Paul Tansom
Been on HantsLUG since around 1999 if I remember correctly. Started using Linux in around 1996, but started follwing its progress in what must have been 1992(ish) on the internal IBM forums – particularly one concerned with running it on the old IBM PS/2 L40 laptop which ran on the all powerfull 386sx20 processor (I still have mine in a box somehere!).
Started playing with computers way(ish) back in 1981 when my Dad bought me a ZX81 that was advertised in the Barclaycard catalogue – I think he’s been regretting it ever since! Followed on from then through the Spectrum, Amstrads (CPC464 and CPC6128) and then on to an Amiga (A1500) because the PC with DOS and Windows (such as it was then) didn’t constitute a real computer when I looked at them in shops – far too primative!
Finally tempted across to the PC world by the launch of OS/2 2.0 and bought myself a laptop – after all there wasn’t any need to replace my Amiga workhorse for the real work, and a laptop gave me new capability as well as compatibility with what I used at work (I did work at IBM after all!).
…to be continued…
location: Waterlooville, near Portsmouth for those not familiar with the area
email: paul@aptanet.com
website: http://www.aptanet.com/
..and a few other websites I run..
Sailsite: http://forums.sailsite.co.uk/
Tudor Sailing Club: http://www.tudorsc.org.uk/
Portsmouth & Langstone Sailing Association: http://www.plsa.org.uk/
Family page: (there’s a very old copy of my CV there if you’re that interested!): http://www.tansom.co.uk/
Weblog: I’ve given in to the urge to blog, the question is will I actually keep it up?!: http://www.linuxlore.co.uk/
occupation: run my own IT support business, specialising in Linux solutions oddly enough!
distribution: A Debian user since around 2000, having abandoned Red Hat after about 5 years. For the past few of years I’ve been using Ubuntu quite a bit, being a more pragmatic version of Debian. This works better in business, and saves hassle when you have to work with proprietary formats or code – as you often have to do when dealing with things like Flash or nVidia motherboard chipsets during an install straight to RAID. I’m quite happy for anyone to use whatever other distribution they may be misguided enough to prefer though. 
PS. Sorry for the horrible photo of me, I’ve been playing with images and alignment – which the Wiki seems to handle very badly from what I can work out so far. 
PaulTansom (last edited 2010-04-19 20:44:27 by PaulTansom)