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PCLinuxOS Family Member Spotlight: JohnW_57


as told to Smileeb

This month, we get to learn more about JohnW_57.



How old are you?
56.

Married, single or what?
Single.

Children, grandchildren?
No.

Retired or working and for how long and at what?
Still working since 1977.

Are you handy with your hands and have any hobbies?
A bit, home-built computers.

What is your education level?
Moderate.

Do you like to travel, go camping?
Not really.

What caused you to try Linux and join this forum?
(See at: http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,121862.0.html)

I started using computers in 1982 with the Commodore VIC 20 and C64, and later with a C128 with a bit using the CPM OS on that machine. I also had a MSX computer (the 1st MS OS), and a little bit later my 1st x8(8)6 computer with MS-DOS 2.11 with the Word/Calcstar and DBase on a green/black monitor (with the Hercules video card).

After using MS Windows 3.11 and 95/98(SE), I did my first try with Linux with Red Hat 6.4 with a simple WM as the desktop (I had to start it with the startx command), and using devices with mount and umount commands. I also tried a few Suse installs (now OpenSuse).

A bit later, I installed Mandrake 7 from a linux computer magazine, and updated to the paid versions later (the Internet was slow then, with 28K/sec).

I broke with Linux for a few years for Windows 2000 and XP until October 2004, when I saw a PCLinuxOS preview 0.7 on a torrent site with the nvidia driver ISO. I burned it onto a cd and tested the LiveCD, and a bit later on the hdd. The first install was without problems, but met a few issues which were solved with preview 0.8 (one issue was playing mp3 files correctly).

With preview 0.93, I did the first install with MiniMe (Junior and Big Daddy were released a bit later). The reason why I used Minime was to localize PCLinuxOS in the Dutch language. It was less work than with Junior and Big Daddy. I then wrote a how-to on the PCLinuxonline forum. I had to modify the rpm macro file and reinstall a lot of packages while searching with Kpackage to discover which rpm packages have no files for translation.

PCLinuxOS 2007 was and is still a big highlight for PCLinuxOS. I installed all testing installs. I think 2007 is still the biggest success in PCLinuxOS history!

The year 2009 was a bit difficult (some users and devs know why), but a positive point was addlocale (an easy localization feature). However, I'm still using PCLinuxOS in 2014 as a user and tester. I built a new rig with the latest Intel hardware (Haswell), and PCLinuxOS 2014 does fine on it.

Thanks go to all the devs, packagers, testers, moderators, PCLinuxOS Magazine Crew....

Also for me:

Bill Reynolds, aka Texstar
Jim Jensen, aka Exterm (IRC)
TheDarb (IRC)
Pinoc (Localization, KDE4 and LO manager)

N1PTT (IRC and testing) posthumously.
Joble (Packager and Moderator) posthumously.

Wow... 11 years goes fast!

PCLinuxOS Family Member Spotlight is an exclusive, monthly column by smileeb, featuring PCLinuxOS forum members. This column will allow "the rest of us" to get to know our forum family members better, and will give those featured an opportunity to share their PCLinuxOS story with the rest of the world.

If you would like to be featured in PCLinuxOS Family Member Spotlight, please send a private message to smileeb in the PCLinuxOS forum expressing your interest.



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