Being from a so-called "developing" country my contact with computers was highly limited. Like, I used one for the first time when I was 11-12 years old and had the very first one until I was 17, and it was an Acer Note Light that had Windows 95 - but we were in 2005.
At my school, which was actually a "social project" of a school for rich people, they lent us the computers they no longer used for us to learn how a computer worked - at that time they were old b&w Macs and some years after Win95 pcs (they had the then-new iMacs but lent us only for one class; I recall the "wow" factor was so much I even thought the round mouse was cool).
After school I went to try to study electronic engineering but was a total failure, I ended at graphic design that is what I do for a living now. But at that time on a little show the cool kids were toying with PCs running several flavors of Linux, and showing off Compiz and that stuff. They gave us an (original!) Ubuntu 5.10 CD, which was the thing actually blew my mind off - a whole free OS! How that was possible?
Tried to install it in my PC at home (I could afford a crappy clonic when I got into uni) but, as usual, deleted all my stuff I had in my hard disk. That didn't put me off, though - we hadn't internet at home at that time, until some years after, but eventually I could manage to install it. Some years after using Ubuntu, pulled the trigger and installed Gentoo. That was in Jan. 2009 and hadn't distrohopped ever since, did my whole graphic design degree using FOSS and now in what I do for a living. Can't see myself using privative software.
Interesting, I'm wondering if you can share your favorite tools?
Photoshop is pretty much the only thing I miss from the proprietary OSes, never managed to match the workflow with Krita or Gimp.
At my school, which was actually a "social project" of a school for rich people, they lent us the computers they no longer used for us to learn how a computer worked - at that time they were old b&w Macs and some years after Win95 pcs (they had the then-new iMacs but lent us only for one class; I recall the "wow" factor was so much I even thought the round mouse was cool).
After school I went to try to study electronic engineering but was a total failure, I ended at graphic design that is what I do for a living now. But at that time on a little show the cool kids were toying with PCs running several flavors of Linux, and showing off Compiz and that stuff. They gave us an (original!) Ubuntu 5.10 CD, which was the thing actually blew my mind off - a whole free OS! How that was possible?
Tried to install it in my PC at home (I could afford a crappy clonic when I got into uni) but, as usual, deleted all my stuff I had in my hard disk. That didn't put me off, though - we hadn't internet at home at that time, until some years after, but eventually I could manage to install it. Some years after using Ubuntu, pulled the trigger and installed Gentoo. That was in Jan. 2009 and hadn't distrohopped ever since, did my whole graphic design degree using FOSS and now in what I do for a living. Can't see myself using privative software.