When did you come to Linux?

[MurphCID]

I come to Linux from UNIX... Digital Unix, HPUX, Solaris, AIX, Sequent, ICL Unix... and first installed Linux for serious use with Ubuntu 5.04. The company I worked for wouldn't allow me to bring a windows laptop on-site but had no rules about Linux ones and they wanted me to be mobile but only provided a desktop.

Moved to Mint when Unity became the default interface in Ubuntu (10.4?). I hated Unity, it really didn't work well on a SVGA laptop, too much space went on fluff round the edges and I couldn't be bothered to de-unity it when there were distros with prettier desktops. And I hated the macification of the Unity interface.

Commercially moved to Linux roles probably around 2003,had too many years being a UNIX professional before that!

Digital Unix...VMS? My word, how old ARE you?!?!

Why I remember running a PDP11...er...never mind...

I remember seeing a PDP 11 once in a museum!

[Arch_Enemy]

I come to Linux from UNIX... Digital Unix, HPUX, Solaris, AIX, Sequent, ICL Unix... and first installed Linux for serious use with Ubuntu 5.04. The company I worked for wouldn't allow me to bring a windows laptop on-site but had no rules about Linux ones and they wanted me to be mobile but only provided a desktop.

Moved to Mint when Unity became the default interface in Ubuntu (10.4?). I hated Unity, it really didn't work well on a SVGA laptop, too much space went on fluff round the edges and I couldn't be bothered to de-unity it when there were distros with prettier desktops. And I hated the macification of the Unity interface.

Commercially moved to Linux roles probably around 2003,had too many years being a UNIX professional before that!

Digital Unix...VMS? My word, how old ARE you?!?!

Why I remember running a PDP11...er...never mind...

I remember seeing a PDP 11 once in a museum!

Thanks pal. Now I feel old...

[MurphCID]

Digital Unix...VMS? My word, how old ARE you?!?!

Why I remember running a PDP11...er...never mind...

I remember seeing a PDP 11 once in a museum!

Thanks pal. Now I feel old...

But not as old as I am I suspect.

[Arch_Enemy]

I remember seeing a PDP 11 once in a museum!

Thanks pal. Now I feel old...

But not as old as I am I suspect.

First computer I ever used was a PDP 11-03...

[MurphCID]

First computer I ever used was a PDP 11-03...

Ok you got me on that one. I learned on a Honeywell punch card system back in college in 1978, and would have liked to try a PDP system.

[Reorx]

I started experimenting with Linux in the summer of 2009. My first distro was Fedora... I didn't care for it and, a week later, wiped Fedora and tried Mint (7 - Gloria)... and I was hooked. I became a full time Mint user 2 years later and haven't looked back. I have tried other distros along the way but have always used Mint (LTS editions) on my production machines.

[Arch_Enemy]

Ok you got me on that one. I learned on a Honeywell punch card system back in college in 1978, and would have liked to try a PDP system.

Ugh! Punch cards?!?! Never had the pleasure!

Friend of mine had a large program on cards and someone opened a door and a gust of wind came along...

[MurphCID]

Ok you got me on that one. I learned on a Honeywell punch card system back in college in 1978, and would have liked to try a PDP system.

Ugh! Punch cards?!?! Never had the pleasure!

Friend of mine had a large program on cards and someone opened a door and a gust of wind came along...

I we had a nemesis that we really wanted to jack with back in the day, if he left his punch cards unwatched, we would shuffle them, and laugh as his program would not run. You learned quickly to never let your punch cards out of your sight.

[HaveaMint]

I checked out Linux way back when? It was much terminal and I was getting spoiled it one on the MS GUI's and never have done well in my typing proficiencies. I kept checking back in the different flavours until it got to my flavour, now it is good and usable to my likings and that is what makes my twinky twinkle.

[BG405]

if he left his punch cards unwatched, we would shuffle them, and laugh as his program would not run.

Reminds me of a hot summer years ago, when I was testing & calibrating at an electronics firm. No suitable space in the test bay, so I put a large stand fan in Tim's printing section aimed at my test bay, via the walkway. Cue office lass with a box piled up with papers. No prizes for guessing what happened when she walked past the fan ..

[Manavsehgal9897]

First installed Ubuntu on a desktop around 2007. Kept with it for a year or so before returning to Windows. I was more into games back then and there just weren't enough to keep me interested. Came back again about 3 years ago with Mint and dumped Windows very quickly thereafter.

Same situation here. I was into games last year and I got bored from it and windows 10 force updating itself whenever connected to the internet is just irritating. Also the lagging and easy target for viruses, adwares and poor disk management irritated me and moved to Mint cinnamon after sometime and loving it till now.

[srq2625]

Friend of mine had a large program on cards and someone opened a door and a gust of wind came along...

