Ubuntu.. we totally make children cry!

[Lovechild]

No kidding!
http://www.stroven.org/blog/?postid=63

[brentoboy]

that is exactly what I needed to finish up a full day of druling work, and still go home happy - thanks
:)
That just hit me as side-splitting hilarious, becuase my 1year old... has her own laptop for that very reason. (of course, she only has it becuase it doenst really work) - but it does make noises and the screen flickers, so she loves it.

[BWF89]

Kids these days. I didn't get my first computer until I was in 2nd grade (im in 10th now).

[TravisNewman]

I didn't get my first computer until I was 17, 7 years ago. Holy crap, it's been 7 years...

That link rocks hard.

[somuchfortheafter]

got mine with dos and print shop at the age of 2, made my own coloring books, bought my very own pc at 13... 17 now... running only linux, with a computer programming internship continuing as soon as I get out of hs....

[Lovechild]

I was 6 when I was first unleashed on a computer on my own, back then the poison of choice was MS-DOS - I learned the ins and outs rather quickly but DOS was rather primitive, at 7 I touched the vim editor for the first time and since then it has been my editor of choice - the DOS port back then rocked hard.

I remember when Windows 3.1 was forced on me I was wondering what we needed all this graphical crap for, man how things have changed. I remember battling ram usage to make my games run and installing stacker because I couldn't afford more than the 40 megs of harddrive we had.

I finally got my own real computer when I was around 14, I bought one of the first consumer model Pentium machines, a hefty 90MHz model.. it was so sweet - I remember hooking up serial links with my neighbor to play doom, oh the time before networking and soundcards were the standard. That machine is still around here somewhere I think, I remember bootstrapping Gentoo on it one time it took forever and a day.

[WildTangent]

I was...15 when I built my own computer for myself. I've been upgrading it, and adding new computers to my collection ever since. Ive been using computers since...well the first time was probably when I was 5, in kindergarten. I'd give this Edubuntu a shot, and let my brother use it, but he's 10, so I think it might be a little too toyish for him.

-Wild

[matthew]

This story sounds like my two kids--I have a 2 year old and a 3 year old and they have my old computer running a fresh installation of Edubuntu.

Just felt old...I got my first computer in 1981 at the age of 11. I was the only person in the house who learned how to use it, even though it was supposed to be for the whole family. :)

[skoal]

Why in my day we only had styrofoam cups and kite string for IRC...

By the way, am I the only one who starts reaching for a crunchilicious can of Pringles while playing with the Potato Guy?

\\//_

[John.Michael.Kane]

Frist computer i had was an Adam.. the rest is history.

[Sirin]

I have been using computers since I was two. Note that I was using MS-DOS v1.1 at the time. Back then, the games were Quick Castle, and some other space game that I forgot the name of (I loved that game... :(). I got the hang of it and I erased my sister's password too (when I was only 2) :cool:. I got used to the design of Windows NT when I was 6, and I started learning HTML when I was 12. I made a fully working computer when I was 13, but my mom threw it out when I was testing it (She thought it was a safety precaution and I was too little). Now I'm 14 and I know the whole language of HTML, but I'm also learning JavaScript, and I'm soon to go to the big leagues with Python, C, MySQL, Perl, and PHP (No, Microsoft fanboys, I'm not touching anything that starts with Visual :D). Guess what I use for development now? Kubuntu! :cool: I might give my little niece Edubuntu for Christmas. :smile:

[Lovechild]

(No, Microsoft fanboys, I'm not touching anything that starts with Visual :D). Guess what I use for development now? Kubuntu! :cool:

I might give my little niece Edubuntu for Christmas. :smile:

Can we tempt you with C# ?

[peterbrowne]

lol, thats funny, really funny

[az]

This story sounds like my two kids--I have a 2 year old and a 3 year old and they have my old computer running a fresh installation of Edubuntu.

Just felt old...I got my first computer in 1981 at the age of 11. I was the only person in the house who learned how to use it, even though it was supposed to be for the whole family. :)

I read every book in the school library on BASIC programming. I wrote a couple of programs on scrap peices of paper and waited for months for my mom to bring home a Commodore64. We were so excited. We were going to open the box the next day and may dad just kept shaking his head.

"But I don't understand! A computer is useless unless you *program* it. I'm afraid you boys are going to be dissapointed tomorrow!"

He just couldn't understand the fun involved. We were *not* dissapointed.

