User:Thuvack/Quote Thuvack
Who am I? [edit]
We are who we think we are, and hence what we let others perceive us as. I am simply Thuvack. I live and work in South Africa. I was born there and that I guess makes me South African. I am black and I speak Xitsonga/Shangaan. I am married to my beautiful wife and we have a lovely daughter and a handsome son.
Why I joined Wikiversity [edit]
It all started about the end of 2006, when I had just received my Varsity Results ( I had Failed! ). In my depression and anxiety I surfed the net for on-line courses in Electrical Engineering, that is when I stumbbled across Wikiversity ( The Free University! ) . After following a link from the main page to the Engineering Portal , I got to The school of Electrical engineering. To my frustration the page was partly developed with a single department news that said: "Department started!".
I was disappointed to say the least, for I really hoped that I had finally found a place where I could supplement my studies. I did not visit Wikiversity for a while, yet at the same time at the back of my mind was an annoying little voice, that kept saying: The next student like you does not have to find such an empty department. It was not until 2007 March 9that I decided to create a Wikiversity account and signed myself up to participate in Developing The school of Electrical engineering.
The whole concerpt of a wiki became very daunting that I did a lot of mistakes at first only to come back the next day and find a fixed page that I thought I had messed-up and a kind remark on my talk page to take a basic wikiversity tour and help page on basics of wiki editing. After a few acceptable edits I disappeared after 2007 March 26 for about ±12months in 2007 due to the internet access policy at work. Things changed recently and I got my internet access back with Wikiversity as one of the accepted sites. I started being active again in 2008 March 31 .As they say the rest is history.
So in summary to this question: I joined Wikiversity to help improve the material/resource for the benefit of many.
What I hope to achieve with Wikiversity
I have come to understand and cherish the idea of Wikiversity and Open Learning as this seemed very much parallel to Open Source and Linux, and obviously appealing to me.
I hope to be part of this Learning Community for as long as I am able to make meaning full contributions. Little efforts stacked upon each other make a very huge difference. I guess I have been looking for something meaningful that I can get involved with and Wikiversity seems to have filled that void.
My Activist Affiliation: [edit]
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- Cape Town Open Education Declaration signatory
What is Open Source Software? [edit]
Open Source software, is software that is released complete with the source code. Why would anyone want to release a sofware program with its source code? well simply because the author realises that the more people there are working on the same software the greater the chances of the software being functional with minimum bugs in it. You can find more about this topic here.
Why I Started Using Linux
I got my first desktop computer when I started varsity some time ago. It was a PII with an Intel CPU. I had Windows 95 installed [ It was a gift from my sponsoring company ]. The computer kept crashing on me and was simply not adequate for my Varsity programing needs. Then One day when I went to do Student Vaccation work, I saw a similar PC used as the Internet and mail machine. It was running Open SuSe 9.4. I started wondering about this strange operating system.
I decided to read about it, and I found "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" by By Eric S. Raymond. It was very comprehensive and clarified most of my questions about this new animal Open Source Software called Linux. I requested a copy of SuSe 9.x and I loaded it in My PII at home and decided to test drive it on a dual boot mode. I have not looked back to this day.
My Distribution of Choice [edit]
I got myself a pre-owned Laptop early this year and I installed SuSe 10.1 and the 10.3 later. I am impressed at the economy of Linux and the efficiency and stability it affords me. By the way my laptop hardly crashes ever since I installed SuSe 10.3. I am patiently awaiting SuSe 11 and KDE4.
OS Information
| OS: | Linux 2.6.22.5-31-default i686 |
| Current user: | crusher@linux-yfxu |
| System: | openSUSE 10.3 (i586) |
| KDE: | 3.5.7 "release 72" |
