I remember coining this name way back in the 1990’s when I got initiated in to the world of computers with a 2 year course at Aptech Santacruz. Those were the old days of dumb terminals, SCO Unix and Novell Netware. MS Dos for the IBM PC was in ver. 3.3. 386 processors from Intel, AMD or Cyrix were the hottest and fastest chip on this planet. The world belonged to Dos 3.3, Wordstar (Not MS Word), Lotus 1-2-3 (Not MS Excel), Borland Turbo Pascal and Turbo C were the programmers war machines, not Visual Basic. Basically there was no OS called Windows !
Today most geeks start computing on the “next > next > finish” world of Windows XP/Vista, however I started mine with the green VT10o terminals of the Unix world. Unix – the mother of all Operating Systems. Those were the days of keyboard supremacy, shell scripts, the terribly complex VI editor, the merciless Kourne shell, where typing even a backspace was considered a sin. However, beneath the unfriendly user interface, it was a true fire-breathing dragon, blazing fast, accurate, secure and more advanced than anything else in the computer world.
In the years to come, the ease of use and a friendly simple DOS terminal with simple commands and even friendlier GUI in the form of Windows was received with open arms by all those really tired with asking as to why Unix had to be so unfriendly and fearful to use even if it was such an advanced OS. Trading performance with ease of use made Windows what it is today – a monopoly desktop OS from big brother Bill Gates. Very buggy, bloated yet gets the job done. The biggest secret behind the phenomenal success of Windows – the MS Office suite aimed at corporates which made life so simple and less complex for them. Perhaps MS Office was the single success key which turned the computing war in favor of Microsoft. While the various unix flavors like Solaris, HP Unix and several others went on refining and defining an OS as primarily a backend server thingie, some operating systems like OS/2, apple and NextOS only remained for a handful few who had a specific need for something extra.
Fresh out of college , I was in love with computers, especially with C and Unix. This was not considered normal in those days, when most IT geeks were waking up to a new software called Windows 3.1 and Visual Basic and even to the archaic COBOL as Y2K approached fast. This new software from Microsoft again called Visual Basic was catching everyones attention fast – even dummies could now code without having to worry about pointers and lines and lines of complex code. Unix was always my first love and remained even as I started wading through the Windows world in my several jobs in corporate life. The love went out of sight but never out of mind, however it could only be experienced n my brief encoounters with Solaris and Aix.
Back then, I wrote all my C code under the name “Manix” simply to identify the rebel in me and all my programs were free to use for anyone who could want it. I had never heard about Opensource back then, however I was happy if some of my code could help someone, especially all the virus busters I wrote. Sadly it was not the era of easy internet access. So I never got to writing code for a wider audience who could download it at the click of a button.
The word “Manix” was a take off from Unix. I had also decided that any industry I start would operate under the flagship ManiXware again taking the cue from the SCO flagship “UnixWare” – quite elementary. I had a box of smart paper visiting cards which went a number of places with my knowledge of computing and my free tools to help someone in trouble for a small fee. I remember that I had recovered the money I spent on the cost of printing those cards several times over. Manixware incidentally was also the first email ID I ever made for myself when Shabir Bhatia opened hotmail.com for the masses.
With time I graduated to the world of network and server infrastructure management in giant corporates running AS/400 and Windows NT server farms, a new kid on the block was about to make an impact on the Windows world. Linux a Unix clone, written by Linus Torvalds as a hobby project was slowly catching the world’s attention. It allowed users of standard x86 hardware for the first time to install a Unix variant without overheads of expensive and hevy server hardware. A normal x86 desktop PC was all that was required. In fact the more archaic the x86 hardware was, the more comfortable this new OS was. It was under heavy development and was noticed by many corporate geeks who needed a “Swissknife” in their armory of Network & data center operations. Suddenly legendary and robust systems like apache web server, sendmail/qmail email servers were available to ordinary network administrators for loading and using on ordinary abandoned desktop computers.
I played around with Red Hat Linux on the corporate front using it for offbeat backend servers doing a lot of things like email, web servers, firewalls and many more small edge network projects like email gateways and all. The OS never complained, never groaned, but kept on happily running on any hardware thrown at it.
On the desktop front as well, since the days of my first 386 computer at home; thanks to the PC Quest magazine in India; I also tried to toy around with Red Hat tools on the desktop. However it wasn’t quite cut out to be desktop OS as I noticed. It simply did not come anywhere close to Windows in ease of installation, ease of use and most importantly – it lacked the support in the form of an ocean of software available for windows. Even after spedning many nights creating a usable and working linux desktop environment, the next question was – what do I do with it now ? There was no application software which compared to the ones on Windows. The mozilla browser was terribly bloated, buggy and had horrible fonts. Gnome early versions was an eye sore and it seemed pretty difficult to use anything on desktop linux other than linux for the joy of itself. It seemed that powerful linux kernel and its powerful command line was perhaps destined only for the backend servers where it would quietly run and unleash the full potential of any hardware it ran on.
However I was so intrigued by the philosophy of opensource and my love for Unix that I never stopped trying. However most distros from Red Hat, Suse and others disappointed me miserabely on my home desktop scene. It was way too much work to get it up and running even for basic tasks.
A few years back, I heard of a new linux distro on the scene – Ubuntu. As usual I downloaded it and gave it a try. In a few months, my desktop changed from Windows to Linux – for the first time ever and it was there to stay.
My expression of my own identity and indepent thinking meant that it was time for me to be writing blogs on my own site rather than a borrowed site from google or others around. So I started toying around with the idea of having my own website.
Quite a few of my google searches on the net took to several personal blog sites powered by the open source blogging software – wordpress.com. In the grand scheme of my own website, the hosting part was easy. I would support opensource linux as my choice of OS for hosting and the website hoster would have to offer wordpress as one of the software which I could install and use.
Using opensource software reflects my philosophy of choice to choose, freedom and community driven free software. Linux symbolized that for me and any software I ever use now on would have to be opensource and ideally Linux based. Hence my ISP also has to be linux based.
However hosting my own website brought me to the hardest bit when creating a website. What name do you give your own website ?
I deliberated a lot and the stress I put on my grey cells revived my old unix days and my playing around using Manixware as my banner. Luckily no one else had thought of that name on this big wide internet and so this site came in to its own existence.
It gives me a sense of achievement and great satisfaction today and I would like to register it for the years to come that I blogged this on my home desktop which has Ubuntu Gutsy as my desktop OS with a custom compiled 2.6.24.3 linux kernel. I have scripted this test using the opensource Firefox web browser. My ISP hosts manixware.com on a linux server and my blogging software happens to be again opensource software from wordpress.com !
