My name is Juan José Ivars Poquet (aka kr0m), my first computer contact was in 1998, my cousin got a Compaq pentium I where he had Windows 95 installed, my first thought was that it was so strange to have to wait long load times to start a demo of MDK game. My second touch was a 486 where a friend and me were playing some sort of spaceship simulator, the computers didnt impressed me yet.
Finally at age of 15 we had the family PC, it was a pentium I with windows 98 loaded, I spent a lot of hours poking around regedit and breaking things. One day I went to my favourite bookshop and saw a little book, it was named: “cracking”, I didn’t know what it was about but I bought it anyway, it was the begining of another era, that book explained me that software can be modified and it can behave like we want even without the source code, in the end all binaries are ASM instrucctions that can be patched. Then I bought the other books of @rroba, “Hackers”, “Linux” and “Virus” it were exciting times.
At age of 16 I finally had my own computer, I could install the OS that I deserve and make all kind of tests, it was a pentium IV an expensive machine in that times. The first night I burned my monitor installing RedHat with the wrong refresh rate, fortunately I could exchange without costs covered by the warranty, I finally installed Mandrake because it autoconfigured my monitor for me. One year later I got Internet throught a 56K modem, pitifully it was a softmodem so I only used it with my Win2k, I installed an RPM driver but it was capped to a fraction of the modem speed. In the institute we started to code in VisualBasic using Microsoft Office macros, I signed up for a Visual Basic course in an academy near my house, it was amazing, I could control my pc and do what I want the way I want.
My next step was to get into computer science degree, there I knewn some friends that talked to me about Polinux, a comunnity of Linux enthusiats, I heared about Gentoo and Debian, in my third year I finally got Internet access and it was revolutionary a flood of information available to me. I decided to install Gentoo, stage1 of course and I enjoyed a lot of, I learned in that years more than in the last 5 years, Gentoo+Internet the perfect combination. I learned a lot of Linux internals, kernel compilation, boot process, user and groups administration, permissions and all kind of other things. One of my friends talked me about FreeBSD but I was too much busy with my Gentoo system to start learning another OS. For exploring something diferent I took advantage of my student position asking to Sun for a Solaris copy, all for free, I tested in a VirtualBox VM but I didnt continue investigating it.
When I finished my studies I worked with Cisco Systems and I decided to get CCNA/CCNA-SEC I learned a lot of about networking, I was interested in security too so I started using Backtrack and finally I installed OpenBSD in my laptop but the wifi didnt worked so I reverted to Debian. Then I changed to a PBX administrator job, we used Debian as base system and Asterisk as soft-PBX, I learned the basics of SIP protocol that was useful for my next job where I changed job to a Telco company that was using Gentoo and Kamailio. My last years I have been working with Gentoo/Ubuntu systems, deep learning of Gentoo portage system introduced me to FreeBSD, and one work friend encouraged me to start testing it, I started reading the excellent handbook and I was hooked.
I installed it on my home pc and home server and I used it every day, I was impressed with the ease of use, organization, functionality, man pages documentation, rock solid stability and the simplicity of RC system. I liked very much the idea that FreeBSD is the complete operating system, everything comes from one source, in that way all the system remains consistent between updates. Separating User programs from base operating system files is magnificent idea to keep base system clear over the time. Later I discovered the FreeBSD community, I immediately realized that its heavy technically prepared, when anybody answer your questions they know what they are talking about.
Since I started using FreeBSD I am so happy and I have never looked back.
What I appreciate the most of FreeBSD system is RTFM/KISS/UNIX philosophy, ZFS, Jails, BootEnvironments, the whole system is carefully planned and consistent, the project follows standards, not hypes and quality is considered more important than quick and dirty hacks to get some fancy feature in.
BTW if you want to contact me you can find me at: alfaexploit.com
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