First, thanks to Vivek for creating and maintaining this site. It’s pretty awesome. I have been here before over the years, but finally took the plunge and joined. I am not an IT guy, and I have never worked in the business, so I am coming at all of this from a different angle, but one which may have some value for some of you, if you can tolerate my offhand remarks.
I am using Peppermint OS on a 12 year old HP Latitude and it has been great. I jumped ship several years ago and ditched everything MS, and have since used about a dozen different distros at least. ( you would think spellcheck would know the word distro by now !). But like some Apple users, I am content to live in linux prison, although I have tried to learn more as I went on. All I am saying is some folks are very good at abstract thinking and higher math and some of us are not. I am in the latter group, but I could build you a pretty good house from the ground up if you needed one.
I intend to represent for the masses, for all those teeming multitudes yearning to breathe free. For I feel that finding and using linux operating systems literally saved my life, and I cannot understand why more folks have not gravitated to it. I can only blame all of you current users ( with the exception of Vivek ) for not promoting linux sufficiently.
It is true that linux popularity has grown and has a toe-hold in market share, but I think it is a pity, actually sort of a tragedy, that it has not become even more widely distributed. So shame on all of you selfish linux users and developers trying to hog all the linux goodness for only yourselves.
I know this is probably not the best way to introduce myself, but I am old and do not have time to pussyfoot around. So what you see with me is what you get. I probably will not get better later, so my apologies for hurting your feelings now and in the future, if I am not immediately banned. I said I would ‘try’ to be civil.
On the other hand, I do want to thank all of you who have shared your knowledge and experience, your time and patience in all the finer details…God bless all of you. I have profound respect for all of you who do have facility, expertise, and experience, and are willing to share that with others. I’m here to learn, and provide feed-back. If I overstep please just YELL at me a little. (scare me but don’t hurt me)
I did have one friend several years ago who eventually found work with the World Bank, traveling around the planet, setting up computer networks and fixing broken ones for them, so I assume he must have known something. Since he grew up in the music business and in music studios as the technology changed over time,( he was familiar with a broad array of old and new tech), he used to say that one issue was many of us do not have perspective on what has gone before. Since tech moves so rapidly and expands in so many directions at the same time, it is difficult to track all the changes.
Well, that is more than two cents worth, so sorry for bending your ear. I’ll try to be brief from now on. BTW - the article I came here for, about ‘16 places to buy pre-loaded linux’ was a good article, but it is a shame there are really still not that many outlets, in the USA particularly.