How many hours did you "invested" to "master" your linux?

[nick65go]

When I was younger, I paid 3 salaries for 1 laptop. Now with one salary I could buy 5 -8 laptops (for my "needs", not for game playing).

Lets do a back of the envelope calc. T= (52 weeks * 5 day/week - 25 holidays - 12 bank_holidays) =1695  "work" hours/year
Lets say average [5..8] = 6 laptops, each not broken for 6 years. OR 8 laptops, each not broken for 5 years. OR 5 laptops for 8 years etc. Pick your poison.
So work 1695/6/6=47 hours slave work (for an employer etc) to USE a laptop evey year!
Nothing to learn, it is win10 guys, ready to use, 1 year warranty, slim.

OR 47 hours/year for the pain/pleasure to use "your" linux. How many hours did you "invested" to "master" your linux?
I am a masochist, so I like the linux pain. To be in control (yap, really?)

But this is about economic/financiar calculation. One week work for 1 year free laptop in year 2020.
Ignore spy, everybody spy us: governments, android, google, Facebook, amazon etc.

You think win10 depletes your battery in 2-4 hours? Guess what, linux is not much better. If ever, then seldom.
Some time worst, because firefox not yet using proper GPU acceleration.
Did you get 4-8 advertized battery hours on linux? Right. So 2h means how much in money saving in a year? $/KWh x 2h/ bla bla. peanuts.

Ah, linux it not about beeing green, saving the planet, the clime? Is it about portability? Right.
Because you live in a jungle, and where ever meeting/presentation you go, there you do not have a power socket. Really?

Oh, I get it. It is about security. Because all big companies are stupid, so they use win10, and like to be spied, someone to take away they research.
But clever people use linux. Because every day they are up-to-date with the security holes, and quickly update the kernel with the patches they fully understand.
linux people do not live a life for entertainment, noo, they live for finding security breaches.

Summary: It is not about cheap (time to learn is money!), it is not about better security than capitalist companies. Neither about saving the planet by less electricity consumption.
Nor about avoiding spying from resources-fully ISP, government, whoever has big money pockets.
Linux for users (developers are from another species) it is just a hobby and a pursuit for (perceived) freedom.

Rant finished. I was a little frustrated when my partner got a new slim, shiny laptop with win10 for a resonable price.
 Capable to do things that my linux can not do yet, even after months of reading and practice of linux.
It is a competition between brain and money. Linux/MacOS/Win10 does not matter. Flashing my mind: 47 hours /year work to enjoy 1 year laptop. Pick your poison. I did it.

[andyj]

When I started using Linux, Windows 3.1 was the current release. After 27 years of Windows, it is still very painful. Just because you are used to the pain doesn't make it less painful.

[nick65go]

I made a "small" mistake. Please replace 47 with 4 hours! because work hours/month is average year/12,
 so (52* 5 - 25 -12) *7.6 /12 =1695/12 =141.25 h/month
141.25 / [36..40] = [3.5 .. 3.9] hours_work/year_latop_use!

[nick65go]

When I started using Linux, Windows 3.1 was the current release. After 27 years of Windows, it is still very painful. Just because you are used to the pain doesn't make it less painful.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masochism"Masochism is the practice of seeking pain because it is pleasurable".
I started with win 1.0, then Win for Workgroups 3.1 etc. In 2006 start to look at linux. In 2009 manage to forget about Excel on my personal laptop. And never look back.
PS: when time on this planet is limited, its value grows exponentially approaching the end.Someone will give 100MM$ for 10 Year of life. Then later 10.000 MM$ for 1 more Year of life. In the last day maybe give all money just for few hours.

[Rich]

Hi nick65go
I started using Linux about 12 years ago. I'll let you know if I ever master it.

[jazzbiker]

How many hours did Andy McLaughlin invested to master VisOpSys?

[nick65go]

wow, you realy like mini OS. how about kolibriOS?
https://kolibrios.org/en/
Americans made a big mistake under-appreciating the Russians or Chinese. They beat the shit out in cryptography, miniature etc.

[NewUser]

Well, I'm a Windows guy. NT4 MCSE even. But I've played around with Linux since RedHat5. At work I was looking for an easy way to wipe laptop disks. Windows doesn't do that, so I started looking for Secure Erase in a Linux distro. I ended up using Parted Magic for that, but I started using Tiny Core at home. My desktop is still Win10, but my laptop is  Tiny Core.

[andyj]

The short answer is this: How many people use a Windows computer to be their home or small business firewall and router versus using some flavor of Linux or BSD computer?

