Born 1942, first computer used IBM 360 mainframe with keypunch, card reader, Fortran G (I believe) and endless reams of syntax error messages
instead of my expected and dreamed of output. Next an IBM PC with floppy drive (No hard drive yet) using DOS 2.11. I had a stint using a DEC PDP 11/73 mini computer and was introduced to the RXM-M Plus operating system sort of. Great machine, you couldn't kill it with a hammer. After that it was all PC's with windows software.In the 80's I thought I was really smart, built a couple machines doing everything cool. I did some very specific programming in the 80's and early 90's but when the object orientation graphical changes appeared I felt lost and confused and by then younger folks were taking over and I moved on to other things. I was introduced to programming when memory was dear so we did flowcharts of all programs and if you could finds a way to make a program more efficient and smaller that was great. I was also taught that to be a programmer you had to know your hardware and that advice was the best I ever received. Like lots of old people I felt that the new programming is too cluttered and sloppy and very confusing. (That's opinion)
But, beat up slower of mind and basically back to ignorant I love the idea of open source software and I too made the switch. I went cold turkey, reformatting my old XP drives and installing Linux Mint 13 Maya with Cinnamon LTS a few months ago. I am now 100% Linux on my desktop and have managed to keep it running even network with my laptop running Windows 7.0 (Used for travel and email only) and I keep a back up of all my data files on the laptop. I have multiple issues still. On updates I get error messages about Samba (I think I saw the reason on a post here) I can't log in or access my Linux desktop from my windows laptop although I can see the machine. I really need to spend some time reading, learning, implementing better security procedures on my Linux machine. I get real frustrated when I try something (in terminal) that I read on this and other forums and I get the “command not found” error. Thinking about upgrading to Mint 17 but see that requires a fresh install and a bit nervous about totally messing up everything I have working right now. Hopefully with help from this forum I can over come some of these issues. My only sorrow on leaving windows is excel – I truly admit I loved that program and after many hours learning to do some nice macro's I miss some of the familiar commands and was disappointed to find that I need to start all over in libre office calc – oh well.
Happy that I finaly made the switch.
