Computers
Background history
I have been using computers since I was quite young. The earliest use of a computer that I can remember happened at one of my aunts' place, and I recall playing around with MS Paint in Windows 3.0. I think I was about four years old then.
I got my first computer at the age of nine. Curious, and wanting to learn by trying and failing, I managed to screw it up within the first half hour of using it. After all, after having to use others' computers carefully for such a long time, having to be careful about what I was doing, I could now do whatever I wanted. So of course I did. And being the newbie that I was, I managed to break something. The computer had to be reinstalled. One of my neighbor's father reinstalled it for me. I paid close attention to what he was doing and how it was done. After a few times of screwing up my computer again, and after having gotten my hands on my own set of MS-DOS and Windows installation diskettes, I could do it myself. Over the course of the next half year or so, I learned everything I needed to learn about MS-DOS and Windows 3.11.
A couple of years later, I got a computer with Windows 95 on it. A new playground! I was more careful this time around, though, I read up on things before trying them out, and I don't think I ever screwed that machine up much, although—being Windows—it had to be reinstalled over every 6 months or so to stay responsive.
Going from Windows 95 to Windows 98 to Windows ME to Windows XP was really no big change. I was also briefly using BeOS, but it had a habit of crapping out on me, so I chose not to pursue it further.
I used Windows XP for some years, until I discovered something better. I recalled first having read about it in a computer magazine back in 1994. I had heard about it every now and then since as well, but I always thought “I don't need it. Windows is good enough.” Which was, and still is true. Windows is good enough. But why settle with good enough when something better is available? Eventually I grew really tired of having to reinstall Windows every six–ten months and having to restart my computer at least once a week.
I was subscribing to a computer magazine at the time, and I had read an article on a supposedly new, more user-friendly GNU/Linux variant named Xandros Linux. I tried it, but Xandros did not suit my tastes, and I quickly grew tired of it and went back to Windows. Again, after those six–ten months when a new re-installation was in order, I felt ready to give GNU/Linux another go. This time around, I went with the Debian-based MEPIS Linux. That was a much greater success. I stayed with MEPIS for at least a year, but eventually went back to Windows, for reasons now forgotten.
Finally I found a GNU/Linux variant that I liked. So, once again, when the next re-installation round came around I tried Gentoo Linux. I've been a GNU/Linux user ever since.
