Is 50 too old to be learning Linux
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Having used all the flavours of Windows since Windows 3.1 right up to Windows 8 and having used Amiga OS 1.3 to 3.9 before then I'm wondering if it's time to try a Linux distro. What I'm wondering is, have I left it too late at the age of 50 to start to get into the intricacies of Linux and which distro would be a good one to start with? I don't mind getting my hands 'dirty' with writing scripts and using a CLI as I've done this before on the Amiga (which was Unix based) and on Wind :-O ows. Any thoughts?
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Eddy Vluggen wrote:
The fact that the AmigaDOS was based on Unix will not help you a single bit under Linux.
Except for knowing what cd and rm stands for. As in don't try this at home:
alias rm=rm
cd /
rm *First *nix machine I did that on was some SCO installation I tried out and was tired of. :^)
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That's because AmigaDOS wasn't based on Unix. Influenced by, maybe, but definitely a distinct beast.
"If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough." Alan Kay.
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I'm curious, what is your interest with exploring Linux distros?
Paul S Wilcox wrote:
and I suppose with no authoritative guidance,
Well, as far as I can tell, most people come from a C background, or from FP languages like Python, but the weird thing is, how software is architected is just plain different, and not to my personal tastes. Here's a great example:
f 'labor_baby_mult',
:label => 'Multiple birth',
:type => 'integer',
:followups =>
{
'Y' =>
f('labor_baby_num',
:label => 'How many babies? ',
:constraints =>
{
'range' => '2:8',
'err_range' => 'Use a number between 2 and 8'
}
)
}Now, first off, I prettied that up for you. The original is all on one line:
f 'labor_baby_mult', :type => 'string', :label => 'Multiple birth', :followups => {'Y' => f('labor_baby_num', :label => 'How many babies? ', :constraints => {'range' => '2:8', 'err_range' => 'Use a number between 2 and 8'})}
Now to pick at things: A string for type? What about an enumeration? What about a derived field (that's what "f" is, a field definition) that describes the type? Why all these hashes - why not define a class with a property "label"? A range constraint defined as a string? Seriously? Custom parsing (the "2:8") for that range? OK, maybe that's regex (I have no knowledge of regex) and I know that the range constraint can use regex, so maybe that's OK. But a string 'err_range' for what could be a property? And not to mention, the question, why are some hash keys symbols (the ":label") and some strings (the 'range' => syntax) ? The inconsistencies, overuse of hashes, lack of OO (especially where, for things like this, OO actually really is good), are all things that make it burdensome and slow to work with this particular open source component (not related to Ruby or Rails, though you can find similar reliance (but not as abusive) on hashes in Rails.) Marc
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My BlogMarc Clifton wrote:
FP languages like Python
Python is not an FP language (assumming you mean Functional Programming) - it is a dynamic, mixed-paradigm language with some functional features, but really is more of a classic procedural object-oriented language for the most part.
"If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough." Alan Kay.
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Having used all the flavours of Windows since Windows 3.1 right up to Windows 8 and having used Amiga OS 1.3 to 3.9 before then I'm wondering if it's time to try a Linux distro. What I'm wondering is, have I left it too late at the age of 50 to start to get into the intricacies of Linux and which distro would be a good one to start with? I don't mind getting my hands 'dirty' with writing scripts and using a CLI as I've done this before on the Amiga (which was Unix based) and on Wind :-O ows. Any thoughts?
Many of the older generation of CPers started with proprietary OSs or machines with no OSs at all. As such, we are more used to switching thinking between environments than the youngsters who grew up with new OSs like Windows 3 or Windows 95/98 will be used to. Those who started with Windows XP will find Linux strange but only because it is different. If your history includes RSX, RSTS, or CP/M then Linux without a GUI will seem familiar; with a GUI, it becomes trivial. I learnt Unix in 1990 (after 18 years of programming) and then went back to real OSs (ICL G3, MVS/XA, VAX/VMS etc) but am just picking up Linux (Raspian) again and am finding that my 'history' plus Google [actually DuckDuckGo] plus the man pages means that it is not a steep learning curve; in fact, it is like rediscovering an old friend. The modern distros do so much of the hard work for you (thus far, I've only had to unpack one
tarball, everything else has beenapt-gets) that it is actually easier (and cheaper) to do interesting things in Linux than it is in Windows. -
Having used all the flavours of Windows since Windows 3.1 right up to Windows 8 and having used Amiga OS 1.3 to 3.9 before then I'm wondering if it's time to try a Linux distro. What I'm wondering is, have I left it too late at the age of 50 to start to get into the intricacies of Linux and which distro would be a good one to start with? I don't mind getting my hands 'dirty' with writing scripts and using a CLI as I've done this before on the Amiga (which was Unix based) and on Wind :-O ows. Any thoughts?
