So I am what could be called an early adopter of the platform,
started looking into Linux when Slackware alpha came out in 1993 (yes, I am THAT old) when at university, have been hooked since.
The initial install was done on a 486SX machine with 8Megs of RAM that I had worked my ass off to get the money to buy.
The installer came on 20+ 1.44MB floppies, that I could not afford, so I would buy 720K floppy disks and just hack them to pretend to be 1.44M by punching a hole in them with a hot screwdriver ⌠the failure rate was > 50%
The process for getting the install was:
on monday: catch a train to University with a batch of fresh floppies, spend the week downloading installer images and writing them to floppy disks using the only workstation that had a drive accessible to students
on friday: catch a train back home, spend the weekend testing the install and when it broke due to a bad floppy, flag it, prepare a new batch and hope to get a good one during the next week
The first install took more than the time it took to Patrick to release a new version, so I had an early exposure to the concept of planning for a task to be completed in a time frame that would not go over the life span of the software
First install was on a 10MB EIDE Drive, hacked form an Old Olivetti M20 machine, controller included, that was upgraded a year or so later to a 100MB scsi drive with an adaptec controller âŚ
By that time, I was hooked, and in the following years I proceeded to attempt the wildest (at the time) installs like:
installing a SCO unix binary compatibility layer and installing a copy of Oracle 6 database and actually write some data in some tables
Getting XFree to go dual monitor between a trident VGA card and an Hercules black and white EGA card
Hooking up a VT320 serial terminal to be used as a text terminal
By the late 90s I was a firm believer in using Linux on the server side of anything, and when I started entering the working world, I have always kept to that, mostly overseeing installations running firewalls/databases/web servers/application servers either on premises or in-datacenter and lately in cloud environments
For my personal daily driver, I never liked Fedora, was an early Mandriva user on Dell laptops and used it from about 2000 to 2009 over various versions of Dell Precisions and Latitudes, while running debian or centos on the servers
In 2009 I got fed up by the constant promise of Xfree /Gnome/Kde/enlightement to be able to get a grip on the user friendlyness vs configurability vs actually working dilemmas and switched to a Hackintosh
I ran a bare metal Hackintosh from 2009 up until last year, where we could say I got back to using linux as my daily driver in the form of a Proxmox server rocking two GPUS where I run either Windows/OSX or Linux virtualized with passthrough GPUS (thanks @wendell and @LinusTech )
A constant in my home has always been a plethora of Linux based appliances, starting with again plenty of âweird onesâ like a Phatbox mp3 player that, back in 2002, was playing 40Gig of MP3 audio on my Audy a4 stock Radio unit pretending to be a CD player ⌠and plenty of normal ones like various NAS boxes, raspberries to control home automation, other raspberries to control my gas furnace and other âfunâ projects like a Picade case or a DVR-type box that could output (back in 2005) S-VIDEO out to a projector with soldered on cables bypassing the MPEG-2 encryptyoin of european satellite providers
So, even if I am not âtechnicallyâ daily driving a gui, do I still get my badge ?
Hi! Thanks for nice reading âold dogâ . Was messing around 2000-2004 with SCO and Infomix as DB. Everybody need some Linux love from a time to another. Using openSuSE leap 15.3 as daily driver and on servers and why should i test something else? Its working for me. Regards from Sweden.
Yeah, keep in mind in 1993, in Italy, there werenât any ISP providers⌠that started some years later, and since I wasnât living in a city adsl wasnât an option until ten years laterâŚ
I still remember paying 1000eur a year for a 128k isdn lineâŚ
From a dog⌠A picture from 2001. In top to the left ACC Congo ISDN 2x64k(1997-2001). In the middle A classic Us Robotics flash 56k(used I think, upp to 1997). To the right a Zyxxel SDSL 128k (2001-2004).
Not on the picture, ADSL 4/1Mbit (2004-2014). ADSL 8/1Mbit (2014-2017(new copper lines in the ground). Today 250/100Mbit (can be uppgraded to 1Gbit) fiber for 29Eur/month. Yes I live a bit on the country side, >3km to the nearest larger telecommunication hub.
Replying to myself
just checked the spec sheet, it can do 1600x1200@75hz though, and using only 145W of power ⌠that was a beast back then and I bet it costed the equivalent of an elctric scooter
I di have a Sony Trinitron 17" of that era, but I had to throw it away as it would stay on for about five minutes and then start flickering and turning itself off âŚ
I had a ViewSonic that did 1600x1200@75Hz; it had a Trinitron tube. I had that one specifically to support that resolution to get more code on the screen at once, using 8 point fonts; IIRC 1600x1200 reduced the colour depth but it was fine for syntax colouring. It was massive, but it was great.
I really dont miss CRTs especially their operating costs. But it was sort of awesome that we could run things at 120Hz+ at a reasonable squarish resolution back then. There wasnt anything that can display it but still cool.
Hi! I went curious my self and It looks like it was built on Sonyâs 21` Trinitron. O yes it was heavy. >30kg. Dont have it today. I even have older photos on it, notice my shining white Compaq Notebook(thin&light) to the right.
Similar story to me, but I was with a 486dx33 and only 4 megs.
X11 ran like total crap
EMACS ran like crap too. But thatâs emacs for you. âeight megs and constantly swappingâ.
Messing with Slackware 96 actually got me my first decent job. The local ISP I used was looking for staff to help with administration of the Solaris/Linux environment in addition to end user support.
Hmm⌠I did post a picture from 2004 in battle stations tread⌠I post a picture from last year and of the latest(oldest) computer I have, -Osborn(II) Executive 1982(?). At least once every year I start it up. Attach 2 pictures.
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