I also remember you used to bit able to visit camden market and meet that little asian guy and get any film you wanted, or get your PS1 chipped etc.

This reminds me of the guy at the A3 car boot sale on Sundays who always had copies (ahem) of the latest games. This is what got me into the original Doom from iD Software!

"It's totally legit, they all have the title in Sharpie on the disc and a clear jewel case!"

The first computer I built was entirely from parts purchased from londons camden market with my great uncle who sadly passed away since at the young age of 87, he was a lot like me, and taught me a lot about computers - I swear he was a genius, ex royal navy, he played instruments, did computers, even taught me how to make home-made batteries at the age of 8 and various things with electronics. Even if he was giving me rum by the age of 13 telling me it would make me a man and put hair on my chest haha It was more than my real father ever did who barely managed to bother to see me once a month, in some cases even less so.

Sadly such places don't exist any more

Sounds like your great uncle was a fun chap - they don't make 'em like that anymore.

For some reason, I'm now somewhat reminded of 1990s "Computer Fairs", if you had any of those round your way.

I remember when I first went to one when I was about 15-ish (only girl there, but it was the first time that nobody batted an eyelid over that - I grew up in a backwards little village, so that really surprised me and stuck with me more than it ever needed to), and the first thing that met the eye when you walked in was a group of beige-boxes set up running retro games. At first I wondered if I was looking at a refurbished Amstrad Mega PC, if anyone remembers that oddity, before noticing that other systems were also covered by the surrounding machines and realising what it actually was (a local outfit selling self-made and totally unauthorised retro-gaming CD-ROMs). I'd recently gotten into emulation at the time because I wanted to run my PlayStation purchases on my laptop, and it simply had not occurred to me at that point that older systems might have emulators available too - it was a real eye-opener that sent me further down a rabbit-hole that I still occupy today. (And of course that loops right back around to how I got into Linux gaming, as well!)

The thought of buckets of parts, tables covered with gear, stacks of rescued laptops, and random emulation showcases set up right in front of the entrance still takes me right back to those days. I really miss the old computer-fairs, but I don't think that they're around anymore!

Last edited by Pengling on 10 August 2022 at 6:16 pm UTC

Firstly, sorry for any drunken posts the other night All sober now.

But I can't help but wonder if sometimes smartphones and easy "do it for you" tech is doing more harm than good. I learned so much having to do things the hard way that so many new generations simply don't have to learn since they can just tap a button and it's done for them automatically.

What happens when all us old folk are gone? Who will retain that knowledge?

Every generation thinks that of the following generations. It's Progress, in a way. It's natural to want a better life for our children, but to also be annoyed(?) by the better quality of life we've given them. And yes, with Great changes in our technology and society, we have to adapt how we teach and learn and new things come and old things phase out.

That doesn't mean the challenges aren't there or aren't any less difficult. Just new. After all, it would say much about our generation if we couldn't conquer our own and pushed it down to our kids, wouldn't it?

My concern isn't about tech being easier per-say. I firmly believe that convenience is great, but a deeper understanding of how the technology you specialise in is essential.

I mean, if someone calls themselves a web developer now, that simply means they know how to use wix to drag and drop. In my mind, a proper web developer may use that for convenience from time to time, but they also understand how HTML, CSS & JavaScript work.

Sadly, too many self-proclaimed "professionals" don't understand the underling methods while dragging and dropping on wix absolutely qualifies them as a professional (in their mind).

This is where I believe the problem is.

Let's take fresh system admins for a example. A recent event actually, I had to have a phone call with the so-called "Senior Network Administrator" of one of my wholesale suppliers, who was unfortunately also their only network administrator. The problem? Fresh out of university, a week on the job to replace the older guy who just retired, but came with a Cisco degree in networking (Linux is included in that course, and it's considered university level!).

That in itself is not a problem.

Their email server was blocking mine with firewall rules, not the first time this has happened with companies before and probably won't be the last, it's the trade off of running your own infra and understandable considering the constant fight with spam. Anyhow, I was simply asking him if he could whitelist our specific ip address in his firewall so that communication could continue between our two companies. A mundane easy task in my view, especially for someone calling themselves "Senior" in their field.

The problem? Initially I explained it's likely his firewall was blocking our datacentre providers subnet range since our IP is clean and not in any blacklists. The first red flag? He asks me "Subnet? What do you mean?". No joke.

Followed by the fact he seemed to have no idea how to set firewall rules up.. thankfully I was able to walk him through it... which makes me worry about their security going forward.. he shouldn't be taking walk-throughs from randoms on the phone...

It's a good job I'm not a malicious party. I ended the phone call with a simple bit of advice "Do some more studying of your setup please."

But it's a good example of how making things easy works for earning a university degree or quick fixes, but without understanding the core principles of the underlying technology and how it works, your knowledge can fall apart very quickly.

I make scripts and shortcuts for myself all the time, and there's no harm in that. But it doesn't mean that you should forget the basics because it can do it automatically for you.

To be clear though, I'm talking strictly professional or techie usage. I mean, Mr. Builder who just wants to order his kebab online obviously isn't required to go learn all the technical ins and outs of a computer (Unless he wants to ofc!)

(Although, I hope he fully understands how bricks, weight and the structural integrity of a building works)

Im in almost the same boat as you..... I am in my 40's and I am still as mature as I was in my teens..... I never stopped being the class clown as you can tell from my stupid one liners I post in the news articles...

My old dumb phone never leaves the house...... When I leave the house I want to be disconnected from the Internet and the people who are not physically around me.... And being harder to track is an added bonus...... I spend enough time on the internet sitting in front of either my Desktop PC doing my own thing or the companies laptop working from home (the laptop still uses Windows.... But its not my laptop so I cant touch it).....

I have never used Facebook or Twitter or Instragram or any of that social media crap..... 1. because I dont have any friends so I never got peer pressured into it (which I think is how it became so popular) and 2. My life is so boring even Randy Newman couldnt be bothered to sing a song about it so why would I want to bore anyone else with it???....... The added bonus is that my job is always safe since there are no old tweets or facebooks posts to drag up from years ago to get me cancelled......

As for passing on my knoweledge.... Well theres not much to pass on..... And even if there was there is no one to really pass it on to.... I have no kids and never want any...... And because of that ive been single for nearly 20 years......

You cant teach an old dog new tricks....... But you can them new stupid one liners and a new operating system...... I am living proof of that

Wow, reading this was almost like reading one of my own posts... spooky.

The difference is, I don't do one liners I tend to do long posts - especially when I don't agree with something... perhaps not with best judgement though,for example:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/33230/discussions/0/3466100515590357963/#c5267542371379702597

Oops, I will probably get banned from Steam for that, but it is my opinion on the matter. I tend to say what I think without considering how that might make me sound, nor how it affects others, whether that's good or bad?

I also don't do social media, and your point about employee's finding your posts on facebook or other social media is valid and all.. but what if they find your forum posts? anything to hide?

I also remember you used to bit able to visit camden market and meet that little asian guy and get any film you wanted, or get your PS1 chipped etc.

This reminds me of the guy at the A3 car boot sale on Sundays who always had copies (ahem) of the latest games. This is what got me into the original Doom from iD Software!

"It's totally legit, they all have the title in Sharpie on the disc and a clear jewel case!"

Oh, absolutely legit! We swear!

The first computer I built was entirely from parts purchased from londons camden market with my great uncle who sadly passed away since at the young age of 87, he was a lot like me, and taught me a lot about computers - I swear he was a genius, ex royal navy, he played instruments, did computers, even taught me how to make home-made batteries at the age of 8 and various things with electronics. Even if he was giving me rum by the age of 13 telling me it would make me a man and put hair on my chest haha It was more than my real father ever did who barely managed to bother to see me once a month, in some cases even less so.

Sadly such places don't exist any more

Sounds like your great uncle was a fun chap - they don't make 'em like that anymore.

For some reason, I'm now somewhat reminded of 1990s "Computer Fairs", if you had any of those round your way.

I remember when I first went to one when I was about 15-ish (only girl there, but it was the first time that nobody batted an eyelid over that - I grew up in a backwards little village, so that really surprised me and stuck with me more than it ever needed to), and the first thing that met the eye when you walked in was a group of beige-boxes set up running retro games. At first I wondered if I was looking at a refurbished Amstrad Mega PC, if anyone remembers that oddity, before noticing that other systems were also covered by the surrounding machines and realising what it actually was (a local outfit selling self-made and totally unauthorised retro-gaming CD-ROMs). I'd recently gotten into emulation at the time because I wanted to run my PlayStation purchases on my laptop, and it simply had not occurred to me at that point that older systems might have emulators available too - it was a real eye-opener that sent me further down a rabbit-hole that I still occupy today. (And of course that loops right back around to how I got into Linux gaming, as well!)

The thought of buckets of parts, tables covered with gear, stacks of rescued laptops, and random emulation showcases set up right in front of the entrance still takes me right back to those days. I really miss the old computer-fairs, but I don't think that they're around anymore!

It was pretty much this! Walked in and lots of tables with different sellers selling various computer parts, go around the tables to get all the bits you need then take it home and build it!

And yup, there was that guy chipping the consoles there, with a stack of lasers and console pcbs next to him

To be clear though, I'm talking strictly professional or techie usage. I mean, Mr. Builder who just wants to order his kebab online obviously isn't required to go learn all the technical ins and outs of a computer (Unless he wants to ofc!)

This is how I see things, too. I'm actually brushing up on my fundamentals at the moment (I'm more of a power-user with a great belief in applying practical computing to daily life, really - not in any tech fields), because I want to be able to show my little relatives who visit that there's more out there than the product-placement/dependency that still passes for computing lessons in British schools*. Lucky for me, they're already taking an interest because nobody in my family uses Windows to begin with (it's a mix of Linux, Macs, and Chromebooks, plus the usual variations on tablets and phones), so they already know that there's variety on offer. Funnily enough, my own interest in retro-emulation helped to get their attention there - turns out that the classics are pretty universal!

*It wasn't this way when I was young. Though I grew up in an old-fashioned anti-technology village where the teachers tried to avoid teaching computing as much as they legally could, they did at least make sure that all of the pupils had access to a lot of different types of computers (my favourite being the school's lone Acorn Archimedes, gotten via the Tesco Computers for Schools scheme that we had all contributed vouchers for - they let my class help to set that one up and try some games on it when it arrived because we happened to be passing through during lunch-break one day, and I still remember it fondly ), and those of us who had computers at home all hung out together and tried out each other's machines as well, so we got a multi-disciplinary computing education in spite of having tech-fearing teachers. I remember seeing computing in schools slide into what it is now and feeling dismay at it when I was a teen.

I've been using Linux for 14 years and I concede that there's plenty that I don't know simply because it's never come up during my daily use of it (the first step to knowledge is knowing when to say "I don't know.", right? ), and I'm really enjoying studying those things that have never come up. The most handy one so far was how to change ownership on the contents of an entire directory with one command, which was forced on me when digging up some stuff from an old backup drive from my Mac days, where, of course, all of the permissions were from some other machine long, long ago. I like using the right tool for the job, and in that case that command was way better than trying to figure out some convoluted way of doing the same thing with a GUI.

It was pretty much this! Walked in and lots of tables with different sellers selling various computer parts, go around the tables to get all the bits you need then take it home and build it!

