Although my profession was computer programming before I retired, I bought my first computer last year. I have the Ubuntu distribution of GNU/Linux. (The Free Software foundation encourages people to say "GNU/Linux" rather than just "Linux" because the system wouldn't work at all without all the hard work that developers of GNU software put into their packages --- it's not just the operating system kernel, i.e., what the term "Linux" actually refers to.)

I use the GNOME desktop with a gray background and have the brightness and contrast of my monitor turned down fairly low. Working on it is more comfortable than it's ever been for me at the various jobs I've had and the other places, like libraries or copy shops, where I've worked at the computer. I have an ergonomic keyboard and mouse and have gotten so used to them that I have a hard time using ordinary ones. I think everything should be ergonomic!

I started using various Unix and Unix-like systems in 1991. At first, they were commercial versions of Unix and then the computer center where I worked started having GNU/Linux. They also had a workstation with FreeBSD on it, which I used once in a while.

I really don't like KDE, too colorful, too much "Schnick-schnack", as we say in German. I especially hate animated things on computer screens, like the idiotic paperclip they used to have in Windows ("Karl Klammer", in German). Back in the day, I got along perfectly well just with X-windows (the real name is "X11"), though I've gotten used to having icons to click on and some things, like a file explorer (or whatever it's called) can be useful.

Aside from a browser, I do most of my work on the computer from within the text editor Emacs. Since I'm a graphics programmer, I do appreciate not just having a screen with green letters, like the ones when I first started with computers (I missed out on punchcards). Of course, I use other graphical programs, like Audacity or Flowblade, etc.

If anyone wants to use GNU/Linux, I would definitely encourage them to do so and would be glad to bore them to death with technical details of the things I know about. I do recommend learning how to use the "shell" a.k.a "the command line". One learns a great deal more about the computer that way than just using graphical user interfaces.

By the way, this is a link to my personal website, in case anyone wants to have a look, with links to my other ones, including one involving my work as a (GNU) programmer: Laurence Finston's Website.

Laurence Finston