Are you a crusty, a youngling, a noughtie or a baby-boomer?

LoTeK · Apprentice Joined: 26 Jul 2012 Posts: 270

puh guys I'm really appeased that I belong to the younger group (25 - 29). often I feel pretty old, especially when I see teenagers. Then I think: fuck, yesterday I was 16 and skipped school and suddenly I'm nearly 30 years old! :lol:

on the other hand it's a bit strange that there are not more younger people. If I had known that gentoo existed 10 years ago I'd use it since then.
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Navar · Guru Joined: 20 Aug 2012 Posts: 353

@gerard82, that's outstanding--from early teens onward, I'm always pleasantly surprised hearing about examples like you.

I could not even get my grandparents to touch a computer for the most part. I managed to get my Mom switched to using Gentoo last year, which, while surprising to me, definitely showed how amenable many are not to being forced into the Windows Vista/7/8 way of things if they're used to anything prior.
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I'm not into marketing, in fact this is one of the few times I'd mark my age (40+). But this curve seems a good indicator so far. *nix in general had wax and wane phases that coincided with everything changing in industry, marketing and trends. 2003 (which matches a particular age grouping in the poll) was in particular a substantial year for Linux, both positive and negative as were 1995, 1997 and 2000. The overall effect became a spotlight effect over time. Apple, Android, etc., *nix is driving more of what lay people use, but they do not care/want to know the details. As long as there still is a fair amount (meaning any) of 20+ somethings showing any interest in Gentoo, it should continue to evolve.

So, in reality, you're always going to have a few who conceivably like to be able to do whatever they wish and desire to know more about the nuts and bolts of how that machine will work, particularly students in the computer science realm (heh, when they find time). But even there, going the *nix route continues to go against the majority trend (think about how many mainstream distros focus as a perk being non-use of CLI), going the Gentoo route seems even more fringe. The rest will want things to be made simpler and less thought out for them beyond use for consuming, communicating, aesthetics and entertainment.
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disi · Posted: Wed Jul 03, 2013 11:35 pm Post subject:

lost+found · Posted: Thu Jul 04, 2013 6:42 am Post subject:

The graphs look like the Constrictive population pyramid, typical for the western world. That's where most Gentoo devs live too. Maybe it's also showing an initial stage of learning/getting interested, and later a decline of interest (in Gentoo? or just visiting the forums?).

Gentoo community poll:

Prenj · n00b Joined: 20 Nov 2011 Posts: 16

TomWij · Retired Dev Joined: 04 Jul 2012 Posts: 1553

bwaldow · Posted: Wed Jul 10, 2013 9:44 am Post subject:

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Wed Jul 10, 2013 5:29 pm Post subject:

Heh,

Unix was not invented when I was at Uni.
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aCOSwt · Posted: Wed Jul 10, 2013 7:59 pm Post subject:

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Wed Jul 10, 2013 8:06 pm Post subject:

aCOSwt,

Thats a wee gem.

Come to think of it, when I learned to program, there wasn't an operating system.
Just, your program, a few useful libraries to (statically) link against and the bare hardware all to yourself.
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Computer users fall into two groups:-
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ulenrich · Veteran Joined: 10 Oct 2010 Posts: 1480

"Linux for Workgroups" 3.11-rc1 release today.
We avidly waited 20 years for this to happen

miket · Posted: Tue Jul 16, 2013 5:11 am Post subject:

eccerr0r · Posted: Wed Jul 17, 2013 5:14 pm Post subject:

I missed the poll. Anyway I don't think Gentoo wasn't available when I started running Linux and that was when I was at college. Linux was still somewhat new then (0.99pl12 - but that means there were several zillion versions before that). So I think that dates me enough...
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steveL · Posted: Wed Jul 17, 2013 6:23 pm Post subject:

John R. Graham · Posted: Wed Jul 17, 2013 6:56 pm Post subject:

It's not closed. Maybe eccerr0r forgot he voted.

- John
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eccerr0r · Posted: Wed Jul 17, 2013 8:44 pm Post subject:

Hmm. not sure what happened there, but very weird. Anyway, I guess I add another one to the hump...
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leifbk · Posted: Fri Jul 19, 2013 11:13 am Post subject:

I'm 60 years old, and apparently a rather atypical Gentoo user. I started with computing on a Z80 CP/M system, back in the days when your only interface to the computer was the command prompt.

In the Nineties, I used to buy a British computer mag called "PC World" or something like that. One of the better columnists was Martin Banks, and I fondly remember one article about "King Computasarfun". I can't find a working link to the article on the net, but here's an intriguing snippet:

... that emporium were in town to tell us what they had done `now'. This turned out to be, amongst other things, the final nail in the coffin of King Computasarfun. You remember him, of course, he was the one that had us all buying computers for splendidly hedonistic reasons, such as playing Space Invaders ...

I've always been of the opinion that computing should be fun, and found Windows more and more boring for each successive version, from 3.0, when you still could play around "under the hood", via 95 and to NT 4.0 and 2000. By the time XP came around, I was totally fed up with Microsoft. I tried several Linux distros, but when I found Gentoo, it felt like coming home. Computing started to be fun again.

Addendum: At the time that I went to high school, Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie were inventing Unix.
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eccerr0r · Posted: Fri Jul 19, 2013 2:37 pm Post subject:

I do have to admit that Linux kernel also has been appeasing the masses, configuration has gotten simpler and more forgiving to problems, but then again, the plug and play mentality is what necessitates it. That bluetooth bug where you can crash your system by suddenly ripping up the connection made me appreciate how complicated things have gotten.

(... and I would have thought it should have been much simpler than what it is...)
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Drasica · Apprentice Joined: 16 Apr 2006 Posts: 181

I have grown up with Gentoo, in a way. When I first heard about linux at the age of 14 or so I browsed the internet trying to figure out which flavor to install. I saw a description of Gentoo and how it strove for strong community, user freedom and configurability and those ideals really resonated with me. Then I went and tried to install it and failed miserably... I left with my tail between my legs and installed Fedora. I graduated from Fedora to Debian upon a friend's suggestion.

A couple years after my first attempt I figured I'd give Gentoo another shot. This time I got it installed successfully. I've been using it as my primary distro ever since (I am now a recent grad from college).

eccerr0r · Posted: Tue Aug 13, 2013 9:56 pm Post subject:

I would have no idea what it would be like if Gentoo was my first Linux/Unix install, even worse if it was my first -any- OS install (based on the fact computers come with OS from the store, typically.) Getting your feet wet immensely helps getting a working Gentoo install quickly.

I think there was another poll/thread about maintenance times, as you get older you don't want to be fscking with blockers...?
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NeddySeagoon · Posted: Wed Aug 14, 2013 8:40 pm Post subject:

Drasica,

There are no known examples of failed Gentoo installs, mostly because its really hard to mess it up so badly that the only option is to start again.
There are however, varying degrees of success.

You learn far more from fixing things that are not quire right than from following the handbook and it just working.
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Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

dysoco · n00b Joined: 28 May 2011 Posts: 14

My 16th birthday was two weeks ago.

I've been using Linux for about... 5 years, and using Gentoo for one year or so.
Indeed I feel very young reading the comments, I thought we had more teenagers over here.

amulet_linux · n00b Joined: 26 Apr 2014 Posts: 65

amulet_linux · n00b Joined: 26 Apr 2014 Posts: 65

I am 19 years old, I been using Gentoo since January first, it was a cold Christmas, really not, the compilation kept me warm
I'm impressed about here is not enough young people, let's do something, more beautiful website design, Gentoo natural wallpapers default theme, new logo, magic USEs, i dunno...
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