NetBSD developer: Julio M. Merino Vidal

As seen in the title, my name is Julio M. Merino Vidal; to those who don't know how to split it, Julio M. is the first name and Merino Vidal (all together) is the last name. I'm from and live in Barcelona, Spain, and I'm currently studying computer science at the FIB faculty (UPC university).

The purpose of this page is primarily to keep a list of things I've done in the free software world, especially for NetBSD. It also contains some biographical information for the curious ones.

I try to regularly post some random news, little programming related articles, and personal opinions in my journal. I'm also open to suggestions for future posts. Visit The Julipedia!

My first contact with Unix-like operating systems was around the end of 1997. At that time I was looking for an alternative to OS/2 Warp 3, a system whose death seemed imminent (of course Windows was there, but it was quite unstable by those dates and I've never been a fan of it anyway). I had heard about Linux (being free was a big plus), so as soon as I got a CD with a distribution on it, I proceeded to install it. It took a long time until I became confident with the system. Since 1997 I've used many different distributions, although the one I like most is Debian GNU/Linux.

Around mid-2000, I had to add a firewall and router box to my home network. Due to several suggestions from other people, as well as all the hype about security it has, I decided to give OpenBSD 2.8 a try. Coming from a Linux-only background, it wasn't a nice experience and it left me a really bad impression about the system, which I extrapolated to the other BSDs. A few months later, I switched that box to Debian, having been quite frustrated by the experience. (To OpenBSD users: I'm not saying that the system is bad in itself, just that it seemed bad to me at that time. But frankly, I don't like it at the moment either.)

At the beginning of 2001, I wanted to give the BSD systems another try, but this time I installed FreeBSD 4.2 on my workstation (which was recommended to me by some other people, too). Fortunately, that completely changed my view about these OSes: everything is clearly organized, homogenized and it seemed easier to manage overall. Eventually, and thanks to the fine documentation available, I got rid of Linux.

Several months later, at the end of 2001, I finally tried NetBSD 1.5. That was certainly love at first sight: the system seemed minimalist, the documentation was excellent, the focus on code cleanliness was exciting and pkgsrc looked more powerful than FreeBSD's ports (despite its lack of packages at that time). Sure, the transition from FreeBSD was somewhat tough, but it was worth it. Since then, NetBSD has been my operating system of choice: I use it whenever I can, and, despite the fact that I try new versions of the previously mentioned systems from time to time, I don't want (nor see any compelling reason) to go back.

To summarize: after all these years, I believe that I have achieved a good level of UNIX knowledge in many areas, be it as a user, as an administrator, or as a developer. Obviously, I still have many things to learn, but this is something I don't mind doing.

My first contact with free software was when I first started using Unix-like operating systems (do you remember FIPS?). Since then, my interest for it has kept growing, and now I try to avoid proprietary software whenever I can. Free software has given me much more than just programs: I have learned a lot of programming and debugging techniques thanks to it.

Personal projects:

Projects I like to contribute to:

The following is a list of articles I feel confident about that I've written and published: