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149 lines
8.7 KiB
Plaintext
149 lines
8.7 KiB
Plaintext
Episode: 4258
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Title: HPR4258: Introduction and History of Using Computers
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Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4258/hpr4258.mp3
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Transcribed: 2025-10-25 22:09:00
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---
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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4258 for Wednesday, the 27th of November 2024.
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Today's show is entitled, Introduction and History of Using Computers.
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It is the first show by Newhost Solus Spider, and is about 12 minutes long.
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It carries a clean flag.
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The summary is, Introducing myself to the HPR community and going through my timeline
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of computer usage.
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Greetings and welcome to Hacker Public Radio.
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My name is Peter Patterson, also known as Solus Spider, a Scotsman living in Kentucky,
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USA.
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This is my first HPR recording, and I thought I would start with an introduction and my
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history of using computers.
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I am recording this on a Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra for running Android 14.
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The software is audio recorder, but acts it, installed from FDroid, recorded to Og format.
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Before I dive into these subjects, I let a thank a few HPR hosts for the encouragement
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for me to get involved.
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Although I knew of HPR via various contacts, I had only really listened to a few episodes
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over the last few years.
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Early this month, Mark Rice, aka Archers 72, was involved in a car accident here in
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Kentucky.
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Although we've been talking for about a year and mastered on, and he living 13 miles
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away, it took his accident for us to get together.
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We first met in person on Tuesday the 5th of November, in this University of Kentucky
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hospital trauma ward room.
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Our last couple of meets have been at Cardinal Hill rehab hospital.
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He is the main person that encouraged me to record the HPR, thank you Mark.
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Others were, Dave Lee aka the Lovebug, Kevin aka Kevin, and his son Alexander aka Locky
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Boy.
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I was born in Elgin Scotland in 1967 and lived there until moving away in my 20s.
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My history with computers starts with me receiving an Ulrich 1 16k for Christmas 1983.
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I upgraded to the Ulrich 1 48k and then to the Ulrich Atmos.
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I loved learning basic programming, typing in programs from magazines.
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During the 80s I owned and used many other 8bit computers, the Dragon 32, Atari 800 XL,
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and 400, 8 Corner Electron, Amstrad PCW 8256 and PCW 8512, although they were actually
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my parents' use for business.
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Enterprise 128, my pride and joy which I only gave away in 2022.
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In 1992 I moved to Aberdeen Scotland for work for Comma Electrical.
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I purchased an Omega 1200 which I upgraded for hard drive and also owned an Omega CDTB.
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I still have the 1200 but has not been powered up in way over a decade.
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In 1997 I purchased an AST PC running Windows 95.
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The plan was to get online and study with the Open University.
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However, I realised I could not afford both the PC and course payments so that study
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never happened.
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I really enjoyed being online, meeting people from all over the world, mostly in IRC and
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news groups.
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Since I was in Britain I had to be careful of phone charges to try to keep my access
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to the weekend and nights.
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In September 1997 I met my future wife on IRC.
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Her name is Arianna and was living here in Lexington, Kentucky.
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We chatted mostly via email and ICQ and in October 1998 she visited me in Scotland for
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three weeks.
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At the start of the third week I proposed to Arianna at a Queen's view locked her
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mole put lockery.
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For some really strange reason she said yes.
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I applied for Immigration to the USA and was granted a K1 visa, usually known as a
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Fionce visa.
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In May 1999 I flew out of Glasgow Airport and landed in New York Airport, New Jersey.
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Before moving to USA I was given the title and responsibility as an official host for the
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MSN network, sci-fi area, looking after IRC and news groups, Arianna also chatted in
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the sci-fi groups.
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Arianna and I were married in Paris, Kentucky, in June 1999.
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Most of our wedding guests were all over the USA that we knew from MSN, that was such a
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great time.
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I received my work permit and started working with God's Pantry Food Bank in July 1999,
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the day after a honeymoon.
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I'm so kindly employed by the Food Bank and that could be a whole HBR episode by itself.
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I had to share online access with Arianna for a while using her Gateway PC running Windows
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98.
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So when our first year together, a manager at work actually gave me his Gateway PC, so
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we now had both online access at the same time.
