HOW....did WE.....get here?

[woodsmoke]

Tell your story.

AS MANY posts/threads as it takes...

HOW...came...YOU...here...to a place that is better than jam on toast!!??

woodkindastupidsmoke

[TWPonKubuntu]

woody,

That would be "better than Premium jam on toast". It's the small differences which make it all better.

I found Kubuntu, and by extension, this forum while testing a few distros because I needed to move away from Win XP. Win 8 was being released and No Way was I going to pay for that...

I had used LInux back when Red Hat was new(ish), so I looked at Red Hat too. I didn't like the "look and feel" of that release. That was about 10+ years back and I don't recall the version or the DE at the time.

Kubuntu worked on my laptop at that time... I've gone through a few of them since then, but Kubuntu worked fine until 16.04 LTS stopped working on my present system. I am looking at Kubuntu 18.04, xfce DE but it still has some video bugs (tearing).

So, I'm here on this forum because there is minimal personality clashes and maximal exchange of useful info. That's a stroke for the mods here too.

[woodsmoke]

TWP

yeppers! I have, NEVER, personally, understood the whole "talking heads" to make money as a "reviewer' thing saying that Kubu or KDE is "WAAY TOO HEAVY"...I have it running on a VERY OLD Toshiba lappy!!

I think that maybe "they" have "copied and pasted" other peoples "data" in terms of "an instant" and WROTE ON...to gather clicks and mone...

So...THANK YOU FOR YOUR RESPONSE!!
forum rules not allowing direct viewing of image please right click and view infomrtion

iot worked last week.

But...uh oh...

you and I have had WAAY too many:

WELL IF THE NEWEST AND BESTEST forum rules had not prohibitied me from just posting a freaking link you could...ummm SEE the link

it destroys the surprise ...

So, I'm here on this forum because there is minimal personality clashes and maximal exchange of useful info. That's a stroke for the mods here too.

[img]https://img00.deviantart.net/10d4/i/...e_by_fhoop.jpg[/img]

[GreyGeek]

HOW....did WE.....get here?

I was running Mandriva and noticed the reports that KDE4 was going to be added in the fall of 2009. Reviewing KDE4 I liked what I saw so I started looking around for a distro that was going to adopt it sooner. I found that Kubuntu 2009.04 Alpha already had it so I ran it as a LiveCD and loved what I saw. In January of 2009 I replaced Mandriva with that Alpha and had no problems with it. At the same time I saw a comment on another site by either Snowhog or dibl (can’t remember which) which mentioned KFN, a forum specifically for Kubuntu but accepting questions about all distros and Windows. Signed on in Feb. Was, and still is, the friendliest forum on the web.

My interest and focus has always been, since SuSE 5.3 in September of 1998, on KDE. When Neon announced that they were going to be a leading edge KDE non-distro distro I jumped onboard. At the same time oshunluver gave glowing reports about Btrfs. He was not exaggerating. When I installed Neon I made Btrfs my root file system.

The Neon/ Btrfs is the dynamic duo of Linux. The produce the best, most advanced, powerful, beautiful and easiest to use Linux experience I’ve ever had in 20 years of using Linux.

My experience with Kubuntu 18.04 (and previous releases) is that it is equal to Neon in every regard except one: the latest greatest plasma. And that one thing causes me to favor Neon.

[Qqmike]

KRONOS OS user 1967-1971. DOS user. Programmer in college 1967-71, and then again 1971-1977 (several languages). XP user.

Then I built my first PC, circa 2005. I was at a Hardwareguys forum (now closed), where the owner and moderators were discovering and promoting Linux. I asked about it and was told that I could get something that closely had a look and feel to XP, and that making the transition would be easy and natural, and that would be: "Kubuntu." And they indicated that there was a Kubuntu forum.

I did play with a few other distros (running the "cube" way back then in MEPIS, having Beyonce dancing on one face of it ...) Did Freespire. Which started me learning about booting and GRUB, which for some reason I found interesting.

And so I ended up here at Kubuntu as a member.
I saw Kubuntu as a place for support, where I could learn, and also as a place where I could write and post how-to's, having it in my blood with a teaching background (Associate, tenured Prof at a state university).
And that's all she wrote.

Actually, I was communicating with the maintainer of GRUB at one time circa 2005-2007, he was young, from Spain, in college, and I used that phrase at the end of an email: "That's all she wrote." He wrote back asking (I think hopefully) if I was a female! Ha! Sorry to say, No, and I have no plans to change this late in life.

What exactly were you looking for, Woody?
...
...

[oldgeek]

I was running Windows XP around 2008 or 2009 when I got a CD with Ubuntu on it. I tried it out, liked it, and eventually made a dual boot with Windows. Later, I started looking at other members of the Ubuntu family, and ended up with Kubuntu. This was I believe version 9.04 I stuck with Kubuntu after that, and found the Forum here by accident, I think. I've referred to it religiously almost every day since 2009, when I became a member. Currently I'm running Neon, which I slapped onto Kubuntu 16.04 using a method I found in this forum (Greygeek?) and it works fine. The only reasons I have for changing it is to install Neon built around 18.04 using btrfs and getting rid of Windows 10. I like this forum for all the help it has given me and the courtesy the helpers provide. I'm not so fond of the political comments, but then again I don't live in the USA any more (since 1980) and don't find its political concerns particularly relevant to me. But the technical help here is outstanding, and I highly respect the veterans here who have helped me so much in becoming a Linux fan.

[GreyGeek]

KRONOS OS user 1967-1971. DOS user. Programmer in college 1967-71, and then again 1971-1977 (several languages). XP user.
...

