Is the Gentoo population aging or getting younger?

[greyspoke]

[FastTurtle]

Got my first computer in 1982 - trs80/4
watched Neal Armstrong step onto the moon live when I was 5 with dad who'd got me out of bed.

Space and computers have run in the family since I was born. Dad was in the service and lucky enough to be involved in tthe early testing of the Gemini and Apollo capsules as he was on one of the recovery carriers.

After he retired, went to work for Hughe's Aircraft - Space Division and was one of the folks that built Voyager2 and he was taking classes at the community college on programming. Hell we've still got his books on flow-charting, which seems to be a lost art to most devs.

I grew up reading Analog, Galaxy, F&SF, Asimov while watching Star Trek TOS, Space 1999, Project Shadow, the Thunderbirds and seeing all sorts of Sci-Fi movies and such that are now coming to life. Strange how life has gone.

Instead of following in dad's footsteps and being involved in electronics or computers directly, I ended up working as a truck driver and if "Q" were to stick his nose in, I'd love to get back to work doing the same for Star Fleet.

[x610]

I'm 25, is it young enough?
My friend is also 25, by whom I was told to switch to Gentoo, he is already 5 years gentoo user.

[henkkus]

I'm 29 and I started using Linux in 2001 on RedHat, used it until 2006 when I switched to Gentoo. On the side I have tried several other distros, but always ended back to Gentoo.

[HomeHammer]

[jenkler]

I am 33 (1981) and for me Gentoo is 4life I have tried other dists but nothing that I like. I started with slackware back in the days Gentoo is the source of Linux knowledge!
_________________
Hello from me: Jenkler IT AB (swedish) (use google translate). Check out my Linux manpages for web in english.

[Wing0]

Did you use computers before 1995?.
Yes, in 1994, MS DOS on IBM PC. I was about 9 yrs.

Did you have to be a geek/nerd to have a computer at home when you first got yours?
My dad was a computer engineer, he's retired now.

Did you see the movie 2001 and wonder if computers will talk like that when the year 2001 comes around?
I've seen Terminator 2 before the movie 2001

Did you see the movie War games and think I need to get one of them MOE-DUM thingies for my Commodore/Atari?
huh?

Did you own an "IBM compatible" computer when IBM had any say in what constituted an "IBM compatible" computer. Or are you to young for any of that?
IBM PC running MS DOS.
Had my fun on QBasic, Street Fighter, & Dave.

Bottom line, are there any on the next generation users interested in Gentoo?
Well, I'm hitting 30 next year, so can't really say I'm "young".
_________________
Free Your Mind !

[jenkler]

Did you use computers before 1995?.
Hell Yeah, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer_XT. 5.25 floppy, Keep it real

Did you have to be a geek/nerd to have a computer at home when you first got yours?
Yes + dating online with BBS was relly for nerds :)

Did you see the movie 2001 and wonder if computers will talk like that when the year 2001 comes around?
Same here, T2 was the greatest movie then. I have seen it at least 20+ times. And yeah 2001 was cool tooo!

Did you see the movie War games and think I need to get one of them MOE-DUM thingies for my Commodore/Atari?
What!!!!

Did you own an "IBM compatible" computer when IBM had any say in what constituted an "IBM compatible" computer. Or are you to young for any of that?
Same here, all good stuff. MS DOS, QBasic, NC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton_Commander)

Are there any on the next generation users interested in Gentoo?
I hope so, I am 33 and not getting younger but i have a son that is 14 yo so maybe i can pass gentoo to him
_________________
Hello from me: Jenkler IT AB (swedish) (use google translate). Check out my Linux manpages for web in english.

[KuroNeko]

Well, now I just had to chime in!

Did you use computers before 1995?.
Well, not possible, although I think I punched on a keyboard in 1995. My mother certainly loved my help!

