Deserted from the Austrian army in 1991. Fled to South France.

Because of the grip Microsoft and Apple still have in the education sector most people leave school knowing nothing else. It's only much later some people look for alternatives, when dissatisfaction with the established operating systems starts to set in for one reason or another. Most people never do realise there are alternatives. Google and Facebook are all they need.

It doesn't surprise me that late 20s or early 30s is the age people start to experiment and find alternatives, although I expect the average age to drop much lower once the Windows 8 fiasco dawns on people.

Not old, but I spent ~4 years in the German Air Force plus ~2 years in the German Navy.
Now I'm 25 and just had my 10th anniversary with Slackware.

Retired U.S. Navy here.

US Army since 2007. Not really a geezer yet though.

It appears that those interested in this thread have figured out how old they are. So I'll mark this thread as SOLVED.

The results were interesting with the asymmetrical bell curve distribution of the 360 respondents. The high point being the 30-39 year range representing 28% of the respondents.

Only 3 responding under the age of 20. This was surprising to me.

10% 60 years or older.

28% 50 years or older.

The 50-69 group (two groups combined) was larger than the 20-29 age group. This also surprised me.

I thought technology was a young persons field. Have us young people all just grown older. Or are we too old to realize that laptops/desktops aren't considered "technology" anymore.

Y'all can draw your own conclusions about the poll results.

On a side note, I've recently had a discussion with a group of 16 - 18 year old students about the NSA scandal. Not only were they not shocked that the NSA potentially listens to every private conversation on the Internet or on the phone, they also found this behaviour "normal". Add that to a general attitude of passive consumerism ("I have to buy the latest iPhone because mine is not the latest model"), and there you have your average youngster, at least here in France.

Of course there are exceptions, so all hope is not lost.

Computers laptops are old school. I can handle them easily enough. What I have problems with is these new phones. I usually have to ask someone who barely knows how to turn a computer on how to do things on one of them so called smart phones. On a side note USMC 11 years during the 80's and my Dad retired USMC, even though he don't use computers.

I started doing "computers" (that would be IBM punch-card tabulators, "programing" with jumper wires) in 1961. Been at it, on and off, ever since. After struggling with installing a ringtone (All My Exes Live in Texas) on a Motorola Razor for an hour with the manual (mumble, grumble), my 10-year-old great niece said, "Oh, sure, Uncle Tom, let me."

Took the kid two minutes, including the download.

They ain't the same as us.

*lol* +1 && ^5

21 years old. I guess that makes me a youngster compared to some of the other folks here...

I've been using Linux in some form or another at the age of... uh, 15 I think (at least that's what the math says; I started using Ubuntu a bit after 7.10 was released).

Most of my like-age peers still stick to Windows and OS X mostly for that reason: it's at school and it's at home, so why bother trying to switch? There's also the fact that most students aren't able to install alternative operating systems on their (parents') computers, lest they invoke the rage of their parents; on the other hand, they might be willing to try out a live DVD/USB distro like Knoppix.

I am 57