CFWhitman

Well, there is an autopilot, but you have to set it up. :-)
Seriously, I refer to Linux as well behaved. By that I mean it does what you tell it to better than other operating systems. They always seem to take a "we know what you really meant" approach.

I decided to get a 2 year degree in Computer Information Systems after being out of work for a while, since I'd always been good in that subject. That was in 1997. At school, I was introduced to Linux (the professor that first mentioned it, called it a "poor man's Unix"). We each got a computer department email account on a Red Hat server (I think it had Red Hat 5 at first) which we had to telnet into and use Pine to access. Of course, more than Pine was available through the command line, and the professor that ran the server showed us Emacs and vi. When playing with Emacs, I ran across the GPL and read it. I read more about Free software, and found it very interesting. Also, in one class, we had to install Slackware 4 as an exercise (though they didn't have us try to get X running).

After I finished my degree and got my first computer job in 1999, I of course acquired a new computer and soon acquired a copy of Linux Mandrake 6. I thought that was a great distribution for beginners at the time, but I tried out others and eventually settled on Slackware (which had jumped from 4 to 7 at the time) for just about everything at home.

I also pieced together a machine from disparate parts at work (it turned out to have a Pentium 266 MHz processor with 96 MB of RAM and two hard drives of 8 GB and 6 GB) which I ran Debian Potato on. The Debian machine turned out to be the way I burned CDs for people at the office. This was because the only CD burner in the place was a 2x parallel port CD burner, and when I used it on my Windows NT 4 workstation, it would only burn one CD between reboots before turning out only coasters. Also, I couldn't use the NT machine for anything else at all during the burn process, or the disc would end up a coaster. On the Debian machine I could turn out disc after disc without reboots, and run seemingly anything I wanted (though mostly it was just Mozilla that I ran) without disturbing the burn process. This was despite the NT machine being first a Pentium II 333 MHz (though with only 32 MB of RAM) and later a Pentium III 500 MHz machine (with 128 MB of RAM) while the Debian machine was a Pentium 266 MHz machine (eventually with 96 MB of RAM, but not at first).

I've gotten lazy through the years and now use variations on Ubuntu, Debian, and Salix OS instead of regular Slackware.