[racl101]

I remember my first year of Uni having to go to the lab just to find a Sun work station (running Red Hat) so I could do my comp sci assignments and hope that there was one available otherwise I'd have to make the trek to the building again. During the winter months this trek was arduous.

It was so great in my 2nd year after learned about Ubuntu, figuring out how to install it on my Windows PC and being able to dual boot and then being able to do my assignments by connecting via SSH. Was able to do my assignments quicker and from the comfort of my rented basement (far away from campus).

And it was even better to just be able to experiment on my own laptop and not worry about screwing things up on the campus workstation.

There's so much good stuff available to make learning programming quicker but I look fondly on those early '2000 years because it makes me appreciate how far Linux and FOSS has come along.

[dleslie]

... SFU had Sun Workstations running Red Hat. They replaced the Solaris machines. Did you go to SFU?