[HN Gopher] Silicon Valley Tea Party a.k.a. the great 1998 Linux...
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Silicon Valley Tea Party a.k.a. the great 1998 Linux revolt take II
(1999)
Author : wizardforhire
Score : 151 points
Date : 2024-12-14 09:49 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (marc.merlins.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (marc.merlins.org)
| billy99k wrote:
| I use Linux daily (command line only) alongside Windows. It's
| amazing to think that after all these years, Linux on the desktop
| (with GUI) still isn't even close to windows in terms of
| functionality.
|
| I've tried it over they years and finally gave up. It would work
| for awhile, until some random change would break something I used
| every day and I wasn't interested in spending many hours trying
| to research a fix and manually hack some .c file to make it work.
|
| MacOS essentially became a form of Unix with a fantastic GUI.
| It's what Linux could have been. I like to use Linux with the
| windows WSL and I get the best of both worlds: a nice GUI and the
| ability to run all of my favorite Linux apps.
| sumanthvepa wrote:
| I have 3 machines at my desk (with 3 monitors) one running
| Ubuntu, (and a bunch VMs) one with Windows 11, and a Mac. They
| use the same keyboard and mouse, and I can move my mouse cursor
| and keyboard focus across the three OSes easily (I use synergy
| to do this).
|
| My experience with the desktops across all the OSes largely
| similar. They do things differently, but once you get used to
| the OS, it becomes second nature.
|
| Linux is my preferred environment for anything to do with
| development. I use my Windows machine for office productivity
| (Outlook, Word, Excel, Powerpoint browsing) and VisualStudio. I
| use my Mac for the Adobe creative suite and Figma and
| iOS/visionOS development.
|
| The difference in OSes isn't the desktop itself. It's the
| software that runs on it. I don't really want use GIMP on Linux
| for example, or do web dev on Windows.
| saagarjha wrote:
| I would argue that you're doing a bad job using those OSes
| through software like Synergy, which doesn't really
| understand things like multitouch or smooth scrolling.
| z33k wrote:
| It's fine in my experience. I use Synergy 1 and I turn off
| smooth scrolling on my laptops and desktops. I find it more
| distracting that some apps support smooth scrolling and
| some don't, so I just turn it off altogether. Together with
| AutoHotkey on Windows and (Built-in) Applescript and
| Rectangle on MacOS, one is able to have similar keybinds on
| both operating systems.
| michaelsshaw wrote:
| >, or do web dev on Windows.
|
| Personally, I find any development on Windows to be a pain!
| impossiblefork wrote:
| Windows is a complete subscription hell, with annoying pop-ups
| unless you regularly pay Microsoft etc. fairly large amounts,
| and then there's the commercials and MSN. My mother switched to
| Linux because she felt that she with Windows didn't have a real
| computer, but that Microsoft had a computer she borrowed.
|
| It was never great-- there was always bloat, but recently it's
| crossed a line of unusability where the OS itself is more
| distracting than useful.
| dboreham wrote:
| Pay Microsoft for what?
| impossiblefork wrote:
| Word, for example, but I think there are also other
| subscriptions in it.
|
| Meanwhile, with Libreoffice, it just works.
| cayley_graph wrote:
| Yes, it constantly bugs you about buying OneDrive.
| MikeTheGreat wrote:
| I was gonna (silently) disagree with you, but in the last
| couple of weeks I updated Windows and now it's periodically
| asking if it can know my location. I'm not clear if Windows
| is asking, or it's asking on behalf of a specific app, or so
| it can give this info to any app that wants it. And I don't
| care - the answer is no, no matter how many times it asks.
|
| I always admired Linux, and was able to get around in Linux,
| but never seriously considered using it until that MS AI
| thing that works by taking a screenshot every couple of
| seconds. And now this pester-ware asking for my location.
| cayley_graph wrote:
| To be honest I've never had issues like you're describing and
| I've been using Linux nearly exclusively as a desktop OS since
| the 2010s. The main deficiency is that it doesn't have eg a
| good Photoshop alternative, but what's there works well-- and
| these days the browser has supplanted most native proprietary
| software, anyway. Things have only broken for me when I've
| hacked/customized them to the point that it's a miracle they
| work at all.
|
| OTOH, Windows has never given me anything but trouble... stuff
| that's easy on Linux semi-frequently required regedit hacks. I
| remember having to mess with some DCOM thing and ended up
| hosing my Windows install. Not to mention that it's awfully
| slow without installing a bunch of debloating tools (and even
| then...).
