I’m new on the forum, but I’ve been using Garuda for a couple years on and off since I get perverse joy out of distro hopping and setting up DE’s. And I’m legally old, mentally young. I celebrate anniversaries of my 20th birthday because that was the best year of my life, so why change a good thing?
I drive a T430 Thinkpad with no overt mods yet other than rejuvenated thermal paste, a RAM bump, and an SSD. I had settled into Debian distros for stability (and still have them on other machines I use daily, but as I’ve progressed sufficiently in Linuxcraft I put Garuda (again) on my main and I do enjoy the much better performance.
I started computing with a Timex/Sinclair 1000 back in '81 or so (it’s fuzzy now), got a summer job and in '83 got a C64, 13" color TV, and a C1541 complete with four No2 pencils for ventilation (if you know, you know). Moved to a C128/C1571 in 1985, and in 1993 I got my first IBM clone, a FastData 386DX-40 with a 40MB hard drive.
I’ve got Win10 on a homebuilt desktop and Win11 on a gaming laptop from a couple years ago, but neither gets used for Windowy things. Plans for the laptop are to move to Linux for gaming but I’m lazy, so I just keep playing on a debloated , non-telemetried system for now.
I’d ask to see your DIP switches, but that’s a little too personal, isn’t it?
A huge and warm welcome. I got started back in '83 on a Vic-20 then got a second hand TRS-80 after that before moving to the Commadore 64. I also happen to be 20 years old Great to have you here!
Former C64 owner here too! In 1993 I got a huge laptop, Sanyo I think it was - Korean with 3.5" floppies which was considered a step up in those days! They were pretty solid machines and I also had the RCA jack connections to the TV which was also considered state of the art at that time lol.
An old Samsung monitor I have (got 2nd hand from a place that had lots of old hotel remodelling stuff) has VGA, RCA, and HDMI ports!
Yes it was the size of a portable electric typewriter! 3.5in floppy Win 3.1 lol. I did a lot on it: word processing Tibetan documents and had a dot matrix printer for it also.
My fondest memory was going through New Delhi customs on a transfer flight from Kathmandu to Bangalore. The Tibetans had given me blessed barley grains that were reputed to make things invisible. Mind you it was personal use only and nothing commercial. But the guy at the xray machine drew a huge X on this large suitcase with the said items, (circa 1993) and I had to collect it from there and walk 3 meters past the guard out the door, and lo and behold he did not stop me even with the giant white X mark on the suitcase!
Great to have you here!
