[Autistic] intro

[Amanda]

I'm Amanda, some may know me from elsewhere, I help run autistics.org and so 
forth.  (We're in the process of switching to our own server right now, hence 
the lack of updates and possible temporary bad performance in the near 
future.  But we'll be able to get the scripts and stuff working again.  So 
this is good.)

I've got two computers, a desktop and a laptop.  

I'm currently running Ubuntu on the desktop, although I'd like to know if 
there's a Debian-based distribution that is not as hard to configure as 
Debian and not as do-everything-for-you-in-maddening-ways as Ubuntu.  Some 
middle ground.

On the laptop (a Dell Inspiron 7000), after every Debian-based distribution 
seemed to fail to recognize its CD-ROM drive, we tried Gentoo.  I still want 
to go further with that, but various circumstances have meant that I use the 
laptop as a communication system, so getting it up fast became a priority, 
hence a lot of headache with Fedora, which at least seemed to recognize most 
things.  (Except the sound card, still working on that.)

When it comes to computers I'm self-taught through immersion, so there's a lot 
I understand but don't know the terminology for, and a lot I have heard the 
terminology for but don't understand, and it's not always predictable.  (This 
mirrors my math skills, in which I could do some elements of group theory and 
topology easily without knowing the name of it, but can't read the equations 
and symbols and have some difficulty with "easy" math.)

Plus my brain hasn't worked as well in some ways since neuroleptics, so I 
haven't made as much progress learning linux as I've wanted.  I'm not as good 
with computers as a professional but a lot better with them than the average 
layperson, mostly figured out by fiddling with them.  I'm not fluent in any 
programming languages.

This has meant that I've been reluctant to get into the Linux community in 
general, because I'm afraid I'll get branded as a stupid newbie asking easy 
questions and so forth, since some of the things I don't know are quite basic 
(but some of the things I do know are far from basic, so there's no simple 
categorization here).  So I'm glad to see a place where anything from the 
really easy to the really hard is welcomed and people aren't treated harshly 
for it.

I've been running since I got my own computer, which was 1999.  And I'm really 
happy to be doing so, particularly because it lets me know what's going on 
when I want to know, and it's very customizable.  I wish there were better 
speech output programs though.

Amanda