I'm 42 and I'm suffering severe midlife crisis.

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Get a bike, or, install Slackware-current like every other one

What manifestations does this take and what are the causes? Is it finding oneself in situations one doesn't want to be in, regretting things, thinking things could have been done better, missing out?

Yes, get a motorbike. I know it's a stereotype. Let's face it, we want to be like Blackie Lawless riding a motorbike though the desert [I have been considering getting a motortrike myself].

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Some time after the advent of Win98 I bought a Linux for Beginners How-To that came with a Red Hat 2.0 CD. I stuck with Red Hat until 7.2. A couple of associates who were command line enthusiasts convinced me to try Slackware. This would have been around 2000/2001. Ever since. I see that at 72 I represent the oldest group. None 81+ yet. Hopefully ;-)

The things we take for granted now! Who has used the setserial command or isapnp in the last decade? Things "just work" these days, except for the cutting edge of course.

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Well I should mention I had a slightly older brother the equipment was really his but since we shared a room they were mine also, or so I would like to think

Must admit I have been quite lucky with having exposure to equipment like that at such a young age, still remember at about 8 years old drawing circles on screen with a spectrum, and then using blitz basic on the amiga kind of peeked my interest since then.

I am more or less your age Lysander666. However, I no longer share your enthusiasm with Slackware, Linux and so on. Unfortunately.

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#12 for the 21 to 30 group
But I use Slackware so I suppose that makes me an "old Unix guy who is afraid of change".

For the condensed history, I don't know exactly when I started using Slackware. My dad ran a mixed windows/linux household with a lot of used and refurbished systems. I learned it by osmosis at an early age. Up until 2008 I used a pentium3 in a dual boot config for windows xp and Slackware. As the years went by Slackware just kept getting better, and every release brought speed improvements. It was (and still is) awesome.


Peer pressure demanded that I learn Windows and Ubuntu. As an internship in 2012 I built an Xubuntu-based distro for a local non-profit. After testing, I found that Ubuntu was unable to meet their memory requirements, and categorically proved the that their Unity desktop failed on a number of very serious technical points (e.g. with 1G of RAM the CUPS configuration app would crash on vanilla Ubuntu). I had to ween them off of Ubuntu, so Xubuntu was a nice way to keep some familiar infrastructure and move to Xfce.
Maybe this isn't the place to say it, but my social life has been negatively affected by the Debian, Ubuntu, and Arch community. So rather than put myself out there and make shit friends, I decided to continue using a stable, reliable, dependable OS.

Sorry for the negativity. I see comments every now and then about younger users (or lack of) and I've personally been confronted by that topic on numerous occasions since 2 universities in my area have big linux-specific programs. Portland has a lot of young people (college kids) who are actively learning linux as a career path, and I would not be surprised if there is some idiot at the OSUOSL putting out false information.

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Oh no, done with the entire thing, jumped ship to BSD?

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Because I am 67 my vote was for 61-70
Just took a short trip with only my phone and a tablet. EGAD but this fish was out of water. I don't like where things are going and don't know what I will do

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I'm 47 and haven't yet had my midlife crisis.

I choose to interpret this as meaning I'll live way longer than 94 years.

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I intend to live forever myself, but the crises are inevitable. In addition to the motorcycle advice, which is sound, I find that having the right eyewear also helps maintain a proper perspective when such a crisis comes!

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Unfortunately all operating systems have negative points. From my point of view Slackware sucks a lot less than other systems I can name.

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Huh, thought there'd be more of me (21-30 year range).

Well, it shows that Linux is no longer just a system for teenage geeks and hackers.

On that note I'm 46 and I plan to straight outlive my self.

Also, who does not come to me funeral, I will remain offended thru the rest of my life.