Hello Fellow Mint Lovers from an Ubuntu Convert

[Fiduggin67]

Greetings All,

I have to admit that this is not my first experience with Mint. I tried it out from a live CD many years ago (can't actually remember how long ago.) I was really impressed with it then and even more now that I have decided to stick with it. I have a lot of computers, most of them quite old, and it has long been a hobby of mine to keep all of these computers alive with linux. I recently rescusitated a 1999 Toshiba Pentium III with 128MB of RAM using a stripped down Puppy version. I am not a techie, but have been using Linux for so long on and off that I can handle most things with guidance.

I first became fascinated with home computing in the mid 1980's. Back then, an IBM 286/386 was several thousand dollars. I could have never afforded that, so my first real home computer was a Radio Shack Color Computer (the CoCo, as it was affectionately known.) It cost me $99.00, and It even pre-dated the Commodore 64 which became so popular. It had a Motorola processor, with 16K (that's right, 16K) of memory. It did not have a hard disk and programs were loaded from cartridges (like old 8 track tape cartridges.) Any work you did that you wanted to save was saved to a cassette tape (which, of course was sold separately.) I also had a Timex Sinclair which was about the size of an iPad and had a membrane keyboard. Both of these computers hookup to your television set through the antenna jack. I learned to program in the CoCo version of BASIC (which was actually quite different to real BASIC.) I rocked on with this computer for a number of years, eventually adding an external floppy disk and a hard drive that sounded like a can opener. I was proud to own the top of the line 10MB version of the hard drive.

In 1993, I was given an IBM 386 as a gift. It had a 120MB hard drive and 8MB of memory. It ran Windows 3.0. I was in hog heaven!!

In 1996, I learned how to built my first desktop. It was able to run Windows 95. While I was building this computer, a friend at the computer store I frequented introduced me to a strange looking operating system that featured a pair of googly eyes on the desktop that followed your mouse cursor. It was very complicated to me, and most of the activity took place on the command line with very little use of a GUI. That operating system was a very early version of Red Hat Linux. In fact, Linus Torvolds had completed the Linux kernel only three years before that. I paid the store $19.00 for the five floppy disks and took home my first Linux operating system and installed it on my newly built computer. Of course, I didn't stick with it for very long and reinstalled Windows 95 on it. But, my fascination with Linux was born and in 2002, I installed Red Hat 9 as my only operating system. Then came Fedora 1, then Slackware, then Debian. I couldn't decide which one I want to stick with, so for 6 years I ran a desktop machine which booted five different versions of Linux. But, as I got older with less time available to me, I settled into Ubuntu in 2006, but continued to play with other distros.

The laptop I am using to write this is a Toshiba Equium A210 with an AMD64 X2 and 2GB of memory. I bought this computer new in 2008 and immediately replaced the hard drive with an empty 160GB drive and installed Ubuntu. I continued to use Ubuntu since then, never reinstalling but rather just upgraded the system every time a new LTS release came out. But, sadly all good things come to an end. The system had become so bloated and corrupt that I had to back everything up to my personal cloud and look for something else lighter weight that this old girl could accommodate. In comes Linux Mint.

I have a little 6 year old daughter now and I don't have nearly the time I used to for experimenting. Mint suits me just fine now and I can see our relationship blossoming.

Anyway, hello to everyone and to anyone who took the time to read this, sorry if I bored you. Great to be here.

Bob

[BaltyRaven]

Welcome to the Linux Mint forums, "Fiduggin67". Hope you have a swell time here.

[Pierre]

Welcome to our Forum

it's always nice to see another User who has Traveled, across the various Linux Systems.


Do Take the Time to Read the LinuxMint Users Guide that came with the installation.

[jimallyn]

Welcome aboard, Fiduggin67! I wish I had been introduced to Linux earlier. I first installed Linux in 2002, and was hooked immediately. I don't think I ever had a CoCo, but I had a microCoCo. It had a 6803 processor, and I think 4K of RAM. I liked programming in assembly language, so I hand-disassembled the ROM enough to figure out how to make it run assembly programs. (There is a RAM location that you have to put either AA or 55 in to make it run the "OS" or your own assembly program.) I also had a VIC20, and a couple of Timex-Sinclair computers. My mother was teaching math in a junior high school, and wanted to teach some computer stuff to her classes. The school had only one computer at the time, an Apple ][. So, I brought in all my computers and helped her teach the computer class. That was fun.

[Fiduggin67]

Thanks to everyone for the welcome. As I mentioned, I have a lot of old laptops (also a new high-spec one that I have to keep Windows 10 on because the wife uses it and she refuses to use Linux.) I also have a Mac Desktop that my little girl uses. But this old Toshiba is still my go to computer and I will continue to use it until it just won't go any more. I am very much enjoying Mint, though I do have one frustrating issue I am still trying to fix. I will eventually fix it. I'm nearly 68 now, but I haven't lost any of my computing enthusiasm.

Thanks again for the kind welcomes.

Bob

[kc1di]

Hello Bob and Welcome Linux Mint Forums,
With all that experience you will be able to help many.
Enjoy your new mint

[WharfRat]

Hello Fiduggin67

Welcome to Linux Mint and the Linux Mint forum

[phd21]

Hi "Fiduggin67",

Welcome to the wonderful world of Linux Mint and its excellent forum!