(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

My life would be a disaster without Puppy.

Don't ask me how I feel emotionally. Half of what you guys feel.

FEEL 25? REALLY?! Maybe YOU guys do so speak for yourselves! lol! But speaking for myself I usually feel like the little kid I always was, and just never grew up. Ask my wife as she'll whole-heartedly agree! "Sheesh! You're always such a kid!" But I don't think she means it nicely. It's normally said out of exasperation at me!

Yes... I still feel much like a kid. However, it's this body that spends much of the day being pushed around in the "roadster" that simply will no longer follow my commands to do as it's told to equally behave as a child - and that can get rather frustrating most times.

Still though - and this is directed to Jay ( Puppyluvr ) - there's no way in hell I'd ever want to be 38 again. Nor even a child! I'm far more comfortable on this end of the spectrum and will be glad when I "buy the farm" as the proverbial saying goes.

My 2 cents worth anyway.

Eyes-Only
"L'Peau-Rouge"

tallboy wrote:The distribution that keeps you young! Proven by the age of it's users!

+1 from me....Nice!
I'm for adopting that as our slogan!

I'm 65 at the 2012 deadline date, 21st December, so feel very connected to all the changes going on in the lead-up...hope you're all keeping safe, and flowing with the changes

People have often asked me how old I am, and a favourite answer is 943, as I seem to have access to certain wisdoms that I know I haven't acquired in this lifetime...
...but as to how old I feel....well, like tallboy's quote, I feel about 27....as that was just a year before I was told I had 2 years to live....so the number of years doesn't matter as much as what you use them for, don't you agree?

Puppy certainly helps, and has been a source of inspiration and conversation since discovering it a few years ago

There's nowt wrong with feeling young, other than the body complaining of abuse, trying to keep up....

Aitch

I remember some of my 20's, mostly they are a haze. 35-43 also not too clear. Not sure if I ever felt as good as I do now at 47, but I do miss how fast I could recover from long nights and injuries, seems like everything takes twice as long these days and I have half the time to do it.

I also missing being able to eat anything I wanted, these days it's all about low-fat, raw veggies, fruits, several small meals during the day and no binging on crap before bed. Gone are the "iron stomach" days.

I think the average age of Puppy users indicates the wisdom of choosing Puppy. We tried the rest, found the best. I used to spend hours dicking around with my computers, I just don't have the desire anymore, I do enough of that at work. Puppy just works, after due diligence with distro-hopping I learned my lesson.

sunburnt wrote: Beat that !!! ( someone will come along that worked IBM 560 ).

ummmm, does an IBM 370 running VM/OS count? Does other old mainframes tied to StorageTek six foot tall (American refrigerator sized) tape-drives count? This of course before the first IBM personal PC was available. Also of interest, IBM has a history of using what "just works" and not upgrading unless necessary. The first Blackberries available in the US were issued to IBM Global-Services personnel and connected to an old, though still usable mainframe. Later IBM created a virtual machine of that system and ran it on an AIX cluster.

....Glen

STK 3650 Tape Drive

http://www.computerhistory.org/collecti ... /102688152

Hello,
Remember when the 5 1/4 floppy was such an amazing improvement over the old 8 inch format.. My first Hard Disk was 10 mb, and I was awestruck..
I held one of the first 100 mhz CPU`s, in the Intel factory, while it was still "top secret" , but wasnt impressed compared to my 486 dx4-66...
Until the 2011 tornado here, I still had my Commodore 128D running GEOS...

Ahhh... Memories...
"SYS64738"

No wonder most of the users in this forum are more experienced in commands and scripts. And that's not a bad thing when it comes to linux.

I don't perceive the age gap here at all. I'm 24 this year. Tinkering with computers led me to look past windows. Started with Knoppix, then Ubuntu and finally this distro which made my old hardware fly.

Community seemed friendly and that is why I joined.

If you really have to know, figure it out for yourself.
I was born in 1947.
I was born again when I discovered Puppy linux!
And I was also reborn when I rediscovered the advances in old Atari PCs.
I am not as frequent visiting now because of the last one as I am trying to build addon hardware for the old Ataris.

I can boot the Atari from a disk image stored on my IBM compatible PC using Windows or linux with a serial connection.
But I am still battling doing so with a USB2serial adapter connected to my serial2atari cable in linux. Works in Windows and I really hate having to go to Windows just for that feature.

I also am going quite insane!
Hope no one ha noticed!

Welcome to the Puppy Kennels ( "forum" ) Zenn! Hope we create a tonne of fond memories for you here and many awesome adventures in the world of Linux my fellow Puppian Friend!!

Cheers!/Amicalement!

Eyes-Only
"L'Peau-Rouge"

I saw people on the moon.
My first computer ZX81.
I know what it means in Fortran, Algol, Basic programming language.
In the past three years, the Hungarian-language was developed more than two dozen puplet.
In short, I am 58 years old...

