of F/OSS applications – and most of them were excellently done. I was very pleased to be able to directly support the developers by buying their commercial products or optionally making ‘donations.’

So where am I?

I didn’t follow the most common route to get where I am with computer use – in fact I’ve NEVER used Microsoft Windows even though at one time WHG III and his company were clients. I started with UNIX, went to Macs, and eventually came full circle when Apple based it’s latest OS on UNIX.

So, am I, too, a F/OSS supporter? I don’t use Linux, I use a proprietary GUI (Aqua) on top of an open-source OS (Darwin) along with a mix of both proprietary and open source applications and utilities.

I don’t know if I’m allowed to be a F/OSS supporter or not.

Sometimes the more radical sorts of F/OSS uber-geeks seem to insist that using ANY proprietary software leaves me with the unwashed.

Others are not so critical.

At least I can say that in over 30 years of computer use I’ve never used Microsoft Windows (though I did use Xenix, which was the Microsoft port of UNIX III to desktops).

These days I run my little LAN as a “Microsoft Free Zone” and maybe that will at least give me a day-pass into F/OSS land… 😉

What do you think?

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