oldfart club

[fturco]

I started using Gentoo at the beginning of 2004. I must admit having left Gentoo several times in the last 14 years for other GNU/Linux distributions, but I always came back home sooner or later. Now I'm using Gentoo on all machines: desktop, laptop and VPS.

[djdunn]

personally i try some things out in a vm to try it, like systemd and such some other distros, but i doubt anything can pull me away, sometimes i will use OpenBSD to make a router cause i like pf very much.

over the years to me at least it feels like gentoo turned from being a "leftist ricer distro" to a "right wing, traditionalist" one
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“Music is a moral law. It gives a soul to the Universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, gaiety and life to everything. It is the essence of order, and leads to all that is good and just and beautiful.”

― Plato

[paulj]

My first linux installation was slackware on a laptop in 1996 - I think the kernel was at 1.36 or so? It was a work laptop, and I resized the drive image for windows and installed Linux on the space. Can't even runs apps on a stick in work these days!

Gentoo came after frustration with binary distributions and dependency hell in 2004. The forum joining date is probably pretty accurate. The desktop PC has been rebuilt with new hardware a few times, and I have a laptop I travel with also running Gentoo. I have a couple of beaglebones as well which are running Gentoo, with a samba drive link to my desktop for portage. Compiling takes a long time there!

I like it because I can make it my way, I can add ebuilds as I wish, and all the configuration is easy to sort out. I do like NeddySeagoon's attitude to some of the more recent developments, but I have to confess I do have udev working on my machines. Without wishing to start a debate about it, I am still on openrc, and intend to continue to use it indefinitely.

I stalk the forums from time to time, and try to help. I normally find that once I post a question, I find the answer 5 minutes later by myself! But the times I haven't, I find the help invaluable. I have toyed with the idea of becoming a developer, but I have a busy work life and don't feel I can commit enough time. Maybe one day. I do post bugs, and often with accompanying patches.

Long may Gentoo continue!

[proteusx]

I too started with Slackware Linux in 1997. It was Slackware 3.4 from a
CD packaged with a magazine I think. I installed it on a Pentium 133Mhz machine
which I was dual booting Linux and Windows 95 with LILO.

Them days, downloading with a 33K modem was painful, so when a couple years
later I found SUSE Linux which came in a 6 CD pack that included a myriad of
precompiled packages as well as their sources, I abandoned Slackware. I think it
was SUSE LINUX 6.0 and kernel 2.0.x. That was before SUSE became Novel. Initially
SUSE was bliss, but slowly in the next few years I became disenchanted with the
dependency hell and the quirky maze of the SUSE startup scheme.

I was seriously thinking to have a go at Linux From Scratch (by then I had a fast
internet connection) when in 2003 I discovered Gentoo and since then I never
looked at other distributions. Gentoo was exactly what I needed. Like many of
the preceding posts, my very first Gentoo installation (on a Pentium 4)
lived (on constantly upgraded hardware) until last year, when I put it to sleep
and I switched all my machines to 64 bit.

The Ubuntus come and go, so do the Arches and the Debians but I never saw
anything enticing there. With Gentoo I was in control and could configure
my machines the way I wanted. Especially after the madness of systemd, I feel
rather smug about my choice of Gentoo which is, more or less, unscathed by the
computational totalitarianism of these days.

My thanks to the developers (past and present) that made Gentoo the best distro ever.

[jonathan183]

I remember using a 2006 live install CD with a graphical installer ... I think I just about managed to install that way but ended up using the handbook to do an install afterwards. I don't have the install or the CD anymore and the hardware is long gone
I started out using SuSE Linux 8.1 and was looking at alternatives by SuSE 10 so I think that was either 2006 or 2007 when I tried my first Gentoo install ... do I get extra points for not remembering

[Zucca]

I started to use Gentoo around 2005 on, already old, Pentium III 900MHz laptop.
I remember compiling X was something I started before going sleep. I think it took longer than Firefox to build.
It's still "in use". Although it now runs Alpine Linux (OpenRC yay!). I may put gentoo back to it if I have time to set up a binhost for it.

My "distro path" is following:

• MkLinux (NIC didn't work, so that didn't last long)
  
• Gentoo (Things worked)
  
• Arch Linux (Out of curiosity)
  
• Gentoo (Still the best for me)

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..: Zucca :..
Gentoo IRC channels reside on Libera.Chat.
--

[superjaded]

No clue when I actually started using gentoo, but presumably it was around or before 2002.. so I guess I'm an old fart.

I started using Linux in my teens (35 now) so I'm really foggy how and when I started using it. It was probably somewhat related to the fact I hung out with a bunch of nerds on IRC when I was growing up. My dad also is somewhat of a nerd and ended up buying a computer magazine that came with "Slackware 1996" on it. I imagine I installed that based something I heard about on IRC.