Hi there, what are you going to use Linux for ? As a desktop its still way behind Windows / Apple IOS but as a server mail/web/media it shines. I host my own Postfix mail server ( purely for fun ) and in the past have setup a Web server using Apache, oh and did I mention ITS FREE, I have digitised all my old CDs and records into FLAC format and store/stream music from my Linux ( Fedora ) server using Logitech Media Server - I tried with Windows first and it worked OK but was waaaay slower. I NEVER have to reboot my server, I can SSH into it and perform general housekeeping / updates etc without having to restart it - the pluses go on and on ( or is that me ?) I'm 60 by the way and in my opinion Linux is the best thing that happened to Unix. Go for it , try different distros and have fun.
When the going gets weird the weird turn pro - Hunter S Thompson RIP
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Having used all the flavours of Windows since Windows 3.1 right up to Windows 8 and having used Amiga OS 1.3 to 3.9 before then I'm wondering if it's time to try a Linux distro. What I'm wondering is, have I left it too late at the age of 50 to start to get into the intricacies of Linux and which distro would be a good one to start with? I don't mind getting my hands 'dirty' with writing scripts and using a CLI as I've done this before on the Amiga (which was Unix based) and on Wind :-O ows. Any thoughts?
Not to put too fine a point on it, but
No!
I learned Ubuntu last year just after I turned 51. Never, ever let the 20-somethings convince you you're too old to learn something new. In fact, occasionally remind them that age and treachery will always overcome youth and zeal :cool:.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
harold aptroot wrote:
50 should be a perfect age to cultivate the epic neckbeard required to fully get into Linux.
Already started with the neck beard, it's a bit grey though. :(
Ignore what they say about debian, I wouldn't use anything else. And I'm a lot older than you.
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Having used all the flavours of Windows since Windows 3.1 right up to Windows 8 and having used Amiga OS 1.3 to 3.9 before then I'm wondering if it's time to try a Linux distro. What I'm wondering is, have I left it too late at the age of 50 to start to get into the intricacies of Linux and which distro would be a good one to start with? I don't mind getting my hands 'dirty' with writing scripts and using a CLI as I've done this before on the Amiga (which was Unix based) and on Wind :-O ows. Any thoughts?
Never too old for something new, but too old to waste your time! ;) (Oh Oh ... here comes the Win vs. Linux fight!)
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Having used all the flavours of Windows since Windows 3.1 right up to Windows 8 and having used Amiga OS 1.3 to 3.9 before then I'm wondering if it's time to try a Linux distro. What I'm wondering is, have I left it too late at the age of 50 to start to get into the intricacies of Linux and which distro would be a good one to start with? I don't mind getting my hands 'dirty' with writing scripts and using a CLI as I've done this before on the Amiga (which was Unix based) and on Wind :-O ows. Any thoughts?
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Having used all the flavours of Windows since Windows 3.1 right up to Windows 8 and having used Amiga OS 1.3 to 3.9 before then I'm wondering if it's time to try a Linux distro. What I'm wondering is, have I left it too late at the age of 50 to start to get into the intricacies of Linux and which distro would be a good one to start with? I don't mind getting my hands 'dirty' with writing scripts and using a CLI as I've done this before on the Amiga (which was Unix based) and on Wind :-O ows. Any thoughts?
Like many of the others who have responded, I'm older than you are, by nearly a decade. I've been dealing with operating systems and development environments for way longer, but I didn't touch my first Linux system until I had reached 50. Since then, I've installed and configured dozens of them, including complex setups like ISPConfig with multiple different content management systems and websites under that. The reality of the situation is that, given a new user unfamiliar with computers, it matters not whether you sit them in front of Windows (except Win 8), Linux, or OSX, as all of the GUIs pretty much look and feel the same, barring minor differences like whether to click in the upper-left or upper-right to close a window. Learning Linux is no harder than learning PowerShell, and command-line stuff is mostly consistent across distros. I tend to be partial toward Fedora for user-type stuff, and CentOS for server systems, but that's my opinion. Others have different leanings.
