The TragDate project is a personal initiative that aims to provide content in Romanian for the Linux, FLOSS and IT security community.

About the Author 🧑‍💻

💾 As a child I was fascinated by technology

I still remember when I first saw a computer at a colleague’s, it was a Compaq 386 with [MS-DOS](https://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/MS-DOS) from what I remember, I was fascinated by all the possibilities it offered and the sound it made when it started:

The fellow had a DOOM game on a couple of floppies but he didn’t know how to install it, I tried to install it and was able to get it running, it was a feeling of freedom and power, I was fascinated by everything a computer could do.

🖥️ Later I received a computer from my grandparents

It was an AMD SEMPRON 2200 with Windows XP without internet I started to explore through all the manuals that Windows had already installed, to exchange CDs with colleagues and to modify/edit everything possible in WinXP.

🌐 Then I discovered the Internet through computer clubs

I discovered that there is a whole world of people who deal with computers, and I started to understand how IRC and other protocols work. Eventually I signed up for internet at home too, and from there I started downloading games, trying to understand how the internet works, and trying to understand how a computer works.

🛠️ I started building & modding computers

Ever since I was a kid I had a penchant for hardware, I would take apart toys and make something else out of them just for fun and to understand how it works. This habit came in handy when I started building computers, understanding how a computer works and how to upgrade it.

🐧 I’ve been using Linux since 2007

Being a teenager in those years, having an “Original” (colored) CD was a great achievement, almost everyone at that time was walking around with pirated CDs. When I found out that Canonical was sending Ubuntu CDs for FREE I couldn’t believe it, I immediately submitted an online request and received a [Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon](https://wiki. ubuntu.com/GutsyGibbon). I installed it in dual boot with Windows XP and started to discover what Linux is, understand how the package manager works, how to install a program, how to update the system, etc…

🧑‍💻 I currently use Arch Linux as my main operating system

I discovered minimalism and started building my own GUI based on the suckless suite with programs like dwm, st, dmenu etc…