It's all gone the same way as local independent computer shops, now (around here, they all got stomped out of existence by the likes of PC World selling computers as appliances years ago).

Still, at least online shopping has stepped up to fill in the gaps - though it's not quite the same as going into somewhere more hands-on, alas.

And yup, there was that guy chipping the consoles there, with a stack of lasers and console pcbs next to him

God, they didn't allow anything like this at my local ones! The closest was the emulator/ROM discs. Not sure why they felt that was different.

Last edited by Pengling on 11 August 2022 at 12:45 pm UTC

To be clear though, I'm talking strictly professional or techie usage. I mean, Mr. Builder who just wants to order his kebab online obviously isn't required to go learn all the technical ins and outs of a computer (Unless he wants to ofc!)

This is how I see things, too. I'm actually brushing up on my fundamentals at the moment (I'm more of a power-user with a great belief in applying practical computing to daily life, really - not in any tech fields), because I want to be able to show my little relatives who visit that there's more out there than the product-placement/dependency that still passes for computing lessons in British schools*. Lucky for me, they're already taking an interest because nobody in my family uses Windows to begin with (it's a mix of Linux, Macs, and Chromebooks, plus the usual variations on tablets and phones), so they already know that there's variety on offer. Funnily enough, my own interest in retro-emulation helped to get their attention there - turns out that the classics are pretty universal!

Yup! There's a whole heap of things knowing a few tricks with computers that can greatly enhance your life! Although, many things are common sense (like avoiding viruses.. don't download from bad places, don't click bad links etc..) other things do that a bit of learning to know, such as *NIX file permissions and commands in general.

Emulation is something that's let's face it, been done on computers for as long as it's been possible! So there's always plenty of ways to get that to work!

From what I've heard even PS4 emulation is a do-able thing now? Though I never even owned a PS4, so I have no games from it that I'd want to play, and God of War is on PC now, so I'm happy.

*It wasn't this way when I was young. Though I grew up in an old-fashioned anti-technology village where the teachers tried to avoid teaching computing as much as they legally could, they did at least make sure that all of the pupils had access to a lot of different types of computers (my favourite being the school's lone Acorn Archimedes, gotten via the Tesco Computers for Schools scheme that we had all contributed vouchers for - they let my class help to set that one up and try some games on it when it arrived because we happened to be passing through during lunch-break one day, and I still remember it fondly ), and those of us who had computers at home all hung out together and tried out each other's machines as well, so we got a multi-disciplinary computing education in spite of having tech-fearing teachers. I remember seeing computing in schools slide into what it is now and feeling dismay at it when I was a teen.

Well.. it was quite different for me growing up in east london, there was pretty much tech everywhere. I still vaguely remember using Windows 95 with MS office in school to make a crossword and a few other word documents and spreadsheets when I was very young, memories of it are a bit fuzzy now though

With that said, I luckily moved out of London when I was around 18 and ended up in Lincolnshire sooo much quieter and peaceful, no more police helicopters flying over your house all night . I did have to change the way I spoke a little though. At first I was getting quite a few bad looks when the locals would speak to me expecting a lincolnshire area accent and I come out sounding like a crook from the dodgy end of london

The biggest shock was the step back in technology up here. At the time a drop from 20Mbps broadband to 600Kb/s alone. It felt like I'd moved to the stone age.

There is a computer shop in the little town I'm in.. but.. honestly I never go in there. It's a poor selection and prices are usually above the manufacturers RRP.

It's a shame, because I do my best to avoid online shopping, and avoid of course naturally to Amazon at all costs like a plague. Usually Scan is my go-to tech website these days.

I've been using Linux for 14 years and I concede that there's plenty that I don't know simply because it's never come up during my daily use of it (the first step to knowledge is knowing when to say "I don't know.", right? ), and I'm really enjoying studying those things that have never come up. The most handy one so far was how to change ownership on the contents of an entire directory with one command, which was forced on me when digging up some stuff from an old backup drive from my Mac days, where, of course, all of the permissions were from some other machine long, long ago. I like using the right tool for the job, and in that case that command was way better than trying to figure out some convoluted way of doing the same thing with a GUI.

You can never know everything immediately. Everything requires learning in life. Nobody will ever instantly know everything.

So yup, gotta keep learning! Bear in mind that things can change also. So you end up re-learning sometimes too.

Ownership and permission control of files on Linux is actually pretty simple and hasn't changed in years.

Generally you just need to remember these tools:

ls
chmod
chown
chattr

In 99% of cases, these are the tools you'll need.

Here's some useful quick and easy to remember tips for my most common file permission usages, that should cover most situations!

Always start with:
ls -lav (file): Shows far more detail about a file and it's permissions, so you know where you're starting. If on an SELinux system changing it to -lavZ will show the files SELinux label. This will also show if a file is link to another file, with an arrow pointing to the location if it is.

You can use any of the "drwxr-xr-x" letters to change the permissions:
d: File is a directory - can't change this one, it's a file type - information purposes only.. okay so not any of them.
r: Read
w: Write
x: Execute

Simply add a plus or minus before the letters above to add or remove the permission respectively. So:

chmod -wx (file): The file can no longer be written or executed by any users or groups.

Naturally you may also want more fine grained control, say to only allow user, but not groups, then you can break it down further:
u: User (owner of file)
g: Group
o: All other users
a: Affects all types

You can pair these with the above permission types by adding a plus or minus (add or remove permission).

For example so, if we want to allow the user to execute, but you don't want groups or other users to execute or read the file:

chmod go-rwx (file)

Groups and other users can no longer read, write or execute the file (minus used), but we want our user to be able to have full control over the file:

chmod u+rwx (file)

Done, your user now has full control over the file (plus used), but other users do not. To perform the action to all files recursively simply add the -R:

chmo -R u+rwx (file)

I usually always recommend pairing -R with -v so, making -Rv - this will output and show the command and action taken.

chmod -Rv go-rwx (file)

Naturally, you can also use numbers instead of the rwx method, but this is easier to remember for new learners (imo).

