[Cialug] Cialug Beginnings

[Matthew Nuzum]

On Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 5:03 PM, Pawel <pdarowski at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> Since I cannot attend meetings for quite some time, perhaps the IRC channel
> would be a good place to start taking advantage of the knowledge that
> already exists in this group. My question is: how did some of you start your
> careers as Linux professionals? My goal is to use Linux in my professional
> life from Day 1.
>

I too am usually unable to make it to the meetings. I do about one per year.
However I still feel reasonably involved with the group by participating on
the list.


>
> Any tips, stories, or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
> Thank you,
>

The common thread among the people I've met through this group is that we're
tinkerers. Find some fascinating problem or challenge and dig into it. Back
in "the day" the most interesting linux problem was figuring out how to get
it to actually install. This one has been pretty soundly dealt with now
though. :-)

(in my case I owned only about 5 working floppies and lived off campus at
ISU (near towers) and had to ride my bike to Durham to download 5 slackware
disks, then ride back home to complete the next phase of the install -
which, btw, is slower than a 14.4k modem)

Some people are financially motivated - they want to run PHP or Ruby or a
server and make websites for money. A huge number of people I've dealt with
are into Games and want to make their own. You'll not find a more diverse
set of development tools than is available in Linux (check out PyGame). Yet
others are into robotics or hardware hacking which is yet again very well
suited for Linux. A few people use Linux to hook up to their TV to record
and watch TV shows.

By the way, this kind of activity looks great to potential employers. They
really like to see people who are problem solves and are self-motivated to
learn new skills and explore new ways of doing things.

I will say that there are three trends to keep in mind as you're looking for
interesting challenges:

 1. We're in an increasingly heterogeneous environment - windows, mac os,
linux, ipads and more all need to talk to each other
 2. The web is either the most important application deployment platform
now, or is right up there (this ties into the prev point)
 3. Mobile is huge (and the number one mobile platform in the world runs
Linux)

(You asked for opinions...)

-- 
Matthew Nuzum
newz2000 on freenode, skype, linkedin and twitter

♫ You're never fully dressed without a smile! ♫
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