[nick65go]

The short answer is this: How many people use a Windows computer to be their home or small business firewall and router versus using some flavor of Linux or BSD computer?

Well, not me! My employer forces win10 enterprise on its laptops + VPN. At home win10 it is OK on my personal laptop, it does all the things I need. Except it updates/upgrades too often/uncontroled. I dislike to be a tenant in my own house (laptop).Also, my ISP forces its router/firewall device into my house if I want to use its internet services.
At home I tried ("succesfully") linux in virtual machines, and I was sure that it will work smooth on real machine/laptop. Not so fast, boy! UEFI from big manufactures (Dell/HP) is [censured!] so bad, it talks criptic with linux, so only windows understands it very well.

For me, in the end it is about TIME (the real value of life). Time and money are convertible between them, ish. My time is finit!But money are infinete. Any goverment can "print" fiat money from their asses (aka colored toilet paper)/ digits on screen, a promise on future return, that will never come, resurses on this planet are finite, exponetial grow is unsustenable, etc. Rant finised.

[Leee]

What Rich said, only for me it's been even longer. 

[PDP-8]

Cliche' but it's not the destination, it's the journey.

Over the years I have come to a conclusion that most of us came to computer well past the mini<>micro processor revolution.  The "micro" culture, where pushing apps, or someone else's idea of what a computer should be carefully shepherded users into that demographic.

You were not taught to think for yourself - just buy into someone else's vi$ion.

I'm still a total NOOB, but I started with the usual Commodore's and whatnot simply due to finances, but I had exposure to mini's.  DEC PDP's in particular.  Later I could afford things like COHERENT:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coherent_%28operating_system%29

Guess what?  Even before that, only a total fool would run ATT Unix, which was totally unsupported prior to divestiture, and had college-kids from Berkeley and elsewhere fooling around with it.  NO BUSINESS of any repute would stake their computer center on that.  Only DEC authorized oem OS (Cutler's RSX / VMS etc) thank you very much.

So we've been down this road before.

What amazes me, is that despite the galaxian advances in speed and memory storage, that for home users, things like simple flat-file text isn't explored as a viable use-case now with just simple *nix.  It freaking flies - even if your shell scripts are total dogs! (like mine).

Just sayin' - I don't need a glorified "app" to show me the date.  Just type date, and there it is.   But that doesn't make marketing sense - convince the people that they are stupid, and open wallet....

Which brings us to how much I love TC (and others obviously).  Maybe because the promise of *nix was to think for yourself, adapt solutions to fit your own situation, and not those of others.  But that was 1970's think.   I can't let go.

My rant over...

[Sashank999]

I have 2 tinycore distros on my Laptop - x86 and x86_64
And hence each distro took approximately 12 hrs of setting up all frugal install, compiletc, firefox, make, gcc, glibc, wifi, firmware, python3, grub2 (with grub2 taking the most time  ).
So a whole day took me to setup 2 versions of tinycore on my Laptop.

[xor]

my mother tongue is a foreign language,
but even google translate translated it so well;
i like this post

Cliche' but it's not the destination, it's the journey.

Over the years I have come to a conclusion that most of us came to computer well past the mini<>micro processor revolution.  The "micro" culture, where pushing apps, or someone else's idea of what a computer should be carefully shepherded users into that demographic.

You were not taught to think for yourself - just buy into someone else's vi$ion.

I'm still a total NOOB, but I started with the usual Commodore's and whatnot simply due to finances, but I had exposure to mini's.  DEC PDP's in particular.  Later I could afford things like COHERENT:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coherent_%28operating_system%29

Guess what?  Even before that, only a total fool would run ATT Unix, which was totally unsupported prior to divestiture, and had college-kids from Berkeley and elsewhere fooling around with it.  NO BUSINESS of any repute would stake their computer center on that.  Only DEC authorized oem OS (Cutler's RSX / VMS etc) thank you very much.

So we've been down this road before.

What amazes me, is that despite the galaxian advances in speed and memory storage, that for home users, things like simple flat-file text isn't explored as a viable use-case now with just simple *nix.  It freaking flies - even if your shell scripts are total dogs! (like mine).

Just sayin' - I don't need a glorified "app" to show me the date.  Just type date, and there it is.   But that doesn't make marketing sense - convince the people that they are stupid, and open wallet....

Which brings us to how much I love TC (and others obviously).  Maybe because the promise of *nix was to think for yourself, adapt solutions to fit your own situation, and not those of others.  But that was 1970's think.   I can't let go.

My rant over...

[jazzbiker]

Hi, PDP-8!

Thanks for Your essays.

Regards