Warning: Removing execute permission from a directory will cause you to be unable to enter the directory. In addition, if a file is not a directory, ask yourself does it really need execute permission? If not, remove the execute permission.

Other things you may need to commonly do:

sudo chattr -V +i (file path): Force a file to be immutable (cannot be edited/deleted/etc) - Really useful for static backups, stops something tampering with them!

sudo chattr -V -i (file path): Allow file to be mutable (can be edited/deleted/etc)

chown user:group -Rv (file path): Recursively change user and group of all files in a directory
chon user:group -v (file path): change user and group of one file

Naturally use sudo | su - | su where needed

Whenever you're not sure how to use a command:
man (command): Should give you a pretty manual that you can read

Failing that if there's no manual page (lazy dev):
(command) --help|-h: Prints basic help info

.. Anyhows -- this is all getting a bit long now so I'll end it here. Sorry for the long post!

You can use any of the "drwxr-xr-x" letters to change the permissions:

For as long as I've been setting permissions, I did not know this. Something new every day.

Emulation is something that's let's face it, been done on computers for as long as it's been possible! So there's always plenty of ways to get that to work!

Haha, yup! I can remember my first brush with it was a demonstration of the BBC Micro emulator for the aforementioned Acorn Archimedes back in junior-school. I had no idea back then the impact that it would have on my gaming life just a few years down the line! (It very much made the oft-rumoured pie-in-the-sky "Console that can run EVERYTHING!" a reality. )

There is a computer shop in the little town I'm in.. but.. honestly I never go in there. It's a poor selection and prices are usually above the manufacturers RRP.

Yeah, that's the problem where I'm at, too. Most were driven out by PC World and the like, and what little is left is understocked and overpriced.

It's a shame, because I do my best to avoid online shopping, and avoid of course naturally to Amazon at all costs like a plague. Usually Scan is my go-to tech website these days.

I like online shopping (not a lot of options otherwise, especially since my gaming-adjacent merch-collecting hobby tends to entail a fair bit of importing), but I do my utmost to support small businesses first wherever possible.

Amazon makes it easy to avoid them these days at least, since Amazon UK is now basically mostly a reskinned storefront for Chinese counterfeits.

I know of Scan but have never yet ordered there (I'm mainly a portables person, so my most recent gear came from Entroware and DroiX). For them to become a go-to, I assume that they're good?

So yup, gotta keep learning! Bear in mind that things can change also. So you end up re-learning sometimes too.

Absolutely, and I actually really enjoy that. I've occasionally seen people grouse about the things they learned in school no longer applying, but I always found that odd, since the world changes all the time and it's only natural that our skills will need updating alongside that.

Ownership and permission control of files on Linux is actually pretty simple and hasn't changed in years.

Heh, yep! I remember learning about permissions/etc. back when I moved to Mac OS X in 2004 (10.3 was a really nice introduction to Unix/Unix-likes, but I always felt that it all got bloaty and over-featured with the move to Intel with 10.4; It made me glad that my move to Macs was only ever meant to be temporary while Linux laptop support got to where I wanted it to be), and I've always been glad that nothing about that has changed.

Generally you just need to remember these tools:

ls
chmod
chown
chattr

In 99% of cases, these are the tools you'll need.

Here's some useful quick and easy to remember tips for my most common file permission usages, that should cover most situations!

Always start with:
ls -lav (file): Shows far more detail about a file and it's permissions, so you know where you're starting. If on an SELinux system changing it to -lavZ will show the files SELinux label. This will also show if a file is link to another file, with an arrow pointing to the location if it is.

You can use any of the "drwxr-xr-x" letters to change the permissions:
d: File is a directory - can't change this one, it's a file type - information purposes only.. okay so not any of them.
r: Read
w: Write
x: Execute

Simply add a plus or minus before the letters above to add or remove the permission respectively. So:

chmod -wx (file): The file can no longer be written or executed by any users or groups.

Naturally you may also want more fine grained control, say to only allow user, but not groups, then you can break it down further:
u: User (owner of file)
g: Group
o: All other users
a: Affects all types

You can pair these with the above permission types by adding a plus or minus (add or remove permission).

For example so, if we want to allow the user to execute, but you don't want groups or other users to execute or read the file:

chmod go-rwx (file)

Groups and other users can no longer read, write or execute the file (minus used), but we want our user to be able to have full control over the file:

chmod u+rwx (file)

Done, your user now has full control over the file (plus used), but other users do not. To perform the action to all files recursively simply add the -R:

chmo -R u+rwx (file)

I usually always recommend pairing -R with -v so, making -Rv - this will output and show the command and action taken.

chmod -Rv go-rwx (file)

Naturally, you can also use numbers instead of the rwx method, but this is easier to remember for new learners (imo).

Warning: Removing execute permission from a directory will cause you to be unable to enter the directory. In addition, if a file is not a directory, ask yourself does it really need execute permission? If not, remove the execute permission.

Other things you may need to commonly do:

sudo chattr -V +i (file path): Force a file to be immutable (cannot be edited/deleted/etc) - Really useful for static backups, stops something tampering with them!

sudo chattr -V -i (file path): Allow file to be mutable (can be edited/deleted/etc)

chown user:group -Rv (file path): Recursively change user and group of all files in a directory
chon user:group -v (file path): change user and group of one file

Naturally use sudo | su - | su where needed

Whenever you're not sure how to use a command:
man (command): Should give you a pretty manual that you can read

Failing that if there's no manual page (lazy dev):
(command) --help|-h: Prints basic help info

Wow, thanks SO much for taking the time to write up all of this - it all goes far beyond what I already knew and what I had to pick up for that little job I needed to do, and I'm grateful for all the detail.

