The early days of Linux

Post by trueliving1 » Sun, Apr 16, 2023, 5:24 PM UTC

Post by iamwell45 » Sun, Apr 16, 2023, 5:26 PM UTC

Post by babynative54 » Sun, Apr 16, 2023, 5:28 PM UTC

Post by anthk » Sun, Apr 16, 2023, 6:35 PM UTC

ofalkaed wrote: post #189

deckard1 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of how I nuked my first Linux drive. I was using the cthugha[1] music visualizer app. You had to pass in a CD-ROM device as well as a DSP device (long before ALSA existed). Instead of the DSP I probably passed in my hard drive. Whoops. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cthugha_(software)

I miss OSS and /dev/dsp, being able to write to the audio output like it was a file was great fun. I spent many hours back in the day just using bash scripting to make sound, I never got things good enough to make any worthwhile music but I did enjoy myself. Never accidentally specified /dev/hda instead of dsp but I did once do rm -r /usr instead of ./usr, switched to always using absolute paths for such things after…

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Apr 16, 2023, 7:21 PM UTC

KerrAvon wrote: post #227

icedchai wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, Apple needed them both. The Apple II was there early, but by the mid-80's it was very overpriced for its capabilities, compared to the Commodore 64 and Atari 8-bits. It needed Jobs' marketing abilities. Late 80's and 90's Apple survived purely because of marketing. Both Commodore and Atari had them beat technically, with the Amiga and ST. Remember, both of those could emulate the Mac and were half the price.

I remember them, and I have to tell you the Commodore and Atari 68k machines were not obvious winners. Ugly software, ugly hardware. I know this isn’t what fans of those machines want to hear, but Apple’s design aesthetic blew them and the PC away; Apple was simply in another league. Late 80’s Macs had the best user experience available. Again, this isn’t a popular take, but it is absolutely true. “Apple’s marketing…