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Having used all the flavours of Windows since Windows 3.1 right up to Windows 8 and having used Amiga OS 1.3 to 3.9 before then I'm wondering if it's time to try a Linux distro. What I'm wondering is, have I left it too late at the age of 50 to start to get into the intricacies of Linux and which distro would be a good one to start with? I don't mind getting my hands 'dirty' with writing scripts and using a CLI as I've done this before on the Amiga (which was Unix based) and on Wind :-O ows. Any thoughts?
I am going to be 49 Friday. I started with an Amiga 500 compiling from the command line on floppies with SAS C. Then I drawn to the world of MS. I am C++ programmer who was drawn to web development. Over the last few years I started using the LAMP stack and PHP so Linux just seemed to be a natural choice. You are never to old to learn. If you want to put the time into it, you will enjoy the things you can do in Linux.
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Having used all the flavours of Windows since Windows 3.1 right up to Windows 8 and having used Amiga OS 1.3 to 3.9 before then I'm wondering if it's time to try a Linux distro. What I'm wondering is, have I left it too late at the age of 50 to start to get into the intricacies of Linux and which distro would be a good one to start with? I don't mind getting my hands 'dirty' with writing scripts and using a CLI as I've done this before on the Amiga (which was Unix based) and on Wind :-O ows. Any thoughts?
I'm 55yo and recently took up the ukulele. If I can manage that, a nice simple Linux distribution such as Ubuntu should be a breeze for you.
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Having used all the flavours of Windows since Windows 3.1 right up to Windows 8 and having used Amiga OS 1.3 to 3.9 before then I'm wondering if it's time to try a Linux distro. What I'm wondering is, have I left it too late at the age of 50 to start to get into the intricacies of Linux and which distro would be a good one to start with? I don't mind getting my hands 'dirty' with writing scripts and using a CLI as I've done this before on the Amiga (which was Unix based) and on Wind :-O ows. Any thoughts?
I'm 64 and still working in IT. The thing I really like about IT is that there's always something new to learn. This is also the pain of IT in that you have to keep abreast of developments ;) If you're in IT you must be prepared to learn, whatever your age and at 50 you're still a youngster! Whether you're able to tackle something new is not so much a matter of age as a matter of state of mind. If you feel you're too old, you probably are, but if you're young at heart, you'll be prepared to tackle anything.
JohnOfStony
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Having used all the flavours of Windows since Windows 3.1 right up to Windows 8 and having used Amiga OS 1.3 to 3.9 before then I'm wondering if it's time to try a Linux distro. What I'm wondering is, have I left it too late at the age of 50 to start to get into the intricacies of Linux and which distro would be a good one to start with? I don't mind getting my hands 'dirty' with writing scripts and using a CLI as I've done this before on the Amiga (which was Unix based) and on Wind :-O ows. Any thoughts?
Age has nothing to do with it, and 50 isn't very old. Don't be too intimidated by Linux, it's not that hard to learn, it just takes time to become familiar with it. It's actually a lot simpler than Windows or Amiga OS in some ways, like the way it treats everything as a file system, and the modularity of it. There are also some good GUIs out there these days, so you don't have to do everything from a command line anymore (unless you want to).
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Having used all the flavours of Windows since Windows 3.1 right up to Windows 8 and having used Amiga OS 1.3 to 3.9 before then I'm wondering if it's time to try a Linux distro. What I'm wondering is, have I left it too late at the age of 50 to start to get into the intricacies of Linux and which distro would be a good one to start with? I don't mind getting my hands 'dirty' with writing scripts and using a CLI as I've done this before on the Amiga (which was Unix based) and on Wind :-O ows. Any thoughts?
Paul S Wilcox wrote:
I don't mind getting my hands 'dirty' with writing scripts and using a CLI
You should sorely miss MS-DOS... ;P Seriously, my choice of distros is Ubuntu, Fedora and OpenSUSE; any of them will be good to start with.
CEO at: - Rafaga Systems - Para Facturas - Modern Components for the moment...
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Having used all the flavours of Windows since Windows 3.1 right up to Windows 8 and having used Amiga OS 1.3 to 3.9 before then I'm wondering if it's time to try a Linux distro. What I'm wondering is, have I left it too late at the age of 50 to start to get into the intricacies of Linux and which distro would be a good one to start with? I don't mind getting my hands 'dirty' with writing scripts and using a CLI as I've done this before on the Amiga (which was Unix based) and on Wind :-O ows. Any thoughts?