Did you have to be a geek/nerd to have a computer at home when you first got yours?
First computer experience was from playing games on my parents PC, 98?
Well my own first computer ran Windows 98 and at that time I was upset, because it didn't run the OS of my birth year. I somehow got around that, and next was a notebook running XP, and there starts my experience with linux, as I somehow got hands on a Knoppix live cd. That was fun, text and colours, that's what got me hooked on computers, although I still used Windows. Somehow around ~2006, I think, I heard something about a thing called programming. I probably got that from our Informatics teacher in sixth grade, that dropped a note about it. That's when I started looking for the best programming language, which certainly was C++.
I actually learned C, it seems, now that I built up have experience in C++, or it was a really bad tutorial. Somehow I dropped it until 8th grade, where you learned programming at school (in Java), and I understood more about, so I got back to learning C++.
That was when I got back to linux and installed it on my hard drive, setting up minGW on Windows was annoying, so i installed OpenSUSE parallel to Windows. I actually switched bach and forth a few times with Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, Fedora, Gentoo(Wow, that was different!) and Mint. Finally I decided 10 years ago on dual booting OpenSUSE and Gentoo, as those seemed the sanest choice for coding, Windows felt like a cage and they felt the natural for my natural desire to dive deep into my systems.

I am currently shaping up my coding skills and will probably start contributing to the community in the future, Gentoo certainly is fun!
So, 19 anyone?
Hopefully still under 25, when there is the first commit in a public repo with my name on it!

[ddriver]

I know I'm not the oldest here, but...

First computer program I wrote was done on coding sheets and sent away by post.
First computer I accessed on-line was via a teletype and an acoustic coupler.
First computer I owned was a single board with a 6502, with programs hand-assembled. That computer got expanded a little, but the budget never ran to the BASIC PROMs so the best upgrade I could manage was line-by-line assembler/dis-assembler. The Sinclair ZX-80 was still in the future.
My first job in computing involved programming an ageing mainframe in COBOL 68 using a card punch.
My first experience of Linux was in 1995 when it was six floppies to install Slackware. I had about 8 years experience of several Unix flavours by then. From that point on I wanted to replace Windows on my own machines, but it took a few years before this was a realistic aim.
I hope that Gentoo is the only Linux I will ever use for my own machines from now on.
I have Gentoo running on probably 40-50 machines
For my work I still have to use Windows much of the time.

[10w.st]

Mid 30s, ZX Spectrum first, then multiple IBM machines, 286, 386 and 486.
After a long break, a decade in the outside world, suse got me hooked again, somewhere around 2004.
Not actually working in the industry, but I'm familiar with most distros.
While I prefer slack, gentoo is a solid system which I also like very much.

[eflothmeier]

First of all I'm 68,

So let's get that out of the way. My own personal
observation is that Linux users are getting older, and the
titans of industry, The Samsungs, Microsofts, and Apples
are doing a good job of winning the hearts & minds of
young people.

I know a young person in his late 20's who
hardly works on his Linux box anymore, (He likes
Debian, and admires me for using Gentoo). Instead
he spends time on his Android smartphone.

I use Gentoo for multimdia production, (I'm
an, (audio), composer and have done video production)
I surf the web and post e-mails. In other words I am
not an IT person working on servers and managing
users needs on an IT network.

My impression is that if your a young person AND
you use Linux, (Gentoo), you are also an IT professional.

Erich

[Irre]

I'm 66.

1970 we had to code a program that calculated eigenvectors and eigenvalues from a matrix. This was part of my education. Language was Algol and computer was IBM, I think. Computer programming was nothing for me but I had a friend who did the coding. I was very impressed, but this was really nothing for me.

I decided never ever to learn how to program. But some years later I realized that it was too hard to do all calculations by hand. With much help from a smart colleague I learned how to program in Fortran.

From then on my life was more or less computer:

1973-1979 Fortran programming, Operating Systems: ICL George II/III and IBM MVS
1979-1995 Some PL/1 coding. Systems programmer, IBM VM/CMS
1996-2013 Coding in C and some C++. Operating system: VMS and some Unix.

Now I'm retired. But as a hobby I try to install Linux and also FreeBSD on my private computers (new and old PC and 3 RaspBerry PI).

Gentoo is my favorite. I've been using it since 2002.

Gentoo keeps me young.

[viralex]

I'm 27 now started using gentoo about .... 6 years, 6 months, 8 days ago.

