My history with the free software (as in freedom), has long date. I’ve begun to try to use when I was in the college, about 2006, I didn’t begin by encourage of my University, but I began because a friend of college encouraged me. I think that is a mistake courses in the area of technology don’t encourage to use free software, because free software gives more liberty and possibilities for who is learning to program. But coming back to my experience, I’ve tried to begin in one distribution for expert users in Linux, the Slackware, but as soon as I began, I gave up, due the difficult to found drivers to a modem of mine. I also had to compile the majority of the programs for this distribution. My Internet in that time was through a dial up modem 56k and I used only on the weekends because on the weekends was cheaper than Monday to Friday. After that I changed to Kurumin, a Brazilian distribution based on Kinnopix who already had tons of automation scripts, drivers and also was livecd. They also had the command “apt-get” derived from Debian bringing in that way a lot of programs already pre-compiled that I could install with the simple command “apt-get install”, this made my life easier :). However I ended up going back to Windows, because I didn’t had a great motivation to continue using the system, the comfort zone won me in that moment.
In the end of 2015, I’ve decided to learn a new programming language. Ruby along the framework Rails. When I’ve tried to install the development environment on the Windows, I don’t know if was because of my inexperience in the language/framework or if it was bad luck but I wasn’t able to install of any way in my computer, I tried also with the installer RailsInstaller what is the easiest way to install. I tried to install in more two computers, but only in the third I achieved success, however the computer was so old. In searches on the Internet I discovered that many Linux distributions already come with packages Ruby pre-installed, others had packages pre-compiled in their repositories. I didn’t think twice and I installed Linux again in my computer, now I had a strong motivation. Learning something new. I started by the distribution more user “friendly” Ubuntu. Since then I learned more and more in the free software world and its philosophy. I started to realize and analyze the different motivations that take users to Gnu/Linux world, some of them go because the “liberty” who is to ensure that their data won’t be copy and monitor by the corporations, preventing in that way that their privacy be violated. Another people use because it is free of charge. Another users use because They want to know how the operational system works and the free software gives to you this possibility, there are “N” motivations and the first step it is to find yours.
After that all, I reached the conclusion that for some users migrate from one OS that they are used to use to another OS, it is like to starting or learning any new thing in your life. First you need to have a great motivation, and after to take the first step the rest is only perseverance and practice.
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