.. Anyhows -- this is all getting a bit long now so I'll end it here. Sorry for the long post!

No, thankyou for the long post - I really appreciate it!

Something new every day.

And that's what I like about always being open to learning more.

Last edited by Pengling on 12 August 2022 at 4:41 pm UTC

For as long as I've been setting permissions, I did not know this. Something new every day.

Nice! Glad to see you learned!

Lots of tutorials on the net tend to keep it simple by saying "just do chmod 644/777" but don't really go into detail of how it actually works or what it means sadly. Often, especially in server setup guides are also very generic and could leave a gaping security hole open. It's actually a bugbear of mine to see articles that don't explain properly or suggest doing stupid things like "Just disable SELinux!"

So, I always say to never just copy-paste commands always try to understand them and what they do first, it helps you learn better and helps your computer too

Haha, yup! I can remember my first brush with it was a demonstration of the BBC Micro emulator for the aforementioned Acorn Archimedes back in junior-school. I had no idea back then the impact that it would have on my gaming life just a few years down the line! (It very much made the oft-rumoured pie-in-the-sky "Console that can run EVERYTHING!" a reality. )

I present to you: The Steam Deck!

It literally can run anything a desktop computer can (almost) and isn't locked down, for that I think it's great. Beats having to flash custom firmware to consoles. Though my PSP had a pandora battery and custom firmware/emulators as a result many years ago.

I like online shopping (not a lot of options otherwise, especially since my gaming-adjacent merch-collecting hobby tends to entail a fair bit of importing), but I do my utmost to support small businesses first wherever possible.

Amazon makes it easy to avoid them these days at least, since Amazon UK is now basically mostly a reskinned storefront for Chinese counterfeits.

I know of Scan but have never yet ordered there (I'm mainly a portables person, so my most recent gear came from Entroware and DroiX). For them to become a go-to, I assume that they're good?

I found them when trying to replace Amazon from my life ironically. What sold it for me was how they package things. I got so sick of Amazon's packaging, where they just throw things into a box with little to no padding and expect it to work upon arrival (I almost always ended up with a drive that's loose in a big box with one "bubble bag" where the drive is left to simply get thrown around in the box during transit. No shock the drive will die shortly after you've used it, or arrive DOA.

Some people will even blame the disk manufacturer after this for DOA's, completely forgetting that these things are fragile and if you throw them around or expose them to large shocks, they will fail. The drive was probably fine until it got thrown around.

So, HDDs (spinning rust) are a huge risk on Amazon simply because of the packaging, since they don't take too kindly to impact damage and shocks.

I tend to buy the expensive large data NAS or Enterprise drives, so it matters a lot to me if it gets damaged or not.

When I ordered a HDD from scan, I expected the usual bad packaging at first until it arrived, upon arrival I was pleasantly surprised.

Came in a box, complete with anti static bags and proper safe packaging that's sealed around the drive entirely (so the drive cannot fall out of said padding). It took me just under a minute to cut through the tape/padding just to get to the drive

So they quickly became my go-to for drives. Used them for other things too namely motherboards and such, same story - properly and safely package and so they're pretty much my go to for computer parts entirely now.

Packaging is really important to me and I hate bad packaging, which is echoed into my own business where I try to make sure orders sent to my customers are also safely packaged.

Scan also offer, for those who need it, additional "installation damage" protection. Granted you have to pay extra for that, but it would be helpful to those who aren't experts who may damage components during installation (Say, graphics cards not being seated properly or pulled out without unclipping first)

I haven't used the additional protection, but it's a nice touch for those who may need it.

Absolutely, and I actually really enjoy that. I've occasionally seen people grouse about the things they learned in school no longer applying, but I always found that odd, since the world changes all the time and it's only natural that our skills will need updating alongside that.

Yup, systemd for example!

Systemd's units are far easier to maintain and make than old rc scripts ever were, yet people complained about it being too complicated. Despite it being far easier, and extremely simple to learn.

The other "do one thing and do it well" view is a whole different argument/view though. I'm talking about the learning side only.

Heh, yep! I remember learning about permissions/etc. back when I moved to Mac OS X in 2004 (10.3 was a really nice introduction to Unix/Unix-likes, but I always felt that it all got bloaty and over-featured with the move to Intel with 10.4; It made me glad that my move to Macs was only ever meant to be temporary while Linux laptop support got to where I wanted it to be), and I've always been glad that nothing about that has changed.

Honestly, I've never used an Apple computer or device for that matter. Though I do have a couple of systems running FreeBSD if that counts?

Wow, thanks SO much for taking the time to write up all of this - it all goes far beyond what I already knew and what I had to pick up for that little job I needed to do, and I'm grateful for all the detail.

No problem!

You can use any of the "drwxr-xr-x" letters to change the permissions:

For as long as I've been setting permissions, I did not know this. Something new every day.

Have you only been using numbers? Savage! Ha

I present to you: The Steam Deck!

It literally can run anything a desktop computer can (almost) and isn't locked down, for that I think it's great. Beats having to flash custom firmware to consoles. Though my PSP had a pandora battery and custom firmware/emulators as a result many years ago.

Exactly, exactly!

I use a GPD Win Max 2021 myself (wanted a gaming portable that I could also use as a laptop), but the Steam Deck in particular feels very much like the actually-competent realisation of the lofty promises made by the vapourware "Action GameMaster" handheld that was announced in 1994. This one got reported on in UK magazines back then so you've probably heard of it somewhere along the line. Of course, the thing morphed into the craziest of rumours once it started spreading around school playgrounds - especially since nobody over here knew about the horrors of the company's other products, Action 52 and The Cheetahmen.

