It's time for a poll. How long have you used Linux?

[visionhelp]

Hi.
I had to study 98 about 5 years and XP again about 5 years, until I could say, Win is in my hand, instead of being in Win´s hand.
The last years I tried - with some difficulties (everything different then Win, unkind and rejecting Linux-forums - to approach cautiously.

Alone to reach the point, to understand the precondition, the needed partitions, but here first just for Knoppix, took - lasted - years.
Now I see me in the middle - between Win and Linux, after having some first views into win10 - of both.

Current plan: Knoppix and win10 and Linux Mint Mate (21.2) onto a stick, as for ´beginning´.
(Knoppix 7.6 - on an old laptop, as replacement - did help in some months, where XP did make me some troubles, once with this TLS for Outlook Express, and once with mainbord having to change.)
My XP - with a still current held browser, MyPal - still is my reliable system, I know how to handle it.
Despite mails with Outlook Express now is gone, after TLS from the mail-providers had been changed. And for XP only hardly to set up.

So, now I am very glad, with discovering this forum, having support possible, when questions are coming up. Thank You very much for this.

Sorry, can´t delete this box.

 

[Danbor]

In December of 22 I deleted windows and installed Linux Mint on my Toshiba laptop and my 7 year old Lenovo Ideacenter desktop. Tried to get Mint on my HP office pro only to discover that the motherboard was hard coded to microsoft. That computer is now sitting on the floor of my closet. In January of thos year, I purpose built this desktop computer for Linux Mint, it's never had anything else but Mint.
I don't know if they share much history, but the Mint OS reminds me of the Amiga OS. Boy do I miss my old Amiga 500!

 

[-jnhjnh517]

I had to just establish some arbitrary numbers.

Just pick the category to which you belong.

For fun, I've made it so that you can't see the poll results unless you have also voted.

Also for fun, you can not change your vote.

(I may sticky this for a few days. I want to give folks a chance to respond.)

If you need to add a caveat, do so in the thread. Note that this is in "General Linux" and not "Off-Topic", so please try to keep it on topic.

2017 - 6 yrs

 

[joe_linux]

A friend told me about Linux back in 2008. I decided to try it. I started with Ubuntu (Hardy Heron, if I'm remembering correctly). I really liked it and played with it for years, getting excited for each new release. For some reason (probably boredom) I installed Mint onto a machine at work in 2018. That was when I first discovered Cinnamon. I thought Cinnamon was the coolest DE ever! That was before I even knew that you could install alternate DEs onto whatever system you chose. As a result I started leaning towards Mint. Then I discovered Mint was based on Ubuntu, which is based on Debian. So I thought I'd try LMDE (seemed like a good idea to cut out the middleman). Then I thought, "Hey, why not just try regular old Debian?" So now I have a Debian 12 machine, a Debian 11 machine, and an Ubuntu 20.04 machine (all with Cinnamon installed for the DE).

 

[joe_linux]

I had to just establish some arbitrary numbers.

Just pick the category to which you belong.

For fun, I've made it so that you can't see the poll results unless you have also voted.

Also for fun, you can not change your vote.

(I may sticky this for a few days. I want to give folks a chance to respond.)

If you need to add a caveat, do so in the thread. Note that this is in "General Linux" and not "Off-Topic", so please try to keep it on topic.

How do we "pick a category" and "vote?"

 

[KGIII]

How do we "pick a category" and "vote?"

There should be a poll at the top of this page where you can vote.

If it's not there, something is broken and beyond my control.

 

[joe_linux]

There should be a poll at the top of this page where you can vote.

If it's not there, something is broken and beyond my control.

Yeah, there's nothing up there. Darn, I was looking forward to seeing where I stand amongst the average member here.

 

[Vektor]

If there is a category for "drive by linuxing" , that is where I am.

Vektor

 

[KGIII]

Yeah, there's nothing up there. Darn, I was looking forward to seeing where I stand amongst the average member here.

Maybe try visiting the first page of the thread? You'd be around the 15 year category, so close to the middle.

If there is a category for "drive by linuxing" , that is where I am.

Vektor

No. It's also (more or less) about when you began using Linux exclusively. It's not a very scientific poll. It's not meant to be. Using this poll to extract meaningful data would be silly.

 

[rmch]

Started around 2002/2003 and saw the SCO/IBM drama. For enterprises it was Red Hat and Suse back then, although I remember one Sys Admin really liked Slackware.

 

[Vektor]

5 years for me. My Linuxmobile has the top down permanently with the Windows removed completely.

Vektor

 

[rossdv8]

Am I 'old fashioned? or just 'OLD?'

I come from a background of Punched tape, Punched cards, Reel to Reel data Tapes in big rooms Something like this (I was supposed to become a 'Computer-Operator).

