My first kiss....

Discussion in 'Off Topic International' started by hezzey, Dec 26, 2021.

  1. hezzey

    hezzey Well-Known Member

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    There was a little shop in my town. There were some commodity PC equipment in stock. And some other stuff too. I didn't understand. Everything in that shop was arcane to me.
    There was a little sticker by the door and it said, among other things:
    This store is all about GNU/Linux. Every bit of stock sold here is either FOR Linux are is 100% compatible, it is ALL open Source.
    I didn't even know what those words meant.
    I had NO internet. I did not know what a modem was even [a modem was NOT what a needed, I learned that I needed a High Speed Connection. I needed to connect and use a Ethernet. A WHAT?????? How do I do that????. I had one from before a modem, that is NOT what I needed. I did't know that. I had no phone, I didn't even care about phones back then....... . BUT I had NO phone. I had to learn everything. From scratch.
    I went through all sorts of hell.....

    I bought the diskettes and after reading from the book that came inside the box [part of it, I only read until I had to stop].
    I had to find out what a High Speed Connection was. I had to find out what a server was. I had to find out how to contact a IP and to connect a router to it and how to do, um everything I did not know a THING about.
    I was inside that little tiny apartment and I was idle. It took me a year to finally connect all the parts and installation.
    One fine day, I guess that was in Spring of 1993 [edit: 1994!!I am looking at the wiki. I have forgotten much of my past]...
    I logged in and instead of seeing seeing some white text on black background, I saw a GUI on the screen.
    I knew what that was BUT I did not know it was what I needed, what I really needed.... a yer before when I started...
    I cannot say:
    I used Linux at The Very Beginning, because there was someone else who had started the concept of Linux Distributions...
    That outfit was called Soft Landing.
    I heard [read] all about that while I was studying that book that was called something like Learn Slackware.
    I did not even know a thing. I could press the power button, yeah. I could stick cards into slots, yep. I was a [not quite MSDOS user, I could made MSWindows 3.11 work, and that was all]
    That was a year spent and that one spring day, after turning that PC on I saw something interesting on the screen.


    I was in.

    I have not gone The Other Route, not since then. And since then my PC has gotten better and better.

    ANYONE who went through the 80s and 90s and had to go through all the agony that I did will know what I DID NOT TYPE.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slackware#History
     
    Last edited: Dec 26, 2021
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  2. hezzey

    hezzey Well-Known Member

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    I am now very comfortable in My Little World.
    AND I do not know anyone who can get in.
    I have heard there are others about. Because I got the web working, I began to find out about them... I was not alone. BUT I sure felt alone. Back In The Day....
     
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  3. hezzey

    hezzey Well-Known Member

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    NOW-a-days all ya need is the hardware that woks AND a Bootable GNU/Linux CD. [Out of the box, it worked OUT OF THE BOX!!!! Amazing!!!!]
    CD???? What is that? How do I get one, how does it work>???
    I was a bit of a hillbilly, BUT I knew. even then, how to read.
     
    Last edited: Dec 26, 2021
  4. hezzey

    hezzey Well-Known Member

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    Thanks Mcgru!!!
    That means a lot to me!!!!
     
  5. hezzey

    hezzey Well-Known Member

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    My son, he is now 34, He [thinks] he knows everything. He is a [almost] experienced MS Windows user. He has watched his his dad's PC changes it's skin, from a MSWindows box into something dangerous and magical [he thinks].
    He watched as I progressed. he did not know that HE was the Cavemen. I WAS NOT.
    And now-a-days he only crosses his eyes and looks the other way, when he sees MY PC working.
    A FUCKING CAVE-MAN.
    And so is everyone I know [except some techies, I see them sometimes, at little tiny shops]
    MY SON cannot even get out of the Boot Choices.
    And neither can ANY of the young People in the family. NOW, my son is Their Great Leader.
    I am so glad that NOBODY every asks me what to do.
    NOW the little people ask my son.
    I am left alone.
     
  6. looseleaf

    looseleaf Well-Known Member

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    Well Hez... I guess you were too young to have bought the original Apple 2, Apple 3. Apple 2c.... and before that the Commodore C64, or Heathkit H8 or Heathkit H11... you dont know about the Apple floppy drives that were dumb- no controller cards, you needed to buy a controller card and the ribbon cable went out to the floppy drive. In fact things were so primitive some times the rpm rate was off and the speed of the floppy had to be tweaked so the computer could read it !!! And the programs were on audio cassettes, or paper tape...
    Better computers came out based on 6502 chips, The Franklin Ace, the German Basis. The Apple had the WOM card, and the CPM card... Direct slot addressing, ROM on the motherboard that if you programmed the chip the computer started right up- no time to boot.... All the great ideas by all the REAL inventors were killed by the Robber Barons.... Jobs, Gates.... little Napoleons that killed all really great ideas that infringed upon their turf. ..... I was there... I saw what was to be a great Renaissance .. all turn to shit by these evil trolls .....shit.... I need a beer....
     