...And we have to set a timer (there is a gnome applet) to be able to close TuxPaint on my three-year-old....

[skoal]

I read every book in the school library on BASIC programming. I wrote a couple of programs on scrap peices of paper and waited for months for my mom to bring home a Commodore64.
I never had a C64. But I do remember sitting in front of an Atari ST on occasion, typing in 5 pages of _nothing_ but machine code from a Computer Magazine. All numbers. There's not much you can do to debug it either. Hell, even Assembly looked like a high level bash script compared to this...

It was only in next month's magazine issue you found out why you had problems, "Our editors would like to apologize, but in last week's issue on page 3, line 1275, there was a typo. It should be 101,64,121,... not 101,64, 221,..."

I rank those programming experiences right up there with waiting hours on end at a doctor's office, eventually to be followed with a cold jellied probe from his glove...

\\//_

[matthew]

I never had a C64. But I do remember sitting in front of an Atari ST on occasion, typing in 5 pages of _nothing_ but machine code from a Computer Magazine. All numbers. There's not much you can do to debug it either. Hell, even Assembly looked like a high level bash script compared to this...
I remember doing the same thing...only I had a TRS-80 Color Computer.

[Kimm]

I got my first computer when I was 4, it was a LeoJet... I belive, running Windows 3.1, I normaly used it to play around. Then when I got 12 I wanted to start programmaming and got a 233 Ghz 32 mb Ram something something running windows 95, about a year after I got and assembled a brand new computer that at first ran Win XP but I quite soon moved on to Mandriva Linux, and Linux is where I stayed.

(Luckily I overheard the word Linux while walking with some classmates and was soon into it, if I hand't I wouldnt know what it is, and bless whoever took the first ever screenshot of Linux that I was, I was completely hocked after that, I cant identify the DE though... and I cant find the image anymore)

[skoal]

I remember doing the same thing...only I had a TRS-80 Color Computer.
I think I lied earlier. It was actually an older Atari 400 I think - the one with the flat plastik keyboard where you could lick your spilt soda off of. By the time the ST came out, those magazines provided that code already on 5-1/4 floppy I think.

I always used to dream of owning a TRS-80 too. It was the rolls royce of mall computers back then. It was always front and center on display at Radio Shack. Sweet box...

\\//_

[matthew]

I think I lied earlier. It was actually an older Atari 400 I think - the one with the flat plastik keyboard where you could lick your spilt soda off of. By the time the ST came out, those magazines provided that code already on 5-1/4 floppy I think.

I always used to dream of owning a TRS-80 too. It was the rolls royce of mall computers back then. It was always front and center on display at Radio Shack. Sweet box...

\\//_ I started with a whopping 4K of ram and a cassette player/recorder to store programs on. 7 to 10 minutes to load "Eliza." :) I celebrated when I had saved up the money to get a ram upgrade to 32K and buy a 5 1/4" floppy (180K/disk!! I thought I would never need to buy more than one or two disks). Most games back then came on cartridges so I could have either a game plugged in or my floppy drive, but never both...until someone figured out how to copy the games from cartridges to disks and I benefitted.

Aahh. Good times.

EDIT: I just had a funny memory. My first printer was a dot matrix that only had 7 pins (from the factory) instead of the soon-to-be-standard 9 pins. As a result I had no true-descending characters in my printing. i.e. letters like g, y, p and so on would be shifted up so the the part that is usually below the line of text would be higher and the "bubble" parts of the letters would be way up as if they were capital P's and so on.

Okay, we are way off topic now...I'm done. Back to children crying because their Ubuntu time is limited.

[brentoboy]

does any one remember pango and jump joe 2 - those were the dos games I grew up on.

8088 microprocessor by "columbia" "98% IBM compatible"
dual 5 & 1/4 " floppies so we could boot to DOS 3.2 and use the B: drive for games. No floppy switching here.

damn that was along time ago.

[racecat]

Man, you guys make me feel old!

Bill

[SamH]

Well, racecat, some of us ARE old! :)

I got my first computer in Jan, 1985. A Tandy 1000, 128 K RAM, two (!) 360 K 5 .25 floppy drives. Wow! Worked my way through a couple of books about BASIC with that.

As far as the old part, I was 28 when I bought that PC.

