Some further thoughts on computer technology in my life …

I grew up in the era of Napster and Macintosh System 7, I never liked the changes when they dropped support for classic Macintosh. Instead, I readily embraced Linux, which is more stable and rarely changes, at least if you don’t want to upgrade to the fancy window managers and desktop environments.

Linux does everything that I could ever need. Maybe because I don’t play games or have very specialized needs, I find that Linux really offers everything I could use for my needs. Maybe occassionally a MS Word document gets a bit mangled in translation but even that’s rare these days.

I don’t like commercial programs. Why pay for something you can get for free, plus have access to the source code and ability to modify the programs as need be through editing source code, or even just the configuration files and plugins? It’s also great that if you are curious how something works you can try to study the methods in the program via the source code.

I don’t like change. One of the great things about Linux is you can keep running the same Window Manager and programs forever, as old programs are usually ported forward as new to versions of Linux. Old programs often are often fast loading and if they did the task in the past, they can still do it today. For example, the XFCE Desktop Environment I use remains virtually unchanged from 25 years ago and is pretty similiar to Mac OS 8 or Winders 95.

I’ve never really wanted to learn gee-gaw Winders 10 or Mac OS X. It just seems like those operating systems have so much unnecessary clutter and window effects that provide no benefit to me. They seem to change their interfaces every two years, while Linux remains largely the same with the same stable roots of half a century ago, and the XFCE window manager being very similar for a quarter century.

I don’t mind not really knowing how to use Mac OS X or Winders. I think the last good version of Mac OS was System 7.5.3, after that things got too complicated and slow. Shortly after then I switched over to Linux in recent years I’ve been pretty much using the same basic software, with few changes. QGIS has gotten a lot more powerful and I’ve learned a lot about mapping, but that’s probably far out of the mainstream of computing today with all this smart crap I don’t use.

I like simple programs you can chain together. The classic Unix philosophy is that all programs should be small and modular. While that isn’t always true these days — QGIS and LibreOffice are rather big monolithic programs — you can chain those big berthas to smaller Unix commands. When you look at those big berthas up close they tend to be more reliant on smaller parts of Unix that might not always be apparent.

I like to tinker but I don’t consider myself a computer geek. I find a lot of the “high” technology things like Winders 10 and Mac OS X to be foreign, I don’t have a Firestik unless you consider the radio antenna on my truck to be Firestik. I don’t ever use Amazon and it’s been months since I’ve ordered anything from EBay.

I like electronics and building things with microprocessors, but you’ll never see me with one of those smart home devices. If I can program something with an Arduino or ESP32 microprocessor, that’s neat, but I can’t imagine ever owning one of Amazon Echos or smart light bulbs. I don’t have a permanent Internet connection at any rate.

To this day I refuse to have a wired internet connection at my apartment, although this winter I do have hotspot data through my phone which turns out to be kind of nice for light web-surfing and working on my blog — mainly because I need a reliable internet connection for work and the library is not open for in-person use during the cold of winter. Once the panademic is over, it’s back to walking down to park or library when I want to get on the web on my laptop.

I don’t mind having the Internet on my Smartphone, although I do worry about spending too much time scrolling through Facebook and Instagram. I have sworn off any kind of political comment on Facebook, and generally try to refrain from any comments on social media.

While I wouldn’t want to give up the Internet, I like keeping things simple and my use of it controlled and limited. It’s great for sharing ideas and photos, but I’d rather stay away from confrontational places like social media.