I mostly stuck with Slackware, though I did try different distributions here and there. Slackware didn't really have a package management system back then (if it even does now), so everything I installed was from scratch. I'm pretty I gave Red Hat a go and didn't like RPM very much at the time.

I still can't do binary distributions. They just don't make sense to me even if they might more "simple" than source based distributions. Or maybe Portage is just *that* good (and/or what I'm used to).

Somewhere along the way I got interested in the *BSDs. After then I mostly used FreeBSD until I discovered Gentoo. I fell in love with Ports. Of course, I ended up having to run a lot of stuff through its Linux emulation layer since FreeBSD had even less desktop related application than Linux did. Had to run the Linux version of my browser (Firebird/Firefox at the time I suppose?) so I could have flash, for example.

TBH I've spent more time away from Linux outside of work than around it in those 15 years. I've been working in Information Security for an insurance company for the last five years, and we are a Windows (and Mainframe, bleck) shop. We do have a non-trivial amount of things which DO use Linux (including some of our most mission critical systems), so I've found my dabbling with Linux throughout my life has certainly come in handy. I imagine most of the stuff I do is super simple to most people around here, but apparently reading logs with less, grep or even nano is hard for people who've spent all their life in Windows.

[krinn]

[khayyam]

[bghoons]

To get an idea of how old fart-ey I am, my first computer was a Commodore 64 with its whopping 64k memory. I soon upgraded to the Commodore 128. I taught myself Basic on that machine, my first program a dice roller for AD&D 2nd Edition gaming. Eh, it was easier to just roll the dice manually but it was fun to try. I am a veteran user of WordStar and DisplayWrite. I used to wear a Member's Only jacket on my way over to a friend's house to play IntelliVision games. I get pissed off when I see kids on my lawn threatening my grapevine, tulips, and begonias.

Disclaimer: being an old fart there may be some discrepencies, my memory not being what it used to be and all that but is fairly accurate.

2004 Mandrake Linux

Unstable. Sound disabled by default--you had to go in and manually increase the volume. I discovered this after a long period of troubleshooting and messing with settings and all kinds of things. Maddening! It was here I began to call KDE the "Klunky Desktop Environment". I used LiLo (LinuxLoader) because I thought Grub sounded disgusting, like a grubworm. Who would name a program Grub? After installing, I tried and tried to get network connectivity but wouldn't you know it, I had a WinModem. Hours of research determined a WinModem will not work with Linux because the WinModem relies upon the Windows OS to achieve connectivity. So, I had to go to a Computer Show and buy for $2.00 a Linux-compatible Modem and compile the driver myself. I was appalled at having to go through all these hoops just to get a working computer but there is something about the "thrill of the chase" that made it fun. I compiled the driver, pleased at myself for figuring it out, and all was well. I was using Mandrake for several months when I went to update and got a message "Sorry, but Mandrake is now Mandriva so you cannot update anymore. Too bad! Get Mandriva." Well, having a 33.6k modem (maybe 56k I forget) meant downloading large files tying up my only phone line in my crummy apartment meant I would not be downloading Mandriva. I went back to using Windows XP.

2006 Debian Sarge, openSUSE

I was in the local book store and saw Linux Magazine, and to my delight saw each edition had a CD of a featured distro. This edition of the magazine happened to have Debian (never heard of it) so I bought the magazine and went home to install. I got the Linux itch again. Unfortunately, Debian had no driver for my network card. It was interesting but useless to me.

I waited for the next magazine and got one with openSUSE. It worked but was very sluggish and in my opinion was "Linux trying to be Windows" which did not please me at all. It also took a long time to install and was sluggish. I went back to Windows XP for awhile.

2007 Linux Mint Daryna

Hey, this is great! I like it. It is what Linux ought to be. Somebody with a brain finally figured out Linux is useless if there are no drivers for the hardware.

2008 OpeBSD 4.4

During one of my trips to the book store I came across FreeBSD. I did not like the devil mascot so I passed on it, but I was intrigued to learn there were other PC operating systems out there besides Mac, Windows, and Linux. Online I ordered OpenBSD for $50.00 thinking it would be quite worth the money. Well, not really, but I liked OpenBSD and it worked for me, and I did not mind contributing to its continued developemnt. OpenBSD was spartan the way I liked it but it was a lot of trouble to get working right by editing a number of configuration files. I was not pleased to learn there is no "update mode". If there is a patch you have to download the file(s) and compile them yourself, provided you are even aware that there is a patch available if you were not on the mailing list or have visited the website regularly.

2009 Gentoo, , Gentoo Linux, Fedora Sulphur & Cambridge, OpenSolaris, Linux Mint Gloria

Since I was compiling stuff, I figured I might as well try Gentoo. I considered myself tech-savvy, and was pretty good at figuring things out. I grabbed the Gentoo bull by the horns and promptly got gored. Ater two weeks I got it working but then I broke it by messing with USE flags too many times not knowing what I was doing.

