Comment by smackeyacky

Personal computers are still fun for me, although it has waxed and waned over the years since I got my first 8 bit computer in the 1980s.

Linux kep it fun. Even during a time when I worked with windows professionally I always had a Linux distribution installed somewhere.

As a short history of fun in no particular order:

First time I got XFree86 working after having to endlessly configure display settings.

Using Yggdrasil to do remote support for Sun systems.

Hacking on a cd-rom driver to get mine to work.

Building a media server on an NSLU2. My media server is still called “the slug” despite being on an RPi now. At one point my kids had repurposed PS2s in their rooms with all their favourite shows at their fingertips. Sounds lame now but back then it was magic.

Moving all my dev tools to Linux after finally realising they all ran worse on windows, including .NET core

Endless fiddling with wine to get games to start, now completely solved but it was educational at the time.

Wacky shenanigans with wifi drivers and binary blobs back when wifi was still emerging.

I don’t know how you get the spark back once it’s lost though, I’d only suggest that the reward centre in your dome doesn’t fire properly unless you’ve been challenged and worked hard to solve whatever you’re faced with.