Strangely Impossible:
Eastern Europe is notorious for abundant software piracy, Romania is no exception. When I first came here in April 1996, the sidewalks were crammed with vendors hawking everthing from the latest Metallica releases to ABBA’s greatest hits, selling for a dollar a CD. For 2 dollars you could lay your hands on games collections with 20 games per CD and I’m not talking about tetris, all the latest stuff from that time. Software collections were equally impressive, a single CD could hold Windows 95, MS Office, and tens of other utilities and programs. It was every teenagers dream. In October of that year, copyright infringement legislation was introduced, and vendors along with it.
Piracy was not eradicated, however, only moved undergound. You could place orders with runners, walk a few blocks, and be handed a bag with the requested merchandise. You might know a guy, or at the very least, a know guy who knows a guy. Cheaply available software certainly made learning all the different applications and systems possible — something that could not be achieved in many other regions, without at least knowing someone who had access to the necessary programs at work, especially before the popularization of the Internet.
So it seems odd that it was near impossible for me to get my hands on a Linux distribution. For more than a month I have been calling up everyone I know, but to no avail. Perhaps it’s just a fluke, perhaps my timing is off, after all it may not be Linux season at the moment. Whatever the reason, I just haven’t been able to start experimenting with Linux. Friday afternoon, however, a friend came through for me, and now I have a brand spanking new distribution of RedHat Linux 8 Professional sitting right here on my desk, all 3 CDs. Perhaps not the most “hardcore” flavor, but hey it’s got a command line doesn’t it?! Too bad things just got busy around here, and I’ll have to hold off on taking the plunge until I can scratch a few of these other items off my work list.
