Peter Blackman

I am a professional software developer, now retired.

My work involved in house systems for consultancies and financial institutions in London, mainly on Digital Equipment kit. I worked with assemblers, Coral 66, RTL2 & Pascal.

My first home computer was a Nascom 1, followed by a Sinclair Spectrum, and then an Amstrad PCW. After that I bought a 386 desktop and have built my own desktop computers ever since (now using Ryzen).

I used Digital Research pascal on the PCW, and then Borland Delphi on my desktops. Today, I use Free Pascal & Lazarus for home development. I packaged GNU Pascal on my Ubuntu ppa, when the official package was withdrawn.

I started using Linux at home with Ubuntu Hardy Heron, switching to Debian with Lenny. Linux made it easier to fix breakages, and compatibility was better with both new and older hardware. Now I use Debian Testing as my main OS on my home desktop.