I was probably 40 when I started learning Linux using Slackware, and am still learning at 62 (it never stops). (When I turned 55, I also re-started learning to play Chopin.) So, it is never too old to start, in fact, it will keep your brain healthier, so I recommend it. When I first started UNIX and Linux, I went through some courses and found it unbelievable that they expected me to remember hundreds of really long cryptically named commands full of cryptic options and special characters to get anything done. So, I never work on Linux without lots of notes handy. Things have gotten little better, though. For distributions, I slightly favor Fedora, because it provides the best GUI administration tools, and packages are always available for the latest software. It is a nuisance, however, that they introduce a new version every 6 months and drop support after only two versions, which means you are always upgrading, and sometimes upgrades don't work (same as Windows) and you have to re-install from scratch. So, I am currently running Ubuntu server with the desktop installed afterwards. I don't like so-called "stable" distributions. To me, "stable" means buggy and backwards and incompatible with current software.
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Having used all the flavours of Windows since Windows 3.1 right up to Windows 8 and having used Amiga OS 1.3 to 3.9 before then I'm wondering if it's time to try a Linux distro. What I'm wondering is, have I left it too late at the age of 50 to start to get into the intricacies of Linux and which distro would be a good one to start with? I don't mind getting my hands 'dirty' with writing scripts and using a CLI as I've done this before on the Amiga (which was Unix based) and on Wind :-O ows. Any thoughts?
In a word NO. Linux can be easier to learn than many other systems because of the CLI and the immediate feedback. So was Basic. If you learn best with visual feedback use the Linux GUIs. The funky names for commands and directories are a barrier at first. Linux-speak converations can be a bit scary to the outsider at first. "What planet are these guys from?" AWK what, grok what, /usr/bin/local/man what. That fades pretty quickly. I have always worked in *NIX and Windows. I am 67 now. Both are great fun. Use and development in either is equally enjoyable. I have had a great time creating in VB, ACCESS, C# or Perl, BASH, Dialog etc. It is never too late - Dive in ....
"Courtesy is the product of a mature, disciplined mind ... ridicule is lack of the same - DPM"
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I'm 59 and just started to do the same thing.. I downloaded 6 different distro's and tried to install them on various machines I have around. i tried..KUbunto 12.04, Ubunto 11 Damn small linux Debian, latest Slax Linux Older Fedora and Redhat versions what I found is that DSL booted on all machines tried. Slax only booted on 1 Ubunto 9-11 booted on all, but didn't configure networks correctly on all. Ubunto 12 is a pig, needs a big machine to run. Debian booted on all, but didn't configure all hardware correctly. So far it's not been pretty, especially since I cut my teeth on building unix disk drivers, so I am not unfamiliar with unix/linux..and certainly not a novice here. fixed the network issues after about 3 hrs of net trolling, easy but docs are all over the place. I thought I would settle on Debian since it seems to have the most stable developer base. I like KDE, but it is slow with a mouse on a 1ghz machine. The zoom features are good for these tired eyes. I don't like Konquerer..not close enough to firefox, my standard, would not even find firefox to install... So far, I have not been able to install any apps I'm interested in on Debian..a brick wall here. I don't like Ubunto with Unity desktop..this is just glitz and crap, can't do real work with this and it's difficult to port any developement tools i use to it. I liked Gnome 2, 3 is so-so, jury still out, but since the dev team is now fractured I'm not sure this will survive.I think it has the best dev support for moving apps over from windows. In the KDE world, I'm not sure reliance on the QT world is a smart idea right now... I wanted to port alot of windows apps I wrote over to Linix, hence the search. Doing ths is a big investment in my time, so I wanted to pick a good platform and UI to start with..So far I am very dissapointed in the state of things and the constant infighting in the Linux community..Where are the adults here? IMHO if Linux is to survive, developers need to spend NO time on glitz and phone apps, this is just stupid. Different platforms require different UI's, you will NEVER merge them into 1, take this on 45+ years of coding and hardware design experience. As hardware evolves this will be impossible to maintain. The first focus should be on a PERFECT app/get/install scenario with a GOOD GUI front end that runs and looks the same on all distributions. All of the apt-get-installs have failed to work properly, can't seem to see the reason why this is Second,a good dev scenario like visua
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ChrisElston wrote:
Wouldn't he better served finding a young mistress?
Now there's a thought!
The best reason for going to Linux would be to save money, a mistress would cost too much.