I can remember that, after I'd heard of it in print, the rumoured version of the device took on the ability to play games from the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Amiga, Atari ST, Game Boy, Game Gear, and Lynx as well, and it eventually became a rumour that two such machines were being worked on! It was truly ridiculous for the time. But, much like how Star Trek inspired people to make its technology real, I think that the Action GameMaster might've ignited that in others!

I found them when trying to replace Amazon from my life ironically. What sold it for me was how they package things. I got so sick of Amazon's packaging, where they just throw things into a box with little to no padding and expect it to work upon arrival (I almost always ended up with a drive that's loose in a big box with one "bubble bag" where the drive is left to simply get thrown around in the box during transit. No shock the drive will die shortly after you've used it, or arrive DOA.

Some people will even blame the disk manufacturer after this for DOA's, completely forgetting that these things are fragile and if you throw them around or expose them to large shocks, they will fail. The drive was probably fine until it got thrown around.

So, HDDs (spinning rust) are a huge risk on Amazon simply because of the packaging, since they don't take too kindly to impact damage and shocks.

I tend to buy the expensive large data NAS or Enterprise drives, so it matters a lot to me if it gets damaged or not.

Oh god! Amazon packaging! NOOOOOOO!

On the now-very-rare occasions when I have to order from there, I can say that it seems they still have the same problems - either massive wasteful overpackaging with no meaningful padding, or stuffing things into far-too-small DVD-mailers, both of which often result in needless damage.

Y'know, I'd never thought about how it must skew reviews for certain types of items, though... Interesting stuff.

When I ordered a HDD from scan, I expected the usual bad packaging at first until it arrived, upon arrival I was pleasantly surprised.

Came in a box, complete with anti static bags and proper safe packaging that's sealed around the drive entirely (so the drive cannot fall out of said padding). It took me just under a minute to cut through the tape/padding just to get to the drive

So they quickly became my go-to for drives. Used them for other things too namely motherboards and such, same story - properly and safely package and so they're pretty much my go to for computer parts entirely now.

Packaging is really important to me and I hate bad packaging, which is echoed into my own business where I try to make sure orders sent to my customers are also safely packaged.

Scan also offer, for those who need it, additional "installation damage" protection. Granted you have to pay extra for that, but it would be helpful to those who aren't experts who may damage components during installation (Say, graphics cards not being seated properly or pulled out without unclipping first)

I haven't used the additional protection, but it's a nice touch for those who may need it.

That is very useful to know in its entirety (the installation-damage thing might not be necessary for me, but I certainly know people who'd find it reassuring and helpful) - thanks very much again for spending the time on all the details.

Honestly, I've never used an Apple computer or device for that matter. Though I do have a couple of systems running FreeBSD if that counts?

I reckon!

FreeBSD is one of those things that I'm always meaning to get around to learning, but never have because Linux always tends to do what I want it to no matter what I throw at it. One of these days, I'll do something to satisfy my curiousity about it!

As for Apple, I really liked their PowerPC devices and Mac OS X as it was back then - they did their jobs stably and the OS stayed out of my way (and, if I'm remembering right, people and maybe even Apple themselves used to champion Darwin's BSD roots), which is what I want out of my computers. I wouldn't personally recommend them nowadays though; I've had some exposure to the modern versions due to some relatives using them and grousing about the same things that put me off, and it feels like a lot of the hassle I used to use their machines to avoid now comes from Apple themselves!

My story with Linux is linked to gaming, actually.

Like many have already manifested, I was there when DOS gaming was big. When games had to ship the different assortment of drivers for devices as varied as sound cards, mice, video (even 3Dfx had Glide on DOS!). Moving to Windows suddenly meant that you had to have a beefier PC to be able to play some games (that were perfectly playable in DOS with relatively the same quality). Like many I did the transition from DOS to Windows when 95 came along (before, I'd rather use DOS to Win 3, for pretty much heverything except those few programs (not games) that absolutely required it).

As an avid gamer, there was a local gaming site in my country that actually had made mention of Linux and that ticked my curiosity. It was summer of '95, and I was in my late teens. I had attempted to download an image, but failed miserably, but soon(ish) after my attempt, I came across a strange book at a local store that simply had in the title "Linux" and mentioned it included a CD (and a 3.5" boot disk).

The CD had Slackware 3 on it, and I was able to install Linux, to get to a familiar back with grey text prompt. Making my way through the text for configuration and familiarization with the system (the book was basically a glossary of commands with brief explanations and examples, as well as included instructions for setting up things such as sound and graphics in X11). I couldn't do much with this install, actually, but was blown away by the sheer amount of "programs" included in the CLI (unlike a default DOS fresh install) and I was actually able to configure and set up X11 (XFee86 3 in those days) to display the iconic black screen with an X cursor at a whopping 800x600 resolution!! (no XTerm, no graphical session or DE installed or loaded or anything).

That gave me an oddly satisfying feeling... of accomplishment. With some tweaks I was able to squeeze 1024x768 resolution (the native resolution of my CRT) and I was absolutely fascinated.

As I read more, and subscribed (rather lurked than post) to /. then I came across the first distribution I was actually able to download over dial up, Red Hat 5.2 (it took over a week to download over a 36600 baud modem). Installing it was a breeze (even back then it was faster to setup a distro like RH compared to Win95! ), I had to go back and forth from Windows to Linux, for one simple reason and my early lesson about hardware and its state in Linux: Modem drivers. I ended up fitting my computer with two modems due to this: My first real HW modem (14400, the one I could use in Linux) and the "newer" 36600 one I had to use under Windows. Back then, at one point I was able to come by a 3DBlaster Banshee which was an amazing upgrade from my already ageing 3Dfx Voodoo Rush based card. And yes, I was able to get stuff like Starcraft (actually a very temperamental game) to run in wine as well as a wide assortment of other older games, but what made the icing on the cake was being able to get Quake and later Quake 2 running fully HW accelerated...