LX (knew that Latin “O

Thanks for the warm welcome Eyes-Only. A small community already feels cosier than a large, commercialised one.
No doubt my exciting adventure has only just begun.

Zenn wrote:I don't perceive the age gap here at all. I'm 24 this year.

What age gap??

tallboy

I am 56, so I can't win the age contest, but I HAVE been programming since 1972, so call me 40 in programmer's years. (My high school had only started offering programming classes a couple years before that. We used a PDP 8L with 8K memory and a dial-up line and teletypes to get to a computer system at a local college.)

First computer was a Timex/Sinclair. My second computer (circa 1985) was an AT&T PC 6300, an IBM XT clone that one-upped the speed to 8mhz. (that's MEGAhertz, children).

I've done other things, but finally came back to programming (which I do as a job) and messing with obsolete/small/failed/obscure computers and tiny/beautiful/effective/elegant/home-brew operating systems (i.e., puppy) which I do as a hobby.

This got me thinking. When did programming (in high level language) start. As I recall there was a FORTRAN standard FORTRAN66 which presumably relates to 1966. Not sure about COBOL.

There must be a limit on age in Programmer Years (in high level language at least).

Me - I'm 60.

My school, which I finished in 1970, did not have ANY computers or calculators. Slide rules and logarithms were the technology of the classroom! I had some time to kill so used a book to teach myself FORTRAN before going to University later in the year, where I did it properly. These were the days of submitting programs on punched cards and waiting overnight to see if it ran! Getting syntax errors was extremely annoying and caused a delay of a day in running a program so we took more care in those days.

Puppyluvr asks us to remember when the 5 1/4 floppy was such an amazing improvement over the old 8 inch format.. My first Hard Disk was 10 mb, and I was awestruck..

He must be young! I've already mentioned punch cards and then came cassette tape on the first home computers. Hards disks? they were but a twinkle in the eye! I paid £180 to expand my Commodore PET with 8K of static RAM. A twin 5-1/4" floppy came later at £540.

Earlier this year I paid £8 to get an 8GB USB stick.

My computing history?

FORTRAN on an ICL190x mainframe (education and work)
IBM360 (work)
Commodore PET - Commodore 64/SX64 - Commodore Amiga (Home)
CP/M based machine (work)
IBM compatible PC (work and home) in increasing size and power over the years.

The computer thinks I am this old:

111010

-- or --

3A

I'm not surprised that there's an almost bimodal distribution of ages on this forum. This group isn't like the poll about "who uses Ubuntu"' which might be skewed to a younger more casual crowd. Nobody adapts Ubuntu. You just download it and use it. Whereas puppy is incredibly adaptable, designed deliberately to be adapted by people with different levels of expertise, from simple remastering all the way to building whole new versions from the ground up using woof. Theres a place for everyone here. It's a real community, where real enthusiasts spend a LOT of time working on their own versions, making pets, building kernels, figuring out printing, or wireless, or helping newcomers.

So who's got the free time to spend doing all that? Some young people, with their youthful energy and relatively free schedules (although they're probably neglecting their studies somewhat). Some younger singles, without family obligations, although sometimes they get busy with their jobs. ( jemimah works like a superhuman person when her job isn't busy, but even she has to pull back when it is). Who really has the time - frankly it's going to be retired people, or people who're between jobs. Bless them, that they spend that free time working for the benefit of this community.

People in between, with kids and spouses and jobs and parents, can't always devote as much time.

Eight Kilobytes to Twelve gigabytes! One meg disk to Terabytes drives. Anyone play or program on an IBM 1130 computer? Eight K.. well actually a sixteen bit word, so by today's terms two bytes per word. Engineering major, was told to take a FORTRAN class, copied the first three programs, was so lost. By the end of the semester, I was playing from eight in the morning till after the janitor left. Following year in 1969 I was programming Payrolls, registration systems, grading systems, all on the 8 K machine. Size of your couch.

Cost was fifty thousand for an additional 8K of core memory. Just added 8 Gig of memory to my new laptop, so now have 12 GB, for forty dollars.

World goes around. One of the neat parts of the 1130 world was COMMON and other USER groups for folks to share programs and ideas. Then bigger systems became the norm. Fewer user groups. BBS's became a bit popular....and finally PUPPY and the Forum... folks like to share and contribute. For me puppy is fun, useful as well. Sixty-Six a few days ago.

Question was asked when higher level languages became popular. I would say mid Sixties. I programmed the 1130 in assembler a bit, mostly in FORTRAN and RPG. I took a COBOL class taught by an IBM instructor at the Junior Collage, COBOL was the popular language for Business and FORTRAN for engineering. A Few other flavors were used as well. That was the age of the IBM 360.

Much faster to program in higher level languages. First database was on the 1130, most of my programming today is in MS Database. Yes still programming commercial applications, in my spare time. Machines change, requirements change, but lots of companies still are manual or semi manual. Bet can be programming the same applications when I am 90! Currently programming an application I programmed similar twenty five years ago.

49 and as the kids are finishing college, just starting life.