Just a though on the Age Poll

[Tommaso]

I was looking at the age poll today, and the results look pretty much like last years. I was still pretty shocked to see who is using linux the most, it's us teenagers. It is kind of a funny though it think that all these serious developers around the world are making all these great linux OS's, and they are mostly being used by teens like us. It must be the start of a new trend in the younger generations.

I wonder how these statistics were like 10 years ago. I betting that back then, linux was only used by computer scientists. The question is, how did it become popular in the teen world. Its kind of odd, if you think about it. I have never seen a linux commercial on TV, and yet somehow i knew about linux even when i was pretty young. I had no idea what it really was, but i still knew about it. The only way i can think of for linux to spread to the teen world, was if one guy's dad was a linux developer, and he had his son try linux, and the his son showed his friends, and his friends showed their friends, and so on. I wonder if this can ever be explained.

Question of the Week: How did teens learn about linux??

[Cabhan]

Personally, I just heard of it through my knowledge in computers. I knew absolutely nothing about it, but I had simply heard the name.

For the record, IBM did air a Linux commercial during the Superbowl one year. It had Mohammed Ali, as I recall.

http://www-306.ibm.com/e-business/on...rt_linux.shtml


Anyway, the reason for its more widespread adoption is likely the prevalence of computers amongst younger kids. Back when Linux first came out, you needed to be a computer expert to install it. Now, as teenagers become more skilled with computers, and as Linux becomes easier to install, more people can embrace it.

[kbk]

I heard about it awhile back from a friend of mine. He told me about DSL and at that time I didn't really care. Then my cousin came to town from TX and I talked to him about it because he is really into computers and I was starting to get into it at that time. He burnt me KNOPPIX 3.4 and well, the rest is history .

[Stefann]

I was looking at the age poll today, and the results look pretty much like last years. I was still pretty shocked to see who is using linux the most, it's us teenagers. It is kind of a funny though it think that all these serious developers around the world are making all these great linux OS's, and they are mostly being used by teens like us. It must be the start of a new trend in the younger generations.

I wonder how these statistics were like 10 years ago. I betting that back then, linux was only used by computer scientists. The question is, how did it become popular in the teen world. Its kind of odd, if you think about it. I have never seen a linux commercial on TV, and yet somehow i knew about linux even when i was pretty young. I had no idea what it really was, but i still knew about it. The only way i can think of for linux to spread to the teen world, was if one guy's dad was a linux developer, and he had his son try linux, and the his son showed his friends, and his friends showed their friends, and so on. I wonder if this can ever be explained.

Question of the Week: How did teens learn about linux??

It started by hearing the word so I looked it up. I started with a quick floppy disk to look at the command line, than I installed my first distro, Mandriva 2005 LE. It was all a experiment and I never looked back at windows. Now all of my friends learn about it from me telling them about it and booting up a live CD at school to show them. I'm a nerd, so I'm one of the pillars who spread it. I think I can make a diagram

IT Guys
    \
   Not-IT, but still tech-smart guys
           -\Nerd teenager learns about Linux from above not-IT guys
               \Nerd spreads word to friends, who spread it to their friends, etc.

[marlowe]

i started with rh 7.0 simply because i was pissed off at windoze and as far as i could tell at that time linux was the only alternative. i remember a lot of my friends saying i was insane. i guess that was part of the fun in using it

[oosterhouse]

I started looking into Linux after getting kind of bored designing websites, I wanted a new challenge. When I actually heard about it? I have no clue, a while ago.

[bryansmith]

I think I can explain the age grouping.

As computer technology has really begun to take off (I am talking personal computers back in the 80's here), we find that the teenagers of today (those born in the 80's) have grown up with this technology and are therefore more prone to knowing more about it.

Bryan

[chopin1810]

I dunno, I think it's just a coincidence, affected by the factor that this generation is just more in to technology than previous generations... but for me it was just my uncle, he was really cool, he knew lots about computers because he worked as a software and hardware engineer... I spent a few summers at his house as a teenager, one day I just started asking him questions like "uncle fred, what are all those gray cables in the computer?" "those are IDE cables." and "what are all those cards inside the computer?" "those are ISA adapters." His house was the first place I saw a unix shell... here's my point though: todays teens are just predisposed to like computers, but that doesn't mean they will, there are lots of stoopid teenagers, in fact I think the wide majority of them are, regarding computers... the teenagers here just happen to be interested in computers this way because of independant factors...

[josolanes]

My first alternate OS was BeOS 3 or 4 years ago. Than I remember hearing about Linux, but had the impression that it would have to be really difficult to use and possibly only console based, so I shrugged the thought off. A year or so later, I decided to research more into Linux and fournd Fedora Core 3. That was my start. Since then I've used many different types including Gentoo, Arch, Suse, Yoper, FreeBSD, DSL, Knoppix, Debian, and Slackware. I'm currently using Arch (as my main desktop OS )