When I was in grad school (1965-68) I took a numerical analysis course. Initially we had a Friden Desktop digital calculator












It was followed quickly by a Burrows 200 main frame and then a CDC 6600. We switched to using the Fortran IV language to write code to solve assigned problems. We used a KSR-133 Keyboard (IIRC) which had a role of 1" wide yellow punch tape on the side. The keyboard worked at 10 cps and made a lot of noise. We'd punch our Fortran IV solution code into the yellow tape and then submit the tape to the bank, which owned and ran the CDC 6600. The Physics Dept was paying $1,500/mo to rent 4K core of memory space! We'd get a greenbar printout of either the solution or our code with the errors marked. It was a laborious process. Only a handful of students solved more than four problems.

[Qqmike]

Now that you mention it, I think undergrad 1967-1971 was an IBM mainframe w/punched cards, and then grad school 1973-197? was CDC 6600 w/KRONOS. I wrote a 20-page TYPED users manual for the KRONOS for the very basic commands (file management) as there was none provided at the Indiana University facility (except the commercial pubs on the 6600 machine). Yes, I recognize, remember, and did FORTRAN IV. I recognize the Friden Desktop digital calculator. As an undergrad, I did Work Study, and one of my (many) jobs was to oversee a calculation lab (i.e., a room full of manual, electronic calculators) for a prof who was into, well, into calculating numbers. (I also analyzed bubble chamber output. Anyone who thinks that must have been romantic work has never sat down to such output for many, many hours, until it all looks the same, and then end up finding nothing interesting, no special particles.)

[Snowhog]

When I was in grad school (1965-68) I took a numerical analysis course. Initially we had a Friden Desktop digital calculator

OMG! What a HUGE screen this monster had.

[Bings]

Hey, it's not the size of the screen that matters, it's what you do with it...

[GreyGeek]

OMG! What a HUGE screen this monster had.

We thought so at the time. It was amazing! It gave (IIRC) 12 digit output. Prior to that we were using a slide ruler. Mine was a VerseLog about 12" long that I carried in a leather case that had a belt loop on it. You could tell who knew how to use it if their slide movement was never more than 1/3rd the width either left or right. Sometime in 1973 my Phillips gasoline credit card offered me the "Bowmar Brain" for $50. I was astounded!
It was the MX60 a 10 digit, 4-funct, %, red LED display using 3 AA batteries which, IIRC, lasted about 2-3 hours of continuous on. So you turned it off and on a lot. It looked similar to this.

It was only 2 digits less than that Friden and had all the same functions. I had reverted to my slide ruler after grad school but when I got the Bowmar Brain I rarely used it again. In 1975 I purchased the TI SR52 SlideRule Calculator and never did touch the VerseLog again. The SR 52 sold for $395.


It grew legs and walked out of my class a year later, so in 1975 I replaced it with an HP 67.

It walked away too.

In the fall of 1978 I purchased the first Apple ][+ sold in Nebraska at Team Electronics in Grand Island. A 48Kb Apple []+ with a 12" color TV and two Disk]['s cost me, in the end, about $1,500 because I began demonstrating Apples at Team on weekends. In 1983 I sold the Apple and bought an IBM PC XT clone with 640Kb RAM and a floppy disks drive, and a seagate 10Mb HD. Cost about half of an IBM box. I used clones for the next 15 years, until December of 1997 when I purchased a Sony VAIO desktop with a Triniton monitor. It lasted until 2004, when I got a Gateway 675m 18" gaming laptop. It lasted about 4 years and I've been using Acer's every since. My current laptop, purchased in 2012, is an Acer V3-771G 17" with an NVidia GT 650M secondary video, which nvidia-384 powers nicely. The way its running it will probably be the last laptop I'll ever own.

[GreyGeek]

Hey, it's not the size of the screen that matters, it's what you do with it...

I forgot to mention that inside that Friden, next to the long cathode raytube, was a bank of copper coils with ferrite loops on them. That is what comprised the 4K of memory:

[SpecialEd]

When I was in HS (also around 1975) a good friend saved his money and bought the same TI calculator. We spent days glued to him showing us all the "neat tricks" it could do.

I have a line on a used Acer Aspire V17 Nitro. Gonna pick it up either this weekend or next.

• NVIDIA Geforce GTX 860M 4 GB GDDR5
• Intel Core i7 4th Gen 4720HQ (2.60 GHz)
• 8 GB Memory 1 TB HDD
• 17.3" 1920 x 1080 LED-backlit IPS display 16:9 aspect ratio, Wide viewing angle
• 16.65" x 11.54" x 1.0" 6.61 lbs.
• DVD Super Multi
• 1 x HDMI
• 2 x USB 2.0 2 x USB 3.0

$250. Apparently, it is also locked with ransomware. I offered to take a look at it for the owners to see if I could clean it up but they just want to get rid of it. If I can salvage Windows, I'll see if my wife wants it as an upgrade to her HP. If not (and I'm not going to lose any sleep, If I can't). Drive gets wiped, Linux gets installed (maybe an SSD) and I'll play with it a while until I find a happy home for it.

[Snowhog]

My Dad used Slide Rules prior to the 'digital age', and on occasion, still does. He gave me his six-inch K+E Log Log Duplex Decitrig Slide Rule a few years ago; he kept his twelve-inch. I won't profess to know how to use a slide rule, but it was a part of who he is, so I wanted to have it. I also got (from my Dad) an original manual for the slide rule.



Having the tool and the manual could come in useful someday!

[TWPonKubuntu]

I forgot to mention that inside that Friden, next to the long cathode raytube, was a bank of copper coils with ferrite loops on them. That is what comprised the 4K of memory:

4K !!! - Who would ever need more?