Bonum Certa Men Certa

Life Before Techrights

Roy as a teen
Age 16



Summary: It's almost midnight here, so it's a good time to reflect or look back; another 15 years for Techrights should be very much doable

Today -- or as the clock/diary turns (23:55 here) -- we start our sixteenth year, so I've looked at some old archives, trying to find photos of me aged 16 (some time after I had begun programming; I actually messed around with scripting at somewhere around the age of 12 or 13).



Roy as a teenI was introduced to GNU/Linux around 1998 when I was 16. A friend of mine (and a geeky classmate) called it "Linux" and was using it on his PC. Back then, many people including myself were using Windows 95. A couple of years later, as soon as I started studying at the University (aged 18), I move to GNU/Linux. It was Red Hat with GNOME and KDE. Later I experimented with all the other (existing at that time) desktop environments/window managers and settled on Enlightenment for a while. Back then, by GTK and Qt standards, Enlightenment was actually very good. I used NEdit (it's still available and is actively maintained). It was good for development and for note-taking. Later I started using LyX (around 2001) and then raw LaTeX as well; I didn't like Abiword because it wasn't suitable for scientific publishing. My introduction to GNU was around 2001 when I was developing with GTK. I started to get a better grasp of the real history and the underlying philosophy. I then got back to USENET and IRC (which I had already used as a teenager) and a lot of my GNU/Linux advocacy started in newsgroups (before social control media like Digg.com became a "thing"). That was in my early 20s. At age 21 I started my Ph.D. (I could leap past a Masters degree because of my grades) and chose to work on it under the supervision of the person who would soon become the head of the Computer Science department. He was very demanding and had strong work discipline. I learned a lot from him.

Here we are all these years later and I focus a lot on software patents, if not patents in general. In that domain, there is a massive vacuum in the media; it's like there are no journalists left to actually fact-check these matters; operatives of the litigation industry don't quite count, as all they do is churnalism (many examples of this in today's Daily Links).

I didn't plan to do activism or journalism or censorship-resistant publication (essential for vulnerable sources/leakers/whistleblowers). That just happened along the way. It's rewarding in every way except financial.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Computers Got Smaller, So GNU/Linux Got Bigger
Many people here recognise the lack of urgency (or need) to get expensive new laptops
GNU/Linux Grows at Windows' Expense and Microsoft Trolls Infest and Maliciously Target Articles About It
Microsoft is - and has long been - organised crime
They Say I'm Mr. Bombastic
They didn't take good lawyers
 
Culling Bad RSS Feeds of Bad Sites
Not throwing out the baby with the bathwater
Gemini Links 09/06/2025: Addition Addiction and Nitride
Links for the day
Links 09/06/2025: Science, Hardware Projects, and Democracy Receding
Links for the day
BetaNews is a Plagiarism and LLM Slop Hub, the Chief Editor Isn't Addressing This Problem Anymore
SS Fagioli is basically a parasite leeching off or exploiting other people's work
Links 09/06/2025: Chaos in Los Angeles and Hurricane Season
Links for the day
Links 09/06/2025: Windows TCO and Many Data Breaches
Links for the day
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part VI: Political Stunts by Former President Edyta Demby-Siwek and the Connection to Profound Corruption at EUIPO
it's like a money-laundering operation where one politician rewards another at taxpayers' expense
Gemini Links 09/06/2025: Pipelines and Splitgate
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, June 08, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, June 08, 2025
Links 08/06/2025: Tiananmen Carnage Censorship Persists, North Korean Goes Offline
Links for the day
Gemini Links 08/06/2025: Love as an Ethnographic Method and Monitorix Gemini-Frontend v0.1
Links for the day
Links 08/06/2025: Exposure of More GAFAM Surveillance and Social Security Records Compromised
Links for the day
Linux Foundation is a Mediator for Microsoft et al, Not for Small Companies That Support Rather Than Attack the GPL
Many people still wrongly assume that because it is called "Linux Foundation", then it is pro-Linux and represents the same mindset
This Past Friday, Confirming What We Said All Along About Brett Wilson LLP: It's Shrinking, Has Considerable Debt, Loss of Net Assets Despite the Microsoft SLAPP Money
The documents only became publicly available less than 2 days ago
Some of the Many Reasons We Sued Microsofters for Harassment
perpetrators of harassment
For 20 Years Many People Were Sharecropping for Canonical's Oligarch, Now He's Deleting All Their Contributions
"Ubuntu has erased instead of archiving the trove of material at Ubuntu Forums"
There Was Always Too Much 'Crazy Stuff' Going on Around Freenode
What many IRC users lost sight of
Exposing Crime is Not a Crime (It Never Was)
In the eyes of rich and powerful people, those who speak about their crimes are the "criminals"
GNU/Linux Distros Abandoning Microsoft GitHub
Will curl be next to leave Microsoft GitHub?
Expect More XBox Mass Layoffs Soon If the Rumours Are True
From a Microsoft media operative
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 07, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, June 07, 2025
Europe Needs to Move Away From GAFAM; The Sooner, the Better
Europe - not just the EU - must abandon GAFAM as soon as possible
The Issue Isn't GNOME's Promotion of Diversity But GNOME Corruption, Abuse, Censorship, and Worse
So-called "Conservative" (republican, pro-Trump, bigoted) people want you to think the problem with GNOME is politics
When the News Sources Become Scarce and Increasingly Full of Polluted/Contaminated 'Content' (With LLM Slop and Slop Images)
Integrity matters
"Linux" Sites That Spew Out LLM Slop
We're lacking enough material for another "Slopwatch"
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part V: Breaking the Law, Just Like EPO
We'll hopefully cover some of the pertinent details later this year