Age Call!! How old are you?

[Umbra]

Hmmmmm. Very interesting.
Hi all, My first post and not telling my age, but I will say that 1933 was a darned good year, what I can remember of it.

I installed SuSE 8.1 a week ago, took me 3 weeks to sort out hardware probs.

Do I hold the record for the oldest newbie and the slowest installer?


LOL

[kriss]

What? Are you 70 years?
Thats awsome

How did you first hear about GNU/Linux ?

[flw]

Welcome Umbra, we are here for anyone interested in linux. 1933 strikes me as a curious time. So how did your family fair during the depression?

Mine worked two jobs. One legal, one not quite so legal. It's acutally quite amazing the ways one can make extra money from driving a garbage truck

[Umbra]

Thanks for the welcome guys.

Yes I'm nearly 70 (going on 16 !!!)
I've known of linux for some time through mags and forums. Just installed SuSE 8.1 personal.

What recession? Didn't seem to affect us. I was six yrs old when WWII started.......parents worked most or their lives.
Happy and safe days on the whole, unlike nowadays eh!

[flw]

I was six yrs old when WWII started.......

So you were lucky enough not to really be aware of what was going on around you on a macro level. Thats a good thing. I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

So when did you decide you really wanted to get involved with computers and what did you start with?

[Mado]

I'm 16, turning 17 in october...

[Umbra]

Being on 20 miles north of London there was a lot of overhead activity, tho little danger really.
I well remember air raids, shelters, gas masks, dog fights, bombing raids flying overhead, theirs and ours!!
Also able to read well, inc newspapers, by age 4 so by 7 or 8 I was well into reading the latest war news.
However your are correct, no real macro level knowledge.
Strangely enough life was basically safer for young kids then, not much danger from folks around us, I suppose that was because most men were fighting away from England, and relatives kept an eye on everyone. Neighbours then were friendly and helped out when needed.
Exciting times for a child. I was lucky and not evacuated so stayed with my parents throughout the war.

[Umbra]

Computers.....Hmmmmmmm.
Well I was very interested in Sci Fi when a teenager, and computers and robots etc featured heavily, as well as intelligent aliens, friendly and nasty.
Flash Gordon on sat morning cinema was my hero. Even tho his rocket flew jerkily and you could see the strings. LOL
My first proper exp of computers was in the RAF whe they introduced the AEI1010 Digital Computer...housed in a building size of an aircraft hangar.
Data was binary coded by a coding clerk, then that code was transferred to punched paper tape. I was only on the fringe of that.
Then got involved in telex messages around the world RAF Stations, coding my own messages to tape and transmitting.
When I left the RAF in 1978 I cbought a Commodore VIC20. Go look up the spec when you have time.
With that I soon added a 16K switchable ram pack, a daughter board with spare slots on it and software. Did a little Commodore Basic programming, you know, silly text on screen, and simple games stuff.
On around 1996 or so I bought a Time PC 486 DX with a massive 540 MB hard drive, and tremendous 4 MB RAM......sales assured me that that would me mmore power than I would need for years and years.Win 3.1 and DOS 6.0 (later 6.2) and did a little Q Basic stuff.
Soon added promise card to read bigger disks and added a 1 GB second drive.......WOW...really brave in those days.
After that I bought a faster machine with Win 95B, and then later moved to custom made PC to my own spec.
Now my latest is 3 yrs old, 600 MHz Coppermine, 256 SDRAM. 6x PCI, 1 x ISA, 1xAGP slot (x2). 2 HDD, 40GB runs Win 98SE and 20 GB with SuSE Linux.
I'm getting ready to upgrade mobo any day now.....just need to decide what I need.
RAID or not? 6 PCI again? AGP faster than 2x, Processor prob Intel near the 2 GHz mark.
All got to be ok with graphics tablet, 750 MB Zip drive etc, and of course LINUX. LOL

Not bad for someone 70 going on 16 eh.

btw......how do you get those darn smilies into a post?

[flw]

Lets start with the truely import stuff in todays world:

btw......how do you get those darn smilies into a post?

Just locat the face to the left you would like to use and when the cursor turns into a hand cleft click once and the code sould appear where ever your cursor is. You could code it my hand, but why? With one click you can get the same results. :>

If you have any other questions on using the board please post them. If you have a question, then someone else does too but may not ask.

Flash Gordon on sat morning cinema was my hero. Even tho his rocket flew jerkily and you could see the strings. LOL

I wonder how many people other than you and I remember ever seeing the original Flash Gordon (strings and all ) ? Anybody? I only saw him years later in re-run of the shows. But they were still cool 20 years later to kids. Fake Rocket smoke blown by a fan...........

Although this is a Linux forum, (we do hardware) so feel free if you having problems with yours. Well give it our best shot. It's most difficult with linux because the mfg's don't all support Linux, in fact not many do. We will try our best to lend a hand.

And for your computer friends "loose lips sinks ships" doesn't apply here We would like to be like the only women in a bar when a entire company gets a off base pass :>

Hope to see you back,

Dan

[Giro]

Hey Umbra are you from luton by any chance?