In the late 90s, my brother gave me his old 486 machine. Around the same time, the Seattle Weekly published an April fools article[1] which mentioned a free operating system called Linux. I thought it was part of the joke, but on further research, I discovered it was real. Fascinated, I bought a CD with the RedHat 5.0 installer and put it on my 486. I quickly decided the 486 was too slow, and the excitement of learning more about Linux prompted me to build myself a much better machine.
Then I discovered there were many free operating systems available, such as FreeBSD. I installed it on my machine and started going to the local BSD users group meetings. I met a guy there who hosted weekly programming classes at his house. One of the people that went to his classes worked for a small web hosting company and helped me to get an interview. I landed the job, and that is how I got my foot in the door as a professional.
Then I discovered there were many free operating systems available, such as FreeBSD. I installed it on my machine and started going to the local BSD users group meetings. I met a guy there who hosted weekly programming classes at his house. One of the people that went to his classes worked for a small web hosting company and helped me to get an interview. I landed the job, and that is how I got my foot in the door as a professional.
1. https://www.seattleweekly.com/news/microsofts-new-brain-proj...