After wondering if I had somehow come in contact with The Twilight Zone by trying Gentoo, I had not the time nor patience to spend so much time compiling so I went to Fedora Sulphur which worked but then the next release, Fedora Cambridge, broke half the stuff that was working just fine before. I could not believe the Fedora people would not write down in a book "Okay, this works: don't mess with it anymore." No, they had to keep messing with stuff and broke parts of my system and after the Gentoo fiasco I was about ready to swear off Linux for good.

I obtained a copy of OpenSolaris, I think from Linux Magazine but maybe from somewhere else. OpenSolaris took a very long time to install, longer than openSUSE, which I found to be frustrating--what was it doing, checking three times before writing anything to disk? After it was installed I was pleased to see it used CDE as a desktop, something I had not used since the late 1990s when I worked with Solarix UNIX professionally. I gave it a spin and found it was just what I wanted! Unfortunately, there was no driver for the network card. Nothing I could do could get it to work, nothing. Having had great success with Linux Mint which always seemed to have a driver for everything, I downloaded Gloria and was quite happy with it. I began to think of Mint as "old reliable". I never would have thought something coming out of Ireland could be stable and reliable. Braveheart is one of my favorite movies and that movie is one of the few references I have for anything Irish other than a bunch of drunks on St. Patrick's Day so my opinion of the Irish is a bit stereotyped.

2010 Linux Mint Julia
I was so pleased with Linux Mint I kept on using it.

2011 OpenBSD 5.0

I missed the simple, streamlined elegance of OpenBSD so went back to it.
2012 openSUSE 12.2

OpenBSD had no driver for the wireless card, and I did not feel like jumping through a series of flaming circus hoops trying to get the wireless card working. Decided to give openSUSE another try. It was good but still bloated and Windows-esque. I was too lazy to uninstall so I used it for a while.

2013 OpenBSD 5.3
2014 OpenBSD 5.5

2015 to present Gentoo Linux and CentOS

After this long and winding road, it appears Gentoo is going to be my home. I am eyeing the CentOS machine to put Gentoo on it again but I have neither the time nor energy for a compile-fest at the moment. All of my computers are 32-bit so my options are dwindling for these machines.

[freke]

Started on Gentoo in 2002 as my 1st PC-linux (did try some Redhat install back in the OLD days on my Amiga500).

Joined the forums early 2003 when I couldn't get X to work properly on my - then new - laptop.

Now I'm mostly running Gentoo on my PCEngines APU1D4 and APU2C4.

[rndusr]

I started using Gentoo in the spring 2004 when I built an Opteron-based server, and the 64-bit support in all the other distros of the day was very poor. I found Gentoo much easier to use and maintain than Slackware (which I had been using before, since 1999), and eventually switched my desktop over too. Over the years I have tried out various other systems, but Gentoo has remained the least horrible option by far, and I suppose I will stay with it until ~2050 (i.e. when the *BSDs have all the functionality that I want).
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[beandog]

I don't remember exactly when I started, though my forum registration was in 2003. I *do* remember having the CD for one of the actual releases though .. it was an rc candidate I remember.

I first started on Red Hat and Mandrake Linux when I first heard about Gentoo. The fact that there was an OS that didn't need a license to run absolutely blew my mind (and my mind has been getting blown ever since).

Linux was really rough around the edges application-wise, but it was by far more than enough to do a usable system / desktop. It's how I learned all my tech skillz is by dorking around on Linux, and learning about all the amazing open source software out there.

Red Hat made me rage, though, because it would load *so* many services on boot. I specifically remember the breaking point being that CUPS was starting up on my headless server that had nothing to do with anything, and it was a super pain to figure out how to disable it. Also, I remember there was some setting I had in /etc/ somewhere, and RH had *something* resetting it back to my changes somehow. That drove me insane as well.

I tried using Mandrake, which was good, but it would crash a lot, so I'd bounce back and forth between the two. I found out much later that the desktop I was running it on had a buggy BIOS and was cheap hardware, so everything would crash anyway.

I first heard about Gentoo at work. A co-worker and I were discussing Linux distros, and going down the list, he mentioned Gentoo, one I'd never heard of. He commented and said that it was really hard to set up and install, and that you'd have to download everything yourself, which would be a major pain (it was ... this was back when we had dialup modems still).

I looked online for more information about it, and saw a gorgeous screenshot where someone had a beautiful background and a single terminal window open that was skinned and nothing else. I wanted minimal, and that was it!

The rest is history. I fondly remember doing stage1 installs on my Pentium 3. Now I'm supes lazy and for my home setting, share the same portage tree and stage3 install and never update them.
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