Computer Project

Regarding the Canonical fiasco that’s happened…

It seems a number of users are moving to either Mint or Pop!_OS due to what Canonical did, and it makes sense; The OSes maintain compatibility with Ubuntu packages, while not being affected by Canonical’s decisions. I recall hearing someone liking the DE (Er, UI) of Ubuntu; That’s the GNOME DE, which you can install on any OS you fancy. Either OS mentioned would fit the bill with all Ubuntu packages carrying over with hopefully no extra work. I’ve not used either before, so I can’t say, but nothing on paper says otherwise. I personally will go either with Fedora or AntiX, with FreeBSD on the side.

Also, if anyone wants to see a list of Linux/non-Windows OSes…

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The problem with Linux has always been that, for the average user, it was difficult / impossible to get it to work properly, or reliably.

My first experience of Linux was with the Red Hat distro, back in about 1995. It was a nightmare. Nothing would work as intended. Everything had to be modified - mostly in bizarre and counter-intuitive ways, and using languages and syntax I wasn’t familiar with. I gave up on it. It was too much like hard work.

What Windows does well is provide a single, standard, OS package, that all suitable apps are guaranteed to work on. You just install it, and it works. This is something Linux struggled with for a long time, and it’s what held back it’s adoption for many users (well, that and the lack of Linux compatible games…).

Then came Ubuntu. It’s a Linux distro and software suite that just works, straight out of the box. It updates itself. It keeps on working. It automatically checks its own dependencies. You don’t need a deep level of computer knowledge to use it. That’s where Ubuntu wins - it works just like Windows - i.e., it just works.

AFAIK, no other distro does this properly. Certainly, when I’ve tried other distros, within six months I’ve ended up in dependency hell. That’s one of the reasons I like Ubuntu. The other is, of course, the philosophy behind Ubuntu - free access to computing resources for everybody, regardless of their wealth or nationality.

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Pffft…save your money…who needs a new PC?! :smile:

You have to love the ad…so much hype! Just like ‘back when’.

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It’s silly, I know, but I actually remember when things like the Sinclair and the Commodore were truly astonishing.

When I was 18, a computer was a thing that occupied three floors of an office block, and had its own air conditioning system. It had a team of white-coated acolytes to attend it. If you didn’t have a maths PhD, you weren’t allowed within 500 yards of it.

Computers existed - but for most of us, they were the stuff of science fiction. In our imagination, they had
banks of flashing lights, and names like Mulitivac or Omnivac.

Then came the home computer. A tiny, feeble thing by modern standards - but still, a real computer, that you could buy, and own, and program yourself. It’s impossible now to express what a revelation that was to us, back then. We had been given the future.

In time, the home computer developed into the PC, the console, and the mobile phone. And now, people just accept them as consumer products. They don’t understand how ridiculously impossible it seemed, forty years ago, to even imagine such things.

We are now living in the science fiction world of my childhood.

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Yeah. I had a C64 and everyone wanted to come to my house for parties so we could huddle around it with our fingers on the keyboard playing Wheel Of Fortune. I had a headset for Echelon and I could say Fire! to shoot down targets. My dot matrix printer was like my best friend. I spent time with it every day.
I learned to program in BASIC just before it came to an end. Now days there are so many computer languages…if I had taken that Tech College course in Computer-Aided Drafting that I wanted so much, I would have needed to be retrained at least a dozen times by now. Yet, no matter how sophisticated PC’s get, I still love my old C64…why? Because it worked! I didn’t have to upgrade it or worry about what OS it ran or worry about being hacked and having my info stolen…the good old days, lol.

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I think @Polyphemus could really do this :slight_smile: He must! We could all communicate with him blowing raspberry pi’s at him from Earth. :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

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Everyone getting one of these, should be watching Jim Butterfield :slight_smile:

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Well, now I have to have one! :laughing:
Best line: “This cable connects from your computer almost all the way to your TV”
And the deluxe floppy disc drive is a must :rofl: This is priceless. And he actually does a good job. This was all foreign to most people back then.
Opening my C64 … :dizzy_face: I would have never done that!

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Good news! Maybe you can set up your new PC up with this new fangled idea called Windows 1.0. :smile:
Seriously, Microsoft just deleted all their tweets and replaced them with the 1.0 logo. Forbes is wondering if they might open source 1.0…
https://twitter.com/Windows/status/1145731141695168512?s=20

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