[Novalug] How to Encourage Women in Linux

Megan Larko larkoc@iges.org
Fri Jun 27 10:37:03 EDT 2008


Just one females opinion.

It does  not matter to me the gender of the worker so long as he or she 
does a good job in the position.


As for me personally,  I love tinkering with things.   I was one of two 
women in high school auto club.   I got involved with linux while I was 
working at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on systems like the Cyber 
205.  I wanted to be able to test my code locally before trying it on 
the main system (which was sometimes a long wait for job turnaround). 
Linux as "UNIX on a PC" met that need.  With the help of Alan McConnell, 
Przemek Klosowski and definitely Don Becker, I started working in the 
linux environment.  Not much more than a year later I was realigned from 
my scientific programming position to one in which I had to modify the 
OS in order for some very specific science code (LIS) to run.  Linux was 
selected as the OS because one could modify the source code.  The other 
systems available to the group at that time (CRAY YMP, and SGI and Sun 
of various flavors) could not be so modified.

I still do similar minor mods to linux boxes to get them to run the 
specific science code my users need to run.  I'm very glad linux gives 
me that opportunity---regardless of gender.   (Smile)

megan



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