When Bitcoin first began you could mine Bitcoins by using the setgenerate=true command
Sadly that's impossible on a standard computer today. This is the amount of equipment you need to mine Bitcoins today.
![](https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fcryptomining-blog.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2014%2F12%2Fgenesis-mining-a2-scrypt-farm.jpg&t=663&c=hWuGvzgMGfCScQ)
To begin with you could mine using your computer's CPU, then you needed to mine using your computer's graphics card. Now you need a mountain of special equipment to mine.