On being a little old lady

[hazel]

I believe I represent a type of Linux user that the community perhaps hasn't taken much account of until now. "Little Old Ladies" as I call them are not necessarily female, though most of us probably are, just as most geeks are male. We are the generation who used mainframes for office work in the 70s and 80s, so we're not afraid of a command line interface, but we remain basically suspicious of computers so we need to feel in control at all times. We don't like operating systems that are too complex to understand. We don't like systems that update themselves behind your back, even if they ask permission first. We don't like having to ask all the time "What's the bloody computer up to now?". And we feel humiliated if the only way to put something right is a registry hack that involves blindly following someone else's instructions.

For such little old ladies, Linux is the ideal system. It is easy to understand how it works, how the parts (kernel, shell, X-server, window manager, background services and apps) fit together. There is no confusing registry. If one of the background services fails to start, the rest of the system still boots, so you can fix things. And fixing things usually means no more than exercising a little logic and editing a config file or script. It runs well on legacy hardware (little old ladies are thrifty folk) and is wonderfully well documented (we always prefer to read the manual before doing anything).

Are there any other little old ladies out there who love Linux for the same reasons I do?

[fingal]

Thanks for an entertaining and interesting post! Hope some little old ladies reply.

Actually you mentioned one of the things I really love about Linux which is that if a background service fails to work you can still keep going. Great stuff!

[gtmtnbiker98]

Describe your definition of old? You talk as if the 70's and 80's are prehistoric times. Computer history aside, it really isn't that long ago, is it? Beginning to feel old in their mid-30's

[daacosta]

Describe your definition of old? [...] Beginning to feel old in their mid-30's

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I refuse to be called Sir or Mr.! I refuse to age gracefully! I am not and will not be OLD! Beginning to feel old in the mid-30's??? Sheshhh!!!!

Anyway, I loved the post. It is not so like my dad (He is old)!

[d38dm8nw81k1ng]

wouldn't know about being a little old lady. i'm one of "those damn kids with their new fangled gadgets!"

[Juan Pablo]

I don't feel so old, i'm just 16

[hazel]

Yes I do regard the 70s and 80s as prehistoric in computer terms because this was the mainframe era. Most young people today have never used a mainframe computer but they were ubiquitous in the offices and libraries where I worked. Everything was command line then and it was easy to understand: you gave the computer an order, the computer obeyed it, and then prompted you for a new order. I still feel more at home with a CLI than with a mouse! And I think that as a retired person drawing a pension I have the right to think of myself as old if I want to .

[celticgeek]

As someone who used mainframes back in the 70's and 80's, I understand your point of view. The first computers I ever actually used were a Honeywell H600 and a Honeywell H6000. And I wrote BASIC, FORTRAN and COBOL code on them. And even with Linux today, I use the command line at least as much as I do GUI interfaces. I have been using GNU/Linux since 1999, and essentially full time since 2002.

My joke is that I have written a lot of code in now-obsolete languages on now-obsolete hardware. And I still have a lot of it in various notebooks scattered around the house.

I do, however, tend to think of my self as a "little old man" rather than a "little old lady", but that's just a personal prejudice on my part.

[techieMoe]

I work with quite a few "little...ladies" who I wouldn't call "old" to their face if I wanted to keep mine looking pretty. Most program COBOL and Model 204 User Language in front of a mainframe terminal emulator all day. They're still crucial members of our staff because my generation are about as comfortable on a green screen as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. (Note: I'm talking about mainframe applications here, not just a bash prompt, which I am quite at home in front of)

To the best of my knowledge none of them use Linux, but I imagine a few of them would probably feel right at home.

[flipjargendy]

This is a great post.. it's true! i'm happy to say i'm most likely a younger "little old lady". When i was five years old i was using DOS to get my games (Police Quest, Black Cauldrin) going and tried my best to understand how to make a BBS like my dad.

One reason i don't like Windows is because it doesn't tell you what it's doing or what exactly went wrong. So you can't fix it!! i was trying to set up a network last weekend in Windows (so my wife can use the computer too) and after attempting to the "Network Wizard" said it was unable to setup the network... i was mad... it didn't tell me why!

Oh how i love Linux and Unix. It tells me it's deepest thoughts and feelings and i really think it loves me.

P.S. Unix lovers go here: sdf.lonestar.org