Then came the transition from XFree86 3.x to 4 (and the rise of tech such as DRI and DRM kernel modules), which also meant 3D acceleration was much easier and faster than before. I was delighted I was able to get Glide 2 and 3 running on Linux with my Banshee and then my Voodoo 3, and was even able to get games such as Unreal Tournament (and hence Unreal through a mod called OldSchool) to run with native Glide (which I may be wrong, but I do remember Glide being faster on Linux than on Windows for this particular game).

By the end of 2000 I stopped dual-booting and used Linux exclusively on my personal computer. I skipped Windows ME and XP altogether and for anything I needed Windows for, I used 2K instead in the family computer, which I got free from Microsoft themselves as part of a program I signed up to and which I was able to keep up until around 2004 (when I no longer had any use for it).

I did sacrifice many top tier games from that era, but I had been making most of my gaming on consoles: Game Cube and Play Station 2 as well as the occasional XBox session (which my brother-in-law had). Still tinkering and getting whatever I could run on Linux. I played weekly with some friends Diablo II in wine and Neverwinger Nights natively on a regular basis. Ever since 2004 onwards, I had to upgrade my GPU and had to replace my faithful Voodoo 5 with a GeForce (yes, I moved to the dark side), and while there were issues back then, it was the only real alternative for high performance graphics back then for a while... Then I got an R300 based Radeon 9500 which was amazing when I still dual booted on Windows, but was terrible on Linux, even with the proprietary driver fglrx, and games such as Unreal Tournament 2k3 and 2k4 "worked" but struggled and lagged a LOT on it (I remember cringing every time I watched the Assault flyby of the train with that card, regardless of graphics settings).

While not ideal, the nvidia experience in my personal experience has been rather good for the past almost 20 years of exclusive use. Sure there has been issues: the most annoying one a bug which caused your computer to crash, have no input or SSH and be still able to move the mouse but have no input nor keyboard, it was somewhat common in the early days in the order of once or twice per day, and again seen when multi-core CPU started to appear and be affordable, never knew what exactly caused the issue. Mesa wasn't without issues either though, especially with the early open AMD drivers once AMD bought ATi. I kept the 9500 on a secondary computer for a while and tested regularly and it was a crash festival for a loooong while. Alas, AMD has proven their take on the matter has paid off and are now regarded as an example in how an Open driver should be (not even the behemoth Intel can match their open driver with AMD's even with such a HUGE head start).

Ever since late 2012 I was very happy to learn Valve would release Steam on Linux, and when it came to be in 2013 I was ecstatic. I loved every single native game that has been released, though I confess I do not own every single one of them, I do try to support with $$ those who do. Then Proton came along and the amount of games playable (I had been playing most of those games in Steam under Wine, though) seemingly exploded, Proton injected loads of fresh air to stagnant gaming scene in Linux, effectively giving existing Linux users what is considered one of the key aspects for lack of adoption: application support and offered prospect and would-be users variety and actual ability to almost effortlessly running many of already existing games. Albeit, Proton's success has been at the cost of native ports decline (and the fact that the encroachment of Windows games and applications given the prevalence of reliance on Windows-centric game development technologies (especially DirectX, which beside the API, assets have to be of a certain non-portable format, that have to also be translated on-the-fly, contributing to the under-performance of many native Linux ports, amongst other issues).

The remedy has taken way too long to appear in the form of better coding practices (portable code) and Vulkan support, propelled in part due to the biggest gaming market being in the mobile space, where Vulkan is dominant. In any case, the future of gaming on Linux looks promising for now and Valve has been able to shut off many detractors of translation layers and even made a case for Linux-centric devices to be successful (I wish the Deck would sell as the Wii once did in the millions per day), hopefully they will be able to spark more companies to actually invest in proper support and take the premise of Linux better performance even further. Yes, Valve is our kind dictator, to which we "owe" many advances in the open source scene and who actually has contributed to upstream projects to increase adoption.

Nowadays I am a very happy Linux user. My whole household use Linux. My wife (she moved almost at the same time as me back in the early 2000s) and my kids laptops both run Linux on them (ASUS Vivo Book and some Lenovo pad).

I still have to deal with Windows at work, though.

Seems this thread inspires long posts

and the "newer" 36600 one I had to use under Windows.

Oh god, Winmodems - they are not missed!

Seems this thread inspires long posts

I love reading every single one.

and the "newer" 36600 one I had to use under Windows.

Oh god, Winmodems - they are not missed!

Seems this thread inspires long posts

I love reading every single one.

Ha, my first computer build (from the first Windows machine I used, and ended up just buying a bunch of parts to upgrade... to the point I then had enough to just build my own) I refused to get a Winmodem, and ended up with a USRobotics 56k. That was a jump from the 300 baud on the 800xl, the 1200 baud on the ST, then 14.4 for the ST.

Oh god, Winmodems - they are not missed!

Indeed. I was extremely happy when broadband was finally available (initially with PPPoE) in my region, which was superbly supported by Linux, and prompted me to create a small file server, firewall and router for the home, that worked amazingly well for at least 5 years (until our ISP gave us a router proper, time when the machine was set to fileserver only)

Savage
Intro video
Gameplay

The only options I know of for Linux games in general stores, at that time, were ID, Epic, S2 Games, and maybe whoever made Marble Blast?

I worked as a graphic designer for ages but always liked pc gaming growing up. I used and owned macs for work but also took some more general courses in university. I found out there was an alternative operating system to Windows and Mac, called Linux. That was probably 12 years ago or something.

