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Comment by ryukoposting

1 year ago

Anandtech is how I learned what Ubuntu is. I must have been about 10 years old, and the concept of any OS besides Windows or MacOS was completely foreign to me. Within a few weeks, I had dug an old laptop out of my dad's bin of "stuff work wasn't using anymore" and I managed to put Ubuntu on it. I think it was an HP. I don't remember the exact specs but I do remember that the GPU was failing, there were weird video glitches all the time, and the battery held a charge for about 15 minutes.

That was my first experience with Linux. That broken-ass computer was what I used when I learned Arduino. I'm now a firmware engineer, writing this comment on my work laptop, which is running Ubuntu.

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ryukoposting

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vergessenmir  1 year ago

Makes me feel old. I was at uni when Ubuntu came out. But my story was similar to yours in the mid 90s and I got hold of a walnut creek cd with Slackware from some PC mag, a couple floppy disks and discarded hardware and I was off to the races

There was something about discovering tech through dedicated tech sites back then that felt exciting.

Now, any time I find something new it always has a polished marketed feel to it and has none of the secretive clandestine undiscovered power that old tech had.

I guess I am getting old

  • cseleborg  1 year ago

    Slackware!!! Dang, I had forgotten that name. That was the first distro I installed as well. Xeyes and stuff. Oh, dear...

    • 0898  1 year ago

      The guy got sick with a mystery illness didn't he? This was about 20 years ago. He blogged about the saga of having doctors try to figure out what was wrong with him, and I think was self-administering various treatments. Must look up how he's doing.

      1 reply →

    • nurettin  1 year ago

      After installing it from 24 floppy disks, and getting it wrong the first few times I can't forget Slackware. I was scarred for life.

  • ryukoposting  1 year ago

    > Now, any time I find something new it always has a polished marketed feel to it and has none of the secretive clandestine undiscovered power that old tech had.

    If you're getting old, then I must be too, because I know your pain. I don't remember the last time I saw new tech(1) that felt like a real novelty to me.

    Now that I've been fully in "career mode" for a few years, I have the budget to engage in my hobbies with greater depth than ever before, and that's amazing. Yet, I've found myself going deeper and deeper into the "retro." Old computers, old cameras, old music formats, etc. It's easier to find novelty there.

    (1): this is limited to tech. There's great new music that isn't too hard to come by if you can manage to train Spotify's algorithm to give it to you.

  • nharada  1 year ago

    Yeah dang my first linux install was at about the same age but it was Red Hat (not RHEL or Fedora). I remember most of my time was spent trying to get my network drivers working properly.