[fredricsolstad]

Got my first computer at age 7.. a Commodore 64.. after that I turned 12 or 13 when I got my next one.. a Amiga500.. and so on and so fort.. dang.. I've been using computers for 19 years.. heh

[racecat]

Well, racecat, some of us ARE old! :)

I got my first computer in Jan, 1985. A Tandy 1000, 128 K RAM, two (!) 360 K 5 .25 floppy drives. Wow! Worked my way through a couple of books about BASIC with that.

As far as the old part, I was 28 when I bought that PC.

Seems like we're about the same age SamH. I'll turn 50 next year. I was a computer H/W CE from 1981 on, but my first PC was an Atari ST. Late 80s, if memory serves me.

It's amazing how quickly the technology has advanced. I used to rebuild disk drives in the field; the largest was 66mb.

Not so long ago.

Bill

[az]

I remember begging my dad to bring us to Canadian Tire, where a Timex Sinclair K1000 was on sale for thirty bucks.

We got to the store. The three of us followed him nervously through the aisles.

He saw it on display. (it is about eight inches wide by five inches deep)

"That's garbage!" he said.

I was eleven years old, and I think I cried.

[Freddie.Ruddick]

I also started age 2, when I found a PC, Monitor, KB and Mouse in the dining room and decided to plug it all together. Problem: Too far from mains sockedt. Solution: grab an extension cable (This is age 2 remember!). Been building computers now since the age of 10, (14 now) almost exclusively ******* until last year, when I installed RH7.2. Nice graphical installer, Gnome or KDE? (Chose Gnome) etc etc. Finishes install and... A nice terminal, seemingly without any form of desktop environment. Then tried RH9 a few months later. Still no joy, this time I got nothing but a load on garbage characters. Nip into windows, burn Knoppix LiveCD. Looking good, but not good enough. Keep looking. A few weeks back, I find the Ubuntu, courtesy of a link in someone's forum sig. The rest, they say, is history...

[racecat]

I also started age 2, when I found a PC, Monitor, KB and Mouse in the dining room and decided to plug it all together. Problem: Too far from mains sockedt. Solution: grab an extension cable (This is age 2 remember!). Been building computers now since the age of 10, (14 now) almost exclusively ******* until last year, when I installed RH7.2. Nice graphical installer, Gnome or KDE? (Chose Gnome) etc etc. Finishes install and... A nice terminal, seemingly without any form of desktop environment. Then tried RH9 a few months later. Still no joy, this time I got nothing but a load on garbage characters. Nip into windows, burn Knoppix LiveCD. Looking good, but not good enough. Keep looking. A few weeks back, I find the Ubuntu, courtesy of a link in someone's forum sig. The rest, they say, is history...

14! I have a feeling you're going to make great contributions, here; sooner rather than later. Welcome aboard! Some of us need all the help we can get.

Bill

[dbott67]

The first computer I used was in high-school (1981) --- the Commodore PET 16K series. Around that time some friends starting getting Vic20's and Commodore 64's. Then, towards my last year of high school in 85/86, our school got these networked IKON computers - wow.

Used the computer labs in University a few times to do some Maple programming as part of my calculus class, as well as well got to use a 'word processing' lab.

When I started working after graduating, I got a job working at an electronics store selling computers (1991). My first one was a Samsung Sensor 286 with 1 MB of RAM and a 10 MB hard drive running GeoWorks. I've been through virtually every version of DOS and Windows, as well as Mac's from OS6 & up.

Now, like a couple of the other guys here, I've got a 3-year old and a 1-year old that love to beat on their own computer (a P3-500).

-Dave

[Sirin]

I have been using computers since I was two. Note that I was also using MS-DOS v1.1 at the time. Back then, the games were Quick Castle, and some other space game that I forgot the name of (I loved that game... :(). I got the hang of it and I erased my sister's password too (when I was only 2) :cool:. I got used to the design of Windows NT when I was 6, and I started learning HTML when I was 12. I made a fully working computer when I was 13, but my mom threw it out when I was testing it (She thought it was a safety precaution and I was too little). Now I'm 14 and I know the whole language of HTML, but I'm also learning JavaScript, and I'm soon to go to the big leagues with Python, C, MySQL, Perl, and PHP (No, Microsoft fanboys, I'm not touching anything that starts with Visual :D). Guess what I use for development now? Kubuntu! :cool: I might give my little niece Edubuntu for Christmas. :smile:Can we tempt you with C# ? I'd like to mess around with all variations of C. :)