I started using it before distros were really a thing. I got as far as having something that would boot to a shell, but then since I was 14 I had no idea what I was supposed to do.

Backed off until I bought a Slackware book that came with a CD. Then I had the fun of trying to get X working. Manually entering frequencies for your monitor was scary, because if you got it wrong you could damage the monitor.

Then I had a fun problem of either my modem would work, or my sound card would work, but never both at the same time.

Honestly I never got a system which I could actually use for anything, but I was a kid having fun, and it taught me to not be afraid of the computer.

I like to use asterisk spacing.

void main() {
/****/for (int i=0; i <10; ++I) {
/********/printf("hello world\n");
/********/printf("%d\n", i);
/****/}
}

I had a similar problem with hard lockups especially when doing package updates (Arch). After seeing a report on Gaming on Linux about the Nvidia 550 driver (I think it was that one) causing freezes, I uninstalled it and just ran on the intel igpu. Never had a single freeze again. Waited for 555 driver, installed that, and immediately got lockups during package updates (and randomly sometimes) again. I’ve now installed the nvidia-open package to see if it fixes it, and so far so good.

The other day I used the JetBrains AI to write some boilerplate code for me. The JetBrains AI code analyser then kicked in to tell me how poorly written the code was.

As a non European working for a European company, it is an interesting experience with non work times. The laws around working more than 8 hours a day are incredibly strict, and the company and all the managers will never ask or expect an employee to work more than the 8 hours. Even if you are on call and end up having to work, you have to then take time off during the week to “make up” for the time you worked while on call.

Yet I’ll be on call over a weekend trying to fix a problem at 2am, and my colleagues who aren’t on call just drop in to help because they saw the alert and felt like helping out.

It is like people want to actually positively contribute to the well being of the company when they are able to, because the company doesn’t try to drain every bit of will to live from their employees and respects that they are real people with lives.