Brian Masinick
I might as well enter the discussion, though I’ve written about what systems I use and how I use them countless times elsewhere.
I am a retired software professional. I received an undergraduate degree in Computer Science long before Linux existed. Though UNIX was first “invented” prior to my graduation from high school, UNIX systems did not become widely recognized or used until the 1980s, when large businesses first began looking at them as the idea of client/server computing and multi-tier environments were first being considered as viable ways to decrease computing costs, bringing the user experience to a desktop display, coupled first with a keyboard and a visual display, and later with mini and micro computer technologies.
Early personal computers had little, if any, networking capabilities, but private experiments later led to the adoption of networking on desktop devices, which changed everything. Then when mobile computing was added to the equation, first with laptop computers, then tablets, then hand held devices, and finally, network equipped phones that eventually turned into a major communication change.
Freely licensed software had a huge impact on reducing the overall cost of systems, and when the electronic components also decreased in size and cost, coupled with the networking changes, we arrived at what we know today.
As far as antiX goes, it didn’t lead the charge into this era; what it has done is to leverage a broad range of technologies, many of which support one to two decade old equipment, yet also support equipment built within the past few years as well.
With all of that research history and background, my current usage is extremely simple:
I use Web Browsers to read on the Internet – that includes news, weather, sports, and entertainment. It also includes participation in this forum and reading Email. By far this is the greatest use of my system and it’s the main reason I don’t need a fancy system; it just has to consistently provide access to the network. I keep that simple so if there are any problems at all, I can quickly determine if it is the network service, hardware, or software that I have installed. By having multiple distributions, I can isolate hardware versus software just by trying installed versions or removable media versions. That makes those two areas easier to isolate, and then dealing with a local network issue is also easier to diagnose.
So using multiple distributions, even with my trivial use case actually helps in problem diagnosis.
Other than Web Browsers, text editors are important to update shell scripts and system tools, and also helpful for writing and editing even if a network is lost or temporarily unavailable.
Any tools other than these get a very small percentage of use, often only to test and/or help others.
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Brian Masinick
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