I am a Linux Geek (and Proud of it!)

I came to a realization this morning:

I am a Linux Geek.

What finally brought me to this realization? Well, it all started last night. You see I was looking for a new display manager to use on my netbook, GDM has been getting bloated and I was looking for something a bit more trim. I came across SLiM in my various searches, but after giving it a try I decided it was not for me. It was late, so after uninstalling SLiM I went off to bed leaving my display manager search for another day.

As I was running out the door this morning I quickly shutdown my netbook down and threw it into my backpack, playing with display managers was one of the last things on my mind - it was a busy day! When I got to lunch I pulled out my netbook to check my email quickly only to discover the system was hanging at the Pinguy E17 boot splash. This was odd, I hadn't had my system randomly deiced to stop booting since I started using Linux. First things first, I did a cold shut off and waited for it to power back up again - after five minutes at the boot splash (that I normally see for 10 seconds, fast SSD) I concluded the system was not about to boot up.

So I started thinking "What did I change to cause this?" - and that is when it hit me. The system wasn't "randomly freezing" I had caused it to start freezing! After I uninstalled SLiM - I never set GDM to be the default display manager again. Not a problem, the flash drive I keep on my key chain is boot-able. I loaded the live environment, mounted my internal drive, and then ran dpkg-reconfigure gdm in a chroot environment and set GDM to be the display manager again. I restarted the system and this time around I saw my boot splash for a few seconds as normal and my system was starting up as it should.

Something that at one point would have taken me hours to figure out (and odds are would have required a few forum posts) I had resolved in minutes. I may not look like what we often type cast as a Unix Geek

But then, I don't think many of us do. It is 2011, Linux users come in all shapes and sizes today. If anyone asks me I will tell them:

I am a Linux Geek - and I am proud of it!

Have you ever come to this same realization about yourself? If so, what caused it?

~Jeff Hoogland