[229566]

Late 30s. Started using computers and fooling around with BASIC back in late 1980's. Later did some hobby C/C++ and ASM development. Mostly trying to re-make DooM, that was before the age of dedicated graphics hardware. Nowadays my primary work is web apps, I'm a sysadmin and Python dev.

My Linux experience starts with OpenSuSE back in 2007, when I did the plunge from Windows, meanwhile been distro-hopping to and from OpenSuSE, Fedora, CentOS, Debian, Gentoo, Arch, FreeBSD, Ubuntu, mostly to see what's the difference, get the real taste of each, staying with a distro for several months. I started using Gentoo back in 2010 and have since changed a few distros but am now coming back to it, having "seen them all", at least the major ones, both on my desktops and servers. Yeah, HA production machines running Gentoo, how about that.

[santosjaycee0]

I'm 16. I have moved to using Gentoo Linux for everyday use just last year. I have been trying to get my friends in school to try Linux, but they seem content with Windows, OS X, iOS, and Android. Recently, I became involved in configuring servers, using owncloud instead of dropbox, and impressing friends and teachers in the process.

Gentoo Linux was the first distribution to use everyday, as Ubuntu and Arch Linux were not enough for me. Arch Linux is a great steppingstone, but I wanted to get into kernel configuration. Installing Gentoo Linux was a fun experience, and it has ended my two years of distro-hopping.

[aditya3098]

Im almost 16.
I first used ubuntu when I was 13. I jumped off the boat in 2012. Debian was too ancient. I switched to arch this april. Loved it, but systemd was messing things up for me. I installed openrc, and after realising how awesome it was, switched to gentoo 3 days ago. I love it. I use an awesome wm with a config slightly modified from the default. I figured out the most of the basics of portage.

Gentoo is the ultimate distro for those who want complete control.

Also, I don't use facebook or foursquare.

Also, santosjaycee0, totally and completely agree with you.
_________________
The day microsoft makes a product that doesn't suck, is the day they make a vacuum cleaner.
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1002264.html systemd-kerneld is comming...(dramatic pause)...soon

[apiaio]

[1clue]

I'm going to be 50 in less than 2 weeks. I love to hear about young people and 'mainstream' people getting into Linux. I love it even more when they get into coding.

I started using Linux in 1995 or 1996. Redhat was my third distro. First was mkLinux (R.I.P.) and then Slackware. I had to mail in for the floppies for mkLinux, and buy magazines for slack and redhat. With Redhat I used a modem to get updates very now and then, but it was a huge chore that took hours or days.

The reason I'm posting is because I see a lot of comments about advocacy here, especially with the young people. You're doing it wrong. I tried it your way for years and years. Generally people thought I was a pest and avoided me. Then I got married. My wife tried Linux for a short while because I was such a pest about it, then wanted me to put Windows back on her laptop.

I gave up on converting her, and just made my Linux workstation functional and fast, and made an account for her in case she wanted to use it. Never mentioned it again, never was ostentatious about using something really neat, I just used my computer and did real work with it.

After a fairly short while I came home and noticed that the box was logged in with her account every so often. I started having questions from my friends and hers, because what I set up is not really very Windows-like. I started getting requests to install Linux on somebody's computer, and my wife wound up using it again too.

People are naturally curious. You don't have to be a nerd (like me) to like even the advanced distros. People buy smart phones and Macs and tablets and they have no trouble figuring things out. When regular people started buying computers they started using email, and a good many of them learned to touch type. People see things and get curious, and then try something out. My wife is non-technical but very much a gadget freak.

Show people something neat without intending to show them, and they'll be curious. Just live your life without a lot of drama, and they'll ask questions. Somebody's going to dip a toe in sooner or later.

[psycho]

Yes, I wanted an acoustic coupler like the one on "War Games". Yes to most of those "are you an ancient geek?" questions, although I'm only in my forties, because I fell in love with the first generation of personal computers when I was still a small child. I remember mainframes with punched cards and spinning tape drives and massive, thundering daisy-wheel printers...but it was the early Apple II/II+/IIe variants and the endless variety of weird early-eighties home computers (the Vic 20, C64, C128, C16, Atari 800XL, Amstrad CPC464 and CPC6128, Electron and BBC Model B, ZX81 and Speccy...and the Tandys and Colour Genies and TRS-80s etc., etc.) that hooked me. My first was a 16k Spectrum, later an (8086) early PC clone (green screen "Hercules" graphics, and not one but TWO 5.25" floppies, so I could actually leave the one that booted the OS in the drive...such a luxury).

