GETmerPI

Hello, My name is Mitch. Since, 2001 I have been trying to involve myself in as many aspects of learning computer hardware and software as possible. Starting with my first operating system of Windows 98 Second Edition which was on my first computer that was a Compaq Presario laptop. Then shortly after coming home from the service, my brother had shown me how to completely build a pentium 100 computer with cpu, motherboard 256MB of RAM, 56k modem, NIC, 1.44MB floppy and cd-rom drive. To me this was one of the coolest things ever to learn. After that, this was the first time purchasing a Linksys router to setup a LAN attached to DSL to have multiple PCs online under 1 roof. Then I worked on learning about Static and DHCP Ip addresses to setup a network. This would be the first time learning about file and printer sharing with network neighbourhood.

Also, This time frame, I was very curious on how webpages were made and how websites worked. How sites were stored, written and connected to a domain out on the internet. Spending many hours of research, I had registered to Yahoo's free web design graphical user interface called Geocities. Which gave me the very basic understanging of a graphical web design interface. As time went, I studied the basics of html. But Still i needed to learn how to setup cloud web host and create my own web domain. Many hours of research, I finally pieced together the basic concept of how that web sites were created. In the mean time I still had to understand how to setup a web server on a localhost and tie it to a domain. Doing so forced me how to open ports in the router NAT firewall so that web based programs can communicate. Which is another topic. Eventually I learned how to tie a dynamic updating client with a domain service to my web server and running my own apache phpmyhadmin and sql database with XAMPP application to run a web forums on the cloud host and also through my own local web server/host. Finally, I'm slowly figuring things out with much effort.

Through out the years of Dealing with Windows based operating systems including win95, win98, win98se, winME,Win2000, WinNT,WinXP, WinVista, Windows7, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 and Windows 11. It was a struggle of finding myself have to reinstall every windows operating system I had ever used on a yearly bases at a minimum due to slowing down, freezing up, getting glitchy, and even dealing with the notorious blue screens of death. So I started looking into economical alternatives. So I stumbled in to reading a bit on Linux. I found myself purchasing a 35 dollar operating system called Suse Linux at Comp USA around 2004 time frame, which came with free tech support. Way more economical than a Windows License for 100 Dollars. I spent some time using Suse Linux but my mind yet wasn't absorbing how Linux functioned because I was treating it as if it were Windows. Not realising I have to retrain my way of thinking. So I went back to WindowsXP, 7 , 8.1 and 10 for a bit,around 2009. I had heard about the rise in popularity of ubuntu in the tech world. So I had to give it a try. Between the Live Boot process with CDS/DVDs/Thumb drives and the flexibility of not installing drivers was a win for me. These days I was running windows and linux on multiple machines.

While raising a family from end of 2006 to present, I'm trying to advance my learning and finding what works best overall for that specific time frame. Sometime around 2011, I heard about Oracles Virtual box. Learned that this allowed me to run a virtual guest operating system simultaneously with a host operating system at the same time. This helped me test many operating systems to test what the potentials of different Linux Operating systems and how to integrate Linux with windows programs and networks. In 2018, I stumbled in to a raspberry Pi3B at Micro Center. Previously I just heard about the PIs on youtube on how they were a economical credit card sized linux machines with a little bit of power. The next 5 years. Ive tried many operating systems and applications to do many different tasks and learned that the small sbc (single board computers) are a perfect way to get involved in many technical projects to help pave the way for a technical future.