Tech, I got my introduction into computing with the Timex 2068, a Speccy clone, during the mid-80's, then followed up with a professional education during high school as computing technician, and finally ended up doing a degree in Informatics Engineering.
Linux, my introduction to UNIX was via Xenix during high school, where a PC tower was shared among the whole class, and we had to prepare our UNIX exercises on MS-DOS 5 computers.
When I arrived at the university, the campus was running mixing a mix of DG/UX and SunOS servers for UNIX programming classes. By accident I got hold of the the "Linux Unleashed" book during 1995's Summer, which made my life much easier by not having to travel 1h into the campus and wait for free terminals.
After my degree I actually spent most of the time with commercial UNIXes, then eventually went back to Windows as my main computing platform.
Still use Linux on the server and naturally as the kernel powering my Android devices, but not as heavy as during my engineering degree and UNIX related assignments.
UNIX programming took place once a week, the teacher would bring in the UNIX (Xenix) tower from somewhere else, plug a keyboard and screen into it.
We would prepare our exercises in MS-DOS, only ensuring that it compiled (using stubs). There was hardly any testing possible, specially for exercises like UNIX IPC.
Then each group would take their turn at the tower, copy their prepared samples via a floppy, turn those stubs into proper calls, and finally testing that the application was actually able to run and if the exercise goal was met.
Naturally everyone having a turn pretty much depended on how well prepared everyone else was.
I used to admin Netware as well. It didn't have any overlap with Unix at the time, however, and IPX vs. IP. Although they did add IP support and integrate SUSE later I remember, but did that make it back to their DOS client?
Linux, my introduction to UNIX was via Xenix during high school, where a PC tower was shared among the whole class, and we had to prepare our UNIX exercises on MS-DOS 5 computers.
When I arrived at the university, the campus was running mixing a mix of DG/UX and SunOS servers for UNIX programming classes. By accident I got hold of the the "Linux Unleashed" book during 1995's Summer, which made my life much easier by not having to travel 1h into the campus and wait for free terminals.
After my degree I actually spent most of the time with commercial UNIXes, then eventually went back to Windows as my main computing platform.
Still use Linux on the server and naturally as the kernel powering my Android devices, but not as heavy as during my engineering degree and UNIX related assignments.