Late to Linux though: first distro was Slackware 3. First distro to function as my do-everything OS (no dual-booting with Windows) was "Fedora Core 2"; but as soon as it was clear that I'd never be going back to a closed source OS, I took a long hard look at all the available distros and chose Gentoo as the most flexible and technically advanced.

I hope the Gentoo community is getting older. Many of our generation grew up getting thrills from simple things like putting pixels exactly where we wanted them to be, and learned the likes of COBOL: we've played with code since it was so primitive that it was easy for children to follow it, so we have a basic expectation of being able to understand what's happening with our information. Children these days have no such expectation: they're surrounded by technology that's mysterious and magical to them, and are well trained to use it every day with no clue as to how it's working. Even adults, if they're not geeks, seem to be increasingly helpless in the face of IT's complexity: where they used to be very cautious about entrusting their bank account details and personal information to programs written by strangers, now they just shrug and let the software do whatever it wants to them. At work and at home, I'm seeing people every day who don't even consider the possibility of bending the technology to work as they'd like it to work: instead, they bend themselves and adjust their workflows and even their personal habits (everything from how they organize their contacts and schedules to how they organize their photos and music) to suit whatever the technology wants them to do. We need a lot more grumpy old men and grumpy old women who refuse to do that. We need people who expect to be able to understand what's happening with their information, so that they have some control over it, and who protest when the technology's hiding what it's doing. Richard Stallman looks to me like someone who'd be a royal PITA to live with: but I'd much, much rather live in a community of grumpy old-school geeks like him than a community of trendy-geek kids who squeal "oh wow!" every time a gadget takes away more of the pain of thinking ("Hi, it's your phone here, and based on your eating profile, I've gone ahead and ordered and paid for McDonald's for dinner tonight, saving you the inconvenience...hey, don't mention it!"). Long may Gentoo continue to age.

[ian.au]

[leifbk]

I'm 63, and have been using Gentoo since 2003. Yes, I went to see "2001: A Space Oddysey" back in 1968, and sat up all night watching TV the following summer when Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon. Like quite a few of my generation, I was a dropout during the Seventies. But when I first laid my hands on a computer in the early Eighties, I knew what I'd like to do, and since 1984 I've mostly been sitting in front of a computer screen. My first real computer was a second-hand CP/M system with a Z80 processor. It came bundled with word processor, spreadsheet, and Turbo Pascal as well as an internal ROM BASIC. All during my first decade or so with computers I was at the tail end of hardware: In 1989 I bought a 286 AT clone, and then it wasn't until 1994 that I could afford a '486 and an Internet connection via a 28.8Kb modem. But since my first Pentium in 1996 I've always been on adequate hardware. What my first two computers taught me, however, was to write tight code. I played a lot with assembler on the 286.

In 1992 I landed a job at a support center. Among our duties was remote system administration on about 500 Unix System V boxes spread all over Norway, and I fell in love with Unix. At home I successively ran Windows 3.x, 95, NT4 and Windows 2000 until early in the 00's when I installed Debian on my then retired Pentium 133 MHz box and ran it as a headless web development server, accessed from a terminal window on my Windows desktop. After a while I set up my desktop for dual-boot, and tried several distros before I found Gentoo, which felt like coming home. On my next computer I didn't even bother to set up a dual-boot with Windows, as I hadn't used it for a long time.
_________________
Grumpy old man

[vilehost]

28 in june...computers since i was 10.. though name isn't on anything of worth ;p

[ShanaXXII]

I'm 17. Started using Gentoo a year or 2 ago. Windows interface relied too much on the mouse and made my fingers tired after excessive use with the trackpad.
Heard about Linux from a friend and they recommended Gentoo as a good distribution. Took an long time to set up without any prior knowledge/experience with Linux.

Just applied for university and am waiting for acceptance.

[apiaio]

I like hear when young people use Linux.