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| I'm interested to know what breaks in the Linux desktop
| experience.
|
| I've been using Linux exclusively as a desktop environment at
| home for 5 years or more and my primary pain point is kernel
| updates breaking DisplayLink, via a docking stattion I use for
| multiple monitors. I now have a specific command line that
| rolls back the kernel to the previous version, and then I wait
| for updated DisplayLink drivers.
|
| It's a pain, but it's still (much!) better than the circles of
| hell that Windows has been putting users through since Windows
| 7.
|
| Strangely, the Windows laptop provided by my work just stopped
| being able to pipe audio through the speakers plugged into the
| docking station. Which feels like Windows "doing a Linux". The
| tables are turning?
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I don't think that I've _ever_ had an issue like that on
| Windows. Their business practices with the ads and whatnot
| are awful, but the drivers and hardware work very, very well.
| Honestly even as a pretty knowledgeable person I don 't
| consider your situation to be acceptable, much less someone
| who isn't knowledgeable. "You have to roll back the kernel"
| is just not reasonable to expect of people.
| redmajor12 wrote:
| Have you tried the i3 tiling window manager? If you're
| comfortable on the command line, you may enjoy the keyboard-
| forward focus of i3.
| davidw wrote:
| Fun times; I knew some of those people.
|
| Tech felt more nerdy and optimistic. It had its share of
| problems, but I miss some of the idealism.
| advael wrote:
| Optimistic times always end when people who won power in them
| fight to hold on to increasingly more of it, and tend to only
| come back once they fail, stop, or fall.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Consider that the times were optimistic for those who were
| interested, motivated, capable, and in a position (even
| geographic) to learn about computers. But there were probably
| many people for whom the same time was not as optimistic,
| perhaps due to being automated or outsourced.
|
| Probably true right now too, some are in optimistic times,
| and others not. Perhaps the proportions of the two groups
| varies.
| advael wrote:
| Generally when people refer to the "times" they are
| discussing the vibes over some aggregate. Zoom in enough on
| anything and you start to see different individuals with
| unique circumstances, but this doesn't make futile the
| entire endeavor of observing larger patterns
| idiotsecant wrote:
| I feel like maybe there are some parallels with the 60s
| counterculture movements. The 'high water mark' speech from
| fear and loathing comes to mind.
| schoen wrote:
| My friend Nick, with whom I worked on Linux stuff in this
| era, actually quoted that speech in reference to the free
| software scene sometime around the year 2000! I think you're
| the first person since then I've seen mention it in this
| context.
| yard2010 wrote:
| "Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five
| years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a
| Main Era--the kind of peak that never comes again. San
| Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and
| place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not,
| in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or
| music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you
| were there and alive in that corner of time and the world.
| Whatever it meant. . . .
|
| History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit,
| but even without being sure of "history" it seems entirely
| reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a
| whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for
| reasons that nobody really understands at the time--and which
| never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.
|
| My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five
| or maybe forty nights--or very early mornings--when I left
| the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the
| big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an
| hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's
| jacket . . . booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at
| the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite
| sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end
| (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find
| neutral while I fumbled for change) . . . but being
| absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would
| come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I
| was: No doubt at all about that. . . .
|
| There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not
| across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los
| Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere.
| There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were
| doing was right, that we were winning. . . .
|
| And that, I think, was the handle--that sense of inevitable
| victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or
| military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply
| prevail. There was no point in fighting--on our side or
| theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of
| a high and beautiful wave. . . .
|
| So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep
| hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of
| eyes you can almost see the high-water mark--that place where
| the wave finally broke and rolled back."
| idiotsecant wrote:
| He wrote a lot but this, I think, is the most beautiful. He
| was one of God's own prototypes, to be sure.
| nailer wrote:
| It was very funny a few years later in the early 2000 Linux
| started getting games and quite good quality desktop user
| interfaces. Lindows even had the first version of an App Store.