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So I continued using Windows for quite a few years, getting into communities such as other
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sci-fi areas, Christian groups and the virtual avatar world's second life.
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Arianna and I were very active in second life for over a decade in the Elf Circle group,
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and even rented land on an island to make us home.
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At the Food Bank I assisted with IT, maintaining the simple HTML-only website, and setting up
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new users.
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God's Pantry did have a contract with an IT company for support, but I became the man
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on the ground, so to speak.
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As we grew the responsibility, I got much more involved to the point where we hired a
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full-time IT person.
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I really did not want that job, as I was enjoying other duties I had, including purchasing
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and reporting.
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These days we have two full-time IT persons, and it would not surprise me if we hire a
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fraud in the next few years.
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About 2007, I started experimenting with Linux Live CDs.
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Like many, I started off with nobics, but soon discovered Linux Mint.
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In 2008, I installed Linux Mint as a dual boot on my PC, Loving the Exploration.
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Recent Linux brought me back to the fine I used to have with my Amiga.
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For Christmas 2008, my mom sent me a season 1 of Star Trek, the next generation on DVD.
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With her being in Britain, I discovered that it was coded Region 2, USA was Region 1.
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I really didn't want to change the settings on our DVD player, so I tried a disk on the
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Windows machine, and of course it didn't work.
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On a whim, I booted it until an experiment and tried, it worked great on BLC.
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This was a turning point for me, and I soon moved fully over to Linux Mint, scrubbing
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Windows off the PC.
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In September 2016, I discovered Solus.
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Posted out a live CD, and really liked what I experienced, especially the Budgie Desktop.
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So after 8 years of running Linux Mint, and by the way for years I run the Linux Mint
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Facebook group, I switched my PC over to seal Solus.
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Back then I trotted a lot of Ikea Dark Endority to the point where I would call him a friend.
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These days he is working with others on Serpent OS, and I've been following that progress
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mostly on Matrix.
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He and I kinda almost met.
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In 2018 I informed Ikea that my wife and I would be touring Ireland, and we'd plan
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stopping by at Tullymore to visit.
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Well, he moved to England just before then, but we did visit the area and enjoyed the
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town.
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At the start of 2019 I was approached by Rocco, aka Big Daddy.
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He asked me to be part of a group of Linux users discussing Linux together in the live
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video show, broadcast on YouTube.
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That's how I got started with the Big Daddy Linux live, and was part of the show for
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a few years.
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These days the legacy continues with Nathan Wolf, aka Cubicle Nate, and Linux Saloon.
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Biddle, BDD, sorry, BDLL, as it was short name to discuss many Linux distributions
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and software.
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One distro was PC Linux OS.
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I really enjoyed that explanation, and about that time I met Alistar Isart, aka Present
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Arms, a really good friend.
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Alim maintains the truncidestoc version of PC Linux OS, and I had it running on a laptop
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for a few years.
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In January 2023, Solus experience and infrastructure outage was lasted until April.
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About March, I realised that I was not receiving any security updates.
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Just that month before I started volunteer work with a company called Mission Assist,
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Handling Confidential Documents, and knew that I had to do something.
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So I took the step of scrubbing solders from my system 76 failure desktop and installed
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PC Linux KDE Plasma instead.
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In May 2023, Elena and I gave me her Razer 15 laptop to which I installed Solus Budgie.
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That is the current systems I am running.
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Fact about me, the touch jam podcast guys, Kevin, Andrew, Dave and Al, call me this superfan.
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Mostly because I have listened to every published episode, including the Uncat feeds.
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The easiest way for people to contact me is either through Telegram or Macedon.
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On Telegram, the address is t.me forward slash Solus Spider, as t.me forward slash Solus Spider.
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On Macedon, I am at Solus Spider at linuxrox.online.
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I look forward to your comments on this site and any questions you may have.
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You have been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio does work.
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Today's show was contributed by a HBR listener like yourself.
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If you ever thought of recording podcast, click on our contribute link to find out how
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easy it really is.
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Hosting for HBR has been kindly provided by an honesthost.com, the internet archive and
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our syncs.net.
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On the Sadois status, today's show is released under Creative Commons, Attribution 4.0 International
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License.
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