After 30 years of computers I'm finding them scary again

[hunter]

8. I'm done with Microsoft and Apple, that's for sure.

I do almost all my browsing, email, etc. on a little Chromebook, the kind you can buy "refurbished" for less than $100. This is my second Chromebook. Our idiot dog broke the screen of my first. (She is sixty pounds of flying enthusiasm...)

One reason I love Chromebooks is that I don't have to worry much about them. I HATED babysitting expensive laptops when I traveled. I'm really good at losing or breaking stuff, or leaving it out where it will be stolen. It's the same reason I use a cheap flip phone.

My desktop machines are built from e-waste and run Debian with Mate or LXDE. In general I spend more on backup drives than I do on computers. I have files going back to the 'seventies. Most of the computers I've ever used are emulated on my Desktop machines. Building a new machine is easy. I install Debian and copy my home folder over. I'll install less common apps as I need them which keeps the machines from getting to crufty.

The first real operating system I used was BSD. My favorite computers of all time were the Atari 800 series.

When I started using Debian it was like going home again. Most of my BSD files and skills just worked.

When I first signed up to DU back in 2002 I was using a highly stripped down and modified version of Windows 98SE and the Opera web browser. I switched full time to Debian when the browsers caught up -- Firefox, Iceweasel, and then Opera. Now I mostly use the generic Chromium on my desktop machine.

Over the years adhering to the KISS principle has saved my stupid ass on numerous occasions. I write everything in some version of Markdown which works on any sort of text editing program on any computer. I save all my data as comma separated values