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  7. hezzey

    hezzey Well-Known Member

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    Thefirst PC I got was a Vic 20. It was arcane to me I had no idea what was going on oh I could hit the power switch! Actually my mom and her husband bought it but they gave up after about one week and gave it to me…
    Oh I learned how to use the disk drive it was a audio tape…
    I was completely mystified by it.
    Mom and John thought oh Brad he’s a smart guy he could get this working!
    No there was no Internet back then and the library had nothing at all in it that was of any use at all. I was on my own and I didn’t even know how to ask for help I didn’t know any of the lingo…. as if a clean slate.
    Later I got a slightly used C 64.
    It was also a mystery to me
    Can I got some sort of monstrosity made by RadioShack. It was as big as a fridge!!
    It was text only I did manage to get the operating system working and I learned a little bit of ‘Basic’
    Hi don’t know if the age difference between us had much to do with it I was learning how to handle different sorts of tools from the electronic kinds and I was not even aware that there were other types of technology for me to get good with.
    I just didn’t want to cut my toes off with a shovel or hurt my back trying to lift too much.
    I was a pre-industrial type until I got my first PC compatible machine and I use that for a few years but still didn’t know much about it.
    For me my great start was when I got a 386.
    And even that took a few years I am not sure how much time.
    I really was a caveman until I got a 32-bit PC and that was when I started to see the light.
    I still had zero knowledge until I got that 32 bit PC and then began playing around with it and also I got laid off.
    I was a landscaper/gardener I was not in the right social crowd I didn’t hang around with anybody who had any intellectual skills other than stuff like how do you not cut your toes off with a shovel and that sort of thing.
    For me my great awakening was in the early 90s that was a year that I was pretty much unemployed and I was opening my eyes.
    Still high had hardly learned to use a shovel…
    If my mom and her every second year man had any money I think perhaps I would have progressed a lot farther and faster than I did but I was content learning how to maintain the garden system have a shovel and hedge trimmers.
    I was a Ace at handling a wheel barrow...
    And that all changed (I Wrote about that above)
     
    Last edited: Dec 26, 2021
  8. vasco

    vasco Well-Known Member

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    One of my son's classmates, a very business oriented kid, was charging the others in the class money to do their IT homework. Then my son started to help them, out of friendship, by teaching them through zoom. I think his classmate's little business collapsed.
    It's a bit like how I see things are happening in the present. A lot of free help and tutorials are available nowadays. And a lot of user friendly opensource software, for there's a lot a code out there. And people like to share things, they don't always expect money.
    The business might only be riding on a very short first wave from now on, when it comes to home user software. I'm very optimistic about the future.

    @hezzey
    Then my son even taught the businesskid how to install opensuse on his PC, along with The-other-OS.
    When he told me that, I thought "You should have asked him to pay, out of revenge for the others".
    But I didn't say it.
     
    Last edited: Dec 27, 2021
  9. hezzey

    hezzey Well-Known Member

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    Jeeze!
    I do not consider Opensuse to be, um easy to use. I am old and am losing my thinking.
    I used to use (and pay for too!) Suse before it was Open. That was hard on me but it was about twenty-five years go…. And you made it duel boot? On a different Drive? (Never mind…)

    Is he even gonna know how to pick the boot drive/partition ?
    UM. IF he is like my son, Hahaha. He is gonna have a shit….
     
  10. hezzey

    hezzey Well-Known Member

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    I did try a bootable USB stick with OpenSusa on it a couple years back…. That was in my distro hopping days.
    I didn’t learn a thing.
     
  11. vasco

    vasco Well-Known Member

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    You are underestimating the kids
     
  12. hezzey

    hezzey Well-Known Member

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    Yeah you are right.
     
  13. -nicae-

    -nicae- Well-Known Member

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    That's pretty much the way of the .. looooooong term .... future. In the future, all software will be free. Just like Android. Just like GIMP. Just like Blender.
    Think of all of what is super expensive:
    Windows. Linux.
    Office. StarOffice.
    Photoshop. GIMP.
    3D Studio Max. Blender.
    Protools. Rapier.
    Warbirds. Freehost. [lol]

    The future is free software, with monetary gains coming from elsewhere. :)
     
  14. OldUncles

    OldUncles Well-Known Member

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    -nicae-, I want to believe in such a future. Software licenses are VERY expensive for universities. PUC in Rio is awesome, BTW. Guys there created Lua. You probably know that. That neighborhood was very nice. The strange catepillar/worm building so close to the planetarium... I love that place.
     
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  15. vasco

    vasco Well-Known Member

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    There's also the Arduino movement. Open source hardware, fucking brilliant. There's a huge craze among kids all over the world, using programming to control electronical and mechanical devices.
     
  16. -nicae-

    -nicae- Well-Known Member

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    I'm from São Paulo, so I don't like Rio. (In a friendly-rivalry sense :))

    Yeah! It's so brilliant that I even lack any useful ideas for Arduino. It's like it took away any excuse to complain about bad hardware design. lol
    There are big opportunities in hardware!