At home I used cp/m a lot right up through the 80s, and I was doing stuff for IBM that involved using ealy vesions of OS/2. When OS/2 Warp came out, it was a big surprise, because while you could open multiple programs MS Winows (including Win 95) and Switch between them, Windows was not a Multi-Tasking OS until much later.
OS/2 v3 Warp was fully Multi-tasking and could do things Windows 95 could not even emulate.

Then I discovered Linux,and was getting back into the swing of Unixy stuff.

I started messing with Linux seriously around 1995(ish) when I found an early boxed set of Red Hat Linux that came out with a heap of Floppies. (I still had the box, manual and floppies until I decided to get rid of ALL my oldFloppy disks for all my operating systems going back to about 1973).

In 1998 I bought a book called 'SAMS Teach Yourself Linux' and it had the first CD-ROM I ever saw that had Linux on it. So I installed that, and was now on Red Hat 5.0.
Soon after that I decided since OS/2 was officially out of the picture, that Linux could fo most of the stuff I had used Warp for on the desktop.

Then I discovered a product from StarDivision gmbh on Germany called 'Star Office'. It was not only an Office suite, but it dreated a complete desktop within Linux itself. I was hooked and from 1998 onwards I have been a dedicated Linux Only used, and the customers I could not convert to using Linux or Xenix on their servers, I asked politely to call someone who cares (about Windows). So I basically became the default Linux Guy, before Linux was really known.

So, I've been using Linux exclusively since 1998. I retired from my computer business in 2007 after injuries in a hit and run made it ompossible to keep tings going. And I was very active in the old Mandrake, Mepis and PCLOS mailing lists and direct contact with some of the founders of those distros.

That was a long way to say:
"Since 1995" . . .

 

[Aristarchus]

mid 70' - high school programing (ALGOL, COBOL, Fortranand so on) at local university was obligatory
mid 80' VAX
late 80' sunos, netware, windows 2.0
mid 90' my own pc first with FreeBSD/OpenBSD, late 90' RedHat, Slackware, ~2000 Mandrake, SuSE, Arch Linux, and after very disappointing decisions made by Arch devs, went back to FreeBSD. Then I bought my first laptop and a lot of the hardware was not supported yet, so I switched to Slackware-current and using it since.

 

[rossdv8]

mid 70' - high school programing (ALGOL, COBOL, Fortranand so on) at local university was obligatory
mid 80' VAX
late 80' sunos, netware, windows 2.0
mid 90' my own pc first with FreeBSD/OpenBSD, late 90' RedHat, Slackware, ~2000 Mandrake, SuSE, Arch Linux, and after very disappointing decisions made by Arch devs, went back to FreeBSD. Then I bought my first laptop and a lot of the hardware was not supported yet, so I switched to Slackware-current and using it since.

So I'm not the only 'elderly' Linuxian . .
I wonder how many of us have made it this far - and seen the changes we've seen. Like floppy disks the size of a dinner plate - and wasnt it a huge surprise the day you saw your first 'tiny' 5-1/4" floppy?

And 10MB Hard drives that were about 18 inches diameter and around 2 inches thick. And that was on a 'Mini Computer', about the size of an office desk!

And we marvelled at the first Sharp brand Programmable calculators in the 70s, and the Casio digital watch - because it ran using a computer (chip) inside.
That should make you feel positively ancient - especiallywhen you realise that was . .
Half a CENTURY ago !!

 

[Condobloke]

off topic......but I just could not resist saying that at the ripe old age of 71, you may well be considered a youngster around here.....lol

Welcome to Linux.org !

 

[Aristarchus]

and then came double density 5 -1/4"

 

[wizardfromoz]

f it's not there, something is broken and beyond my control.

... and mine, it would appear.

I have checked our CPL but no clues.

Mind you, the thread is 2 years 9 months old, it has had a good run, yes?

@Rob may know something.

Wizard

 

[KGIII]

... and mine, it would appear.

There's probably/possibly a maximum duration for a poll. That's my official guess.

Mind you, the thread is 2 years 9 months old, it has had a good run, yes?

Indeed. It has drawn out some interesting people and stories. It was a better thread than I'd ever have expected it to be.

It might be worth doing it again. We could lock this one and start a new one. Given the nature of the poll, people will have aged out of their previous categories. I'm in that group. While I used Linux early on, and Unix long before that, I didn't use Linux exclusively until 2007. So, I'm now in the 15+ years category.

 

[wizardfromoz]

Might help if we first establish how long a poll can operate.

Otherwise we'll be doing it all over again in 2 years 9 months

 

[GatorsFan]

Been using Linux since Debian Squeeze - 2014