• don@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    17
    ·
    11 days ago

    This was before my first boxed Linux purchase of Mandrake, but learned to dual boot on the home’s 300 ton HP w/ 2gb hdd (98SE, I think) and was fucking around with alternate shells like Afterstep, GeoShell, bbox, LiteStep, etc.

    Learned about doing away with the standard ui completely and putting all the menus into right click, so there were times I’d walk away leaving just a wallpaper and cursor. Family couldn’t figure how to do anything, so I pretended I’d hit some key combo to bring menus which just baffled the fuck out of them, got labeled a “hacker”.

    Very first os was, as a 7 yo, DOS 2.0 on my grandfather’s dual-floppy IBM (to keep a text file of my baseball cards), and a friend of the family who worked at JHU/APL in video production would let me mess around with the 3.11 boxes at the Kossiakoff center.

      • don@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        11 days ago

        I’m really grateful for having had it and the support structure I had at the time, and have tried to make the most I can of what was given to me, and what I learned.

          • don@lemmy.ca
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            11 days ago

            That’s about where I am. I’ve mostly been hardware and futzing around, but coding wasn’t really ever my bag, I guess.