Hello All,

I have been a member of Linux Questions for a few years but haven't posted until now. I have been a user of Linux for a lot longer, since about 2000.

I started my Linux journey while still using Windows 98 and my first experience was with Lindows, later called Linspire but subsequently becoming defunct. By the time Linspire went down the tube I had moved on to a Ubuntu derivative, Klikit-Linux, along with a number of people from the 'Insiders' forum with Linspire. While playing around with Klikit-Linux I leaned some useful skills in downloading large files via the Internet, using dial-up in those days, and soon became a distro-junkie downloading and trying out too many distributions to count. In fact I became overwhelmed by the expanding number of distributions about that time.

A few years back I had my own home-built computer made with the help of my daughter and went through numerous distros before I found one that automatically configured my nice new wide-screen monitor correctly and that was ArtistX. I instantly fell in love with ArtistX and used it as my main OS for a number of years. I still have it installed but have moved on to Limux Mint as my preferred distro these days.

For a number of years I had a lot of time to spend learning Linux as well as just browsing the Web but that changed a couple of years ago when our family decided to work together to renovate our family home, sell and move onto a lifestyle block together. And last March was when it all came together and we bought,sold and made the move from the city to the country. And here we are now, city dwellers learning how to live in the country.

Shortly after the move my PC decided to give up on me and refuses to boot. Since we were totally out of free funds after the move I have had to wait to do anything about upgrading the PC and have had to be content using an old laptop of my wife's running Windows XP. This hasn't been too much of a difficulty as I was very familiar with XP having helped a number of people with their PCs running that OS even though I have never owned a copy myself. I think that there are quite a few older computers in the same position and people are content to keep on using them despite the lack of 'support' from Microsoft.

Over the years I have participated a lot on Linux forums, other than this one, and for a while kept adding to my own free Wiki with what I was doing/learning, mainly to help myself to remember and have a resource to return to when I needed to remind myself. I have suffered for many years with a loss of working memory making it very hard to lean new things and necessitating research every time I need some information that others might carry in their head. The site is still there at http://pgtips91.pbworks.com. Looking at that site now I see it as a veritable history of my journey.

Another of my interests has been photography, with a specialised interest in creating panoramas from the time I found out about Hugin. Some of my panoramas I have uploaded to my Picasa site, Panoramas Collection with my public albums in general at https://picasaweb.google.com/107644081773559810092.

These days I am concentrating on converting our life-style block into a permacuture/bio-intensive productive farm that will feed and help support our family for the future. I recently posted a small album of photos showing life on the farm, Katui Pines - update July/August 2015. That should give an indication of where things are at, both on the farm and for me personally. Linux has definitely had to take a back seat to real life for me now.

Paul
—
Kaukapakapa, NZ
Sunday 09/08/2015