i saw the introduce yourself topic on the recent posts, so here’s mine.
Linux related: been using Linux full time since 2009 when i had a 10" Dell Mini 10v and after reading an article on Lifehacker on how to triple boot a Dell Mini 10v with Mac OS (as it was the only netbook which could run the latest Mac OS, 10.6 Snow Leopard at the time, flawlessly), Windows 7, and Linux. i was a Mac user at the time, and just knew very very little about linux, but being a kind of geek, i had heard about it(actually, i knew a little bit, my friend had installed Mandrake, and i knew about yellow dog for apple computers, and tried to install it on my old mac performa but it was too old and slow and pathetic), and one time, there was a guy in my living room, around 2004 maybe 2005 who said he didn’t use mac or windows, so i said, what DO you use then, and he said Ubuntu, and he showed me, and i was surprised it actually looked pretty good, but never considered to install it until seeing that article.
even back then, i remembered hearing mentions of Linux Mint being good for beginners, and indeed, back then, Mint was much more important and easy to use out of the box than it is now, where proprietary drivers for wifi are no longer a big deal. but i had no idea where to start, and did some research. at the time, ubuntu had a flavor i guess u could call it, Ubuntu Netbook Remix, which was a very unique interface, that sadly, has never been continued, despite it being quite polished, functional, and light, as it worked very well on that netbook with 2gb of ram, and later, on a netbook with 1gb of ram.
i partitioned my HD to be something like 90% Mac OS, and just about 8% for Windows, as a curiosity, to check it out, and to see how it ran on the netbook, and it was really my first time to ever have my own computer with windows on it. i had tried in the past to run the lightest possible versions of win98 on a virtual machine, with some success, even worked for playing back audio form a little digital audio recording device i had which was only playable on windows, ugh, and finally, there was a 2gb partition for Linux, the lovely, and different, Ubuntu Netbook Remix.
i played around so much with that netbook, but i was really bitten by the Linux bug, i spent so much time in there, challenging myself, CAN i actually use this? i was so surprised to see that there were equivalents of things which i considered indispensable at the time, like the Quicksilver launcher for Mac, with the excellent Kupfer launcher, Opera browser was available, so was Skype, which was big at the time, and UNR came with compiz config settings manager, and compiz quick settings, free 2GB of cloud/sync storage with Ubuntu One, which was competitive with Dropbox at the time, also offering 2gb of storage and sync, and i believe still only offers 2gb for free (pathetic), and playing around with Compiz effects was so awesome! beam me up to open windows, burn to close them, wobbly windows, desktop cube, desktop wall, i couldn’t get enough, and i was always chatting with my gf, “i’m messaging you from ‘Linuxland’” and reading about Linux obsessively, and blabbering on about it to anyone and everyone like a “jesus guy”, and then upgrading Ubuntu 9.10 UNR to 10.04 LTS, yea, with just 2GB of space, somehow, and it managed to upgrade to a whole new release, but just barely… incredible!
and then deleting the windows partition, to make more space for linux, excuse me, linuxes, and then shrinking the mac partition as much as possible to make room for what turned out to be like a hostel for linux distros. there was redhat family stuff, there was ubuntu and debian derivatives, there was PCLOS, Meego, peppermint, puppy, fluppy, knoppix, elive, JOLICLOUD!! so much cool shit! such exciting times. i could go on and on. i have seen a lot of good stuff come and go in the Linux-sphere, and glad to see such a solid and community driven independent distro like OpenMandriva still going, and putting out an amazing OS.
my main DE is KDE Plasma, but i recently installed OM ROME on an older laptop, along with antiX, SparkyLinux and some other OS, and installed GNOME, and gotta say, as much shit as i’ve talked about GNOME in the past, i have really been enjoying tinkering with it on that OM install, and the default wallpaper, as lame as this may sound is just so nice i haven’t touched it, and it really adds to the appeal of GNOME shell for me, when i see it in the activities view, i believe it’s called, and GS is quite nice and snappy, and i’ve installed the extensions manager and a few extensions, and checked the before and after to see what kind of memory, cpu and performance hit adding the extensions has on the system, and no noticeable difference at all. 1.5gb before and after. so i experimented with opening EVERY SINGLE APP INSTALLED, including KDE stuff, and to my amazement, i was able to have everything open at once, even tho i found that it was quite heavy idling at 1.5gb and only 8gb of ram total. and with everything open at once, somehow the ram was not maxed out. so maybe there’s some preloading going on?
well, OM ROME with GS is kinda like my new favorite toy, and i want to congratulate and thank you nerds and enthusiasts who keep OM alive, youze are amazing awesome people, and OM is fucking great!
my other interests are sailing, wind powered sports (kitesurfing, snowkiting, kite buggy, etc.), kites, environmentalism, renewable energy, EVs, but i also love all sorts of cars except diesels and pickup trucks and SUVs(eew). i have worked as a photographer, video editor(for an international NGO, using free software only), and mostly as a chef, private chef, having a hard time scraping by so i can be my own boss.
i grew up with punk rock, new wave, rap (yea that’s what it was called back in the day), reggae/danchall/dub/ska/rocksteady/roots/etc, funk, soul, rock n roll, classic rock, then raves/electronic(especially ‘jungle’ and bass heavy stuff and intricately programmed beats -Warp records, ninjatune, et al. early dubstep[nothing like the later brostep garbage]), but i can dig almost all music. i like ashnikko a lot nowadays and billie eilish, but love motorhead, ramones, beatles, butthole surfers, pink floyd, black sabbath, led zep, mudhoney, de la soul, sonic youth, captain beefheart, velvet underground, nirvana of course, and the list can be miles long. i’ve been learning to play guitar, bass, ukulele and guitalele simulataneously and love playing especially early 1st wave punk on ukulele and stuff like the misfits, and the delightfully melodious and family friendly tune ‘last caress’. punk just sounds so good and so fun on ukulele, and it’s so punk to play punk on a ukulele, lol, i love it.
oh, and MAD magazine and Adbusters really had a major influence on shaping who i am.
ok enough blablabla from me. happy days for me would be cruising the ocean for days, trimming sails, reading maps/charts, cooking, playing ukulele, messing around with Linux distros, internet, fishing, an occasional beer(sour ale or anything funky), or snifter of neat scotch, and some female companionship while chugging along in the vast openness of the sea at 6 knots.
cheers
PS - oh and i also play on some minetest servers, usually under the name GNUkid, if any of y’all play and can tell me about neat servers, and nice builds i love to explore that. i see it all as a form of (nerd) art, sometimes very heavy nerd art, such as in the mapgens and how the worlds work, the mods, and of course, the player builds, and the crazy machines within the game(s) (mods such as mesecons, pipeworks, and technic and lwcomponents) which even have microcontrollers which can be programmed within the game with Lua only i believe.