51–60 of 143 posts
TIL: Linus is a Swedish speaking Finn; and those are a thing. This sound has lived rent-free in my head since 1994: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Linus-linux.ogg
Indeed, he is part of the Swedish minority in Finland... I thought everyone (on HN) already knew that?
TIL: Linus is a Swedish speaking Finn; and those are a thing. This sound has lived rent-free in my head since 1994: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Linus-linux.ogg
Indeed, he is part of the Swedish minority in Finland... I thought everyone (on HN) already knew that?
When I met Linus T in 1994/5 I asked why he spoke Swedish and not Finnish and he rolled his eyes. Was so sick of the question even then.
One thing I often think about in the early days of Linux is it's competitors. The article mentions "commercial Unix was so expensive it was easier to write your own". Which is largely true. However there is also Coherent Unix. I remember adverts for it as the full back page of so many magazines of the day, for $99. I always was on the fence about buying it. One of the big drawbacks of Coherent was that it didn't have…
Slackware 3.6/4.0 back in 1998-99 Never forget. The joy of startx command working (sometimes) Fun times.
I chose slackware like many french speaking fellas around. Oh, the times.
PS: debian all the way since.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>However there is also Coherent Unix. I was a customer and it was very good, I use to use kermit to dial into a Sun System at work and it would call me back so I would avoid charges. That was to get USENET and general Internet access. Fun times. It is too bad they had to fold, be to be honest by 1995 the writting was on the wall, When they folded, I went to Slackware, which I still use. Back then, Linux was changing…
Yes, people were really accessible when the community was small. I remember calling, by phone, some (also German) guy about a printer problem - my Samsung printer's Epson emulation apparently wasn't good enough for my distro's Epson driver. It must have been in '98 or '99. He was either the printer guy at S.u.S.E. (name at the time) or maintaining a relevant driver. We chatted for about an hour and I remember being i…
Bless those contributors who were able to keep it up. They're the ones who should have Big Tech salaries, not those of us who gave up and sold our souls to Ad tech.
It's odd how Linux has become the only stable thing in this world. You turn it on and you know that over time it will only become better without any bad intentions.
I do remember there was some point in the mid/late 90s where I had to do a lot of research before buying [desktop] computers and hardware - would this specific network card be supported? Would this graphics card work with X11? etc. Maybe it was trauma and paranoia from the WinModems of the day, that were never going to work. But by the early 2000s we seemed to switch to a world where I just assumed Linux would suppor…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every well can be poisoned. Linux relies on people's values and people's skills. Neither of which are immune to degradation over time. Much like the post world war civil society, economic and diplomatic development was an exception in Human history. Assuming the reality we have will remain forever without protection or constant maintenance effort is dangerous.
> Every well can be poisoned. Linux relies on people's values and people's skills. Neither of which are immune to degradation over time. It's rather the opposite, combined with moral stance of Linus and it's core committee itself that has managed to kept Linux on this track so far.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do remember there was some point in the mid/late 90s where I had to do a lot of research before buying [desktop] computers and hardware - would this specific network card be supported? Would this graphics card work with X11? etc. Maybe it was trauma and paranoia from the WinModems of the day, that were never going to work. But by the early 2000s we seemed to switch to a world where I just assumed Linux would suppor…
Even in the mid--late '00s I had to make careful purchases of things like wifi, or be stuck manually patching and compiling half-working drivers.
Now you reminded me that I bought a wifi dongle around 2012/2013 and ended up having to return it because I couldn't get it to work. But the very next one I bought as a replacement worked first time. So perhaps I'm having rose-tinted memories!