At the newsagents in Sydney, you could buy linux magazines with DVDs on the cover, full of distros. I didn't know anyone else personally who used Linux but there was something great about open source operating systems. They were fast, didn't need much maintenance, could run on anything and had lots of free software. And also didn't catch viruses. I dual booted ubuntu and Windows on my laptop. Ubuntu with gnome 2, was the distro that worked with my WiFi card. Although I played with debian, opensuse, mint, pclinuxos etc.

I've always found Windows to be a bit annoying. Always had to be refreshed and got dirty real quick. Although I continued to use it. Then I remember Gabe Newell decided to promote Linux because Windows was locking down games into their software store. Then Windows continued to get worst and worst with privacy and ads etc. Not like Windows 95!

But I kind of knew that Linux would grow because Valve was investing in making it work. And also that Linux was a modular operating system that could be tailored to get the best performance out of any hardware. So I could see the potential of it for gaming or for anything really. I put Linux on my parents computer, they loved it. My dads old dual core laptop ran peppermint for like 8 years without breaking.

I'd never buy a Windows magazine but Linux is fun. It's just great! And right now I'm running manjaro KDE and I play dota 2 with awesome nvidia drivers. And there's so many games that you can play on linux so it's really awesome! So I guess I liked PC gaming but ended up liking Linux more as an operating system, rather than Windows.

Savage
Intro video
Gameplay

The only options I know of for Linux games in general stores, at that time, were ID, Epic, S2 Games, and maybe whoever made Marble Blast?

Amusingly you couldn't actually get most of those to work 'out of the box' from the store. id didn't have the Linux installers on the disk. Epic did for some, but I think UT2004 if I recall didn't have the installer on the disk? (Or UT didn't and UT2004 did? It's been too long). Savage 1/2 were the only ones that I think actually had the Pengiun on the box.

Oddly enough one of the very few companies that would release their games including all three major platforms on the installation medium was... Running with Scissors! Unfortunately (or fortunately) the last two Postal games have not received Linux ports (yet?). Granted Postal 3 was... not actually done by Running with Scissors, and they apologized for that!

I'm an IT professional and learned how to use Linux in college and then got good at it at work. I used to have a Windows server at home, but I always had Linux servers. I dual booted early on because I was curious if I could use it for my desktop. Back then, there were forum tutorials to get games to work. There just weren't enough of my games that worked.

SteamOS came out and therefore compatible games. There came a point where I realized I hadn't booted into Windows for four months! It was at this time that I was willing to cut off a portion of my Steam collection and delete my Windows drive. If I wasn't on Arch yet at this point, it would have been Linux Mint.

As we all fondly remember, more and more games became easily playable on Linux. Any time I've briefly thought of running Windows again, I think about how much control Microsoft took away from the computer owner, and maintaining two operating systems and application configurations instead of one. I never went back.

I got into Linux in the early 2000s. Back then i didn't have much of a clue what could become of it, but i liked the idea of a completely free and open community driven system that everyone could tinker with and help improve upon. It was what i had thought would be the only way to go forward into the future considering the ever increasing complexity of technology. In the long run, single companies, even with the size and weight of Microsoft would not be capable to constantly innovate and create good software. And now, 20 years later it turned out is was finally right about something. I got into gaming with UT '99, back when it was new and the fascination never left me since. Gaming on Linux had a rough start, but with the capable wine developers pumping out massive improvements to their translator, i had much confidence in it becoming really good some day. Back in 2007, long before Valve started their huge investment in Linux, the most incredible feat imho was a patched wine version that could run the almost brandnew STALKER game perfectly and with on-par performance on Linux. I was in IT school back then and my classmates could not believe what they saw on my laptop. That got some of them much more interested in Linux than they would like to admit :D
For me it was: No Tux, no bucks with a few exceptions when the devs would not go out of their way to block us Tux gamers. Just like Blizzard did. They were totally ok with people playing their WoW, WC3 and Diablo games on the Tux. Not offering any support wasn't a deal breaker to anyone anyway.
Things went pretty slow until Valve stepped into the game with SteamOS and their first official Steam Client. It had a rough start, but the commitment to the platform was obvious. Unfortunately by the time, my private life went south and it took years until i had an option to stabilize and get back into gaming.
Now i own a Steam Deck and having put off gaming for years, i now regained interest, thanks to this amazing, though not perfect device. I am really looking forward to what the future brings.
I also never thought possible that Microsoft would ever touch Linux, but there we are now.
What a time to be alive!

I'm loving all of these stories, and I'm really surprised by how many folks are in the "using Linux exclusively for 10 to 15 years" bracket

To not add into that bracket anymore:
For me it's also less about how than when, I was more or less always a PC Gamer though I had a Nintendo or gamed outside™ etc.
I already knew that Linux was a thing somewhat longer and I also got more into the Privacy and tec cautious bubble, when Windows started to continuously break my PC with updates or push features which weren't quite user ready etc. Things were just adding up, but I hadn't really considered trying out Linux not to mention switching to it from Windows 10.

About 3 years ago or a little more I got a new colleague at work (by that time I was already familiar with Linux in the server realm) and he had a laptop with Ubuntu so with me being already somewhat interested and him being probably as talky about Linux as everyone who uses it we naturally talked quite a bit about it.
Around 2,5 years ago(so not much later) I switched to Linux and while there were some games I couldn't play yet on Linux I didn't really feel like utilizing the Dual Boot function, so I only game on Linux since then.
Also while Ubuntu was my first try I quickly dropped it, tried Kubuntu, but settled with Manjaro since then, though when I got a new PC I didn't switched from xfce to KDE and of course I couldn't be bothered to install windows on it.
EDIT: But yeah [Linux exclusively since like the first month] or so

Last edited by Lamdarer on 5 September 2022 at 2:24 pm UTC