That's why most programming languages back then stopped at column 76. Columns 77 - 80 (that's 4 columns) were for line sequence numbers. Dump your deck? Pick up the cards, dump them into the sorter, and "Bob's your uncle."

There was also the scheme of using a pair of markers (different colors) to draw a big "X" from corner to corner of the deck. This allowed for a way to easily get the cards in almost the right sequence.

Yeah, I remember card decks. Those were the "good old days!"

[MurphCID]

I don't know about good old days, but we seemed to be less lazy programmers in those days when 128K was all the memory you had to work with, and so had to be not only creative but sparing with your code. Now with gigabytes, while we can do more, code seems a lot sloppier and there is less rigor in programming.

[BG405]

Now with gigabytes, while we can do more, code seems a lot sloppier and there is less rigor in programming.

True.

Back when I was regularly working on my Commodore 64 programs, stuff like mouse and display interrupt drivers were squeezed under the BASIC ROM (other locations were used for graphical data) and the display memory was changed too, in order to make space for the HUGE Basic portion which had also been streamlined as much as practically possible.

This might well get a rewrite soon, as I have an SD2IEC to play with. I'll turn it into a graphical disk management utility. Have a 1541C with the ALPS mech, a 1571 and my original 1541-II to add to the mix. Happy days to come ...

Having all this memory and storage hasn't just led to sloppy programming though .. it's led to far too much bloatware.

[MurphCID]

Now with gigabytes, while we can do more, code seems a lot sloppier and there is less rigor in programming.

True.

Back when I was regularly working on my Commodore 64 programs, stuff like mouse and display interrupt drivers were squeezed under the BASIC ROM (other locations were used for graphical data) and the display memory was changed too, in order to make space for the HUGE Basic portion which had also been streamlined as much as practically possible.

This might well get a rewrite soon, as I have an SD2IEC to play with. I'll turn it into a graphical disk management utility. Have a 1541C with the ALPS mech, a 1571 and my original 1541-II to add to the mix. Happy days to come ...

Having all this memory and storage hasn't just led to sloppy programming though .. it's led to far too much bloatware.

I can't argue at all. I remember the "good old days" where programs were lean, and mean, with little bloat, because you could not afford that with your very limited means. I remember with my PCjr. having to load DOS, then remove the disk, and put in another 360k floppy to play a game or use Wordstar. Out of memory errors were common back then. I thought going to 640K of RAM was amazing. Working within limitations forced you to be a better programmer.

[Arch_Enemy]

I can't argue at all. I remember the "good old days" where programs were lean, and mean, with little bloat, because you could not afford that with your very limited means. I remember with my PCjr. having to load DOS, then remove the disk, and put in another 360k floppy to play a game or use Wordstar. Out of memory errors were common back then. I thought going to 640K of RAM was amazing. Working within limitations forced you to be a better programmer.

It seems like every time there is a gain in storage thanks to new technology, the programmers take advantage of it and add bloat.

It goes for all operating systems, but one particular is the biggest culprit.

[MurphCID]

I can't argue at all. I remember the "good old days" where programs were lean, and mean, with little bloat, because you could not afford that with your very limited means. I remember with my PCjr. having to load DOS, then remove the disk, and put in another 360k floppy to play a game or use Wordstar. Out of memory errors were common back then. I thought going to 640K of RAM was amazing. Working within limitations forced you to be a better programmer.

It seems like every time there is a gain in storage thanks to new technology, the programmers take advantage of it and add bloat.

It goes for all operating systems, but one particular is the biggest culprit.

You aren't kidding. Win-bloat is horrible, but Mac O/S X is not far behind. I really have come to love the fast responsiveness of Mint Linux.

[BG405]

Win-bloat is horrible, but Mac O/S X is not far behind.

The worst for bloat (comparatively for its time maybe?) was, IMHO, Windows Vista Blister at around 25GB! Not sure how 10 compares these days but the size of the ISO on its own gives me an idea of how economical and tidy their programming has not been.

I'd heard that Mac OSX was getting a bit bloated, but how bad is it really? It can't be nearly as full of crapware that modern(ish) Windows is? My mate is using an older Mac OS. Also, he is sick of never being able to just use his Win10 tablet (used occasionally) without waiting ages for updates, restarts etc..

[zoli62]

It was back in 2000 when i have seen first Linux. In my workplace at the time, a gateway machine was installed with Red Hat. Later came the Suse then Debian.

[MurphCID]

It is funny to me, how many of us followed similar trajectories with Linux RedHat (Mandrake)>SuSE>Debian (Ubuntu/Mint). Could it be that there is a theme here? Could it be that installing software via APT-Get prevents dependency h*ll and makes things much smoother?

It was back in 2000 when i have seen first Linux. In my workplace at the time, a gateway machine was installed with Red Hat. Later came the Suse then Debian.