Niki Kovacs (kikinovak)

I'm a 45-year old Austrian living in South France since 1991. I've started hacking away on computers as a kid, first on an 8080 monoprocessor board with 512 bytes (sic) of RAM, then on a Commodore VC-20 with 3,5 kilobytes RAM, which I programmed in Basic and in Assembler, both of which I seem to have completely forgotten.

Around the late eighties, after three frustrating semesters in Computer Science at the Technische Universität Wien, my passion for computers fell off me like a skin, and I discovered another passion, for books. In the early nineties, I moved to France, where I studied literature at the University Paul Valéry in Montpellier.

And then, I gradually rediscovered computers, first as a simple tool - no more than glorified typewriters. And slowly and gradually, my old “hacker self” came back. I discovered Slackware Linux in 2001, and since that date, I'm one hundred percent GNU/Linux and FOSS.

In 2006 I was hired by my local town hall for a two-year job, which consisted in installing and networking eleven public libraries around Sommières, using only Linux and free software.

In 2009 I created Microlinux, a company specialized in Linux-based solutions for professionals. Among my clients, I have local town halls, public libraries, schools, small and bigger companies.