|
| However, everyone was so busy thinking about being a better
| version of Windows and Mac that for the most part we didn't
| think about phones. Windows and make themselves fell by the
| wayside to iOS and android.
| Elv13 wrote:
| Not really. Maemo/N900 and OpenMoko existed and worked well
| enough. The problem I think is more than Meego/Mer/Moblin was
| supposed to be equally open, but a customer ready version of
| that idea. It was delayed over and over again. By the time it
| existed, it was no longer a pure X11 based Linux distribution
| and more of an (too) early take on Wayland. It was also so
| late Microsoft made a powergrab and managed to kill it.
| Ubuntu mobile (and to some extent BlackBerry10/WebOS) then
| came and tried to take that crown, but by that time iOS and
| Android were too entrenched. Ubuntu mobile was also
| MIR/LibHybris, you can't really build your own DE/WM on it
| since its a monolith. So the FLOSS community waited/wasted 6
| years waiting for some building blocks (and the hardware to
| go with them) to be ready and were left with nothing. By that
| time the ship had sailed and the world depended on "apps" to
| interact with everything and FLOSS can't challenge it.
| dale_glass wrote:
| I had a N900 and was very fond of it, but it was really a
| prototype. Part done before its time, part a type of system
| that wouldn't have worked for normal people long term.
|
| The N900 was more or less a tiny computer running Debian.
| With 256MB RAM, and swapping on flash.
|
| It was way too low spec to run reliably like that, you
| quickly ran into swap death. And it had none of the
| niceties of Android's memory management, having apps
| designed to be stopped as needed.
|
| Security-wise it was also bad, it was just a normal Linux
| box, so banking apps would be a terrible idea.
|
| If it didn't get killed, I wonder how would they have
| polished it up for public consumption.
| holowoodman wrote:
| But it had some features that modern phones lack sorely.
| E.g. incremental reboot-free (or reboot-only-on-kernel-
| updates) updates ala Debian, such that patching wasn't a
| big deal or a 1GB download twice a week.
|
| And it had a Keyboard! With really real keys!
| dale_glass wrote:
| Those are a pretty bad idea as well, and you see some
| distros like Fedora move away from them by introducing a
| reboot/update/reboot cycle.
|
| Yes, on Linux you can replace binaries and libraries in
| use, but then you're not actually running the new code
| until you restart the program and are still vulnerable to
| any security issue that it fixed.
|
| And with things like runtime loading of plugins that now
| may be incompatible, and programs not expecting stuff
| changing underneath, online updates can be troublesome.
|
| The online model works well enough for a command line
| usage where applications are transient, or a server usage
| where you remember to restart a service or two. But for a
| desktop user with long lived, huge apps like a browser
| it's not that good of an idea anymore.
| holowoodman wrote:
| checkrestart does everything you need. And browsers like
| firefox display a helpful "restart me" button.
| nailer wrote:
| > Not really. Maemo/N900 and OpenMoko existed and worked
| well enough.
|
| I am aware of them - a friend worked on the N900 - but they
| were so far off 'phones' I didn't bother.
| bruce511 wrote:
| In 1998 it was a LOT more nerdy. To some of you youngsters now
| you'd be amazed at the primitiveness of the hardware. It was
| still in the "first adopter" stage from a commercial point of
| view.
|
| CPU speed was measured in Mhz not Ghz. CPUs had one core.
| Memory was measured in MB (not GB) and machines with memory of
| 32MB or less was the norm. A big-screen was 1024x768 (and most
| folk didn't have that) and lots-of-color meant 256 colors.
|
| The publically-accessable internet was in its infancy.
| Connection was through dial ip modem. There was no Google, no
| social media, no news media.
|
| Most of the businesses we sold software to, we had to source
| the hardware for them as well. Computers in the home were
| "common" (but not really used for much apart from games.) And
| by common I'm thinking 10% or so, not 50%.
|
| So yeah, still very nerdy. You still needed a good grasp of the
| command line, config of new machines was tricky, IRQ numbers
| were a thing. My best work was in Assembly language.
|
| And very optimistic. It was clear the best was still to come,
| and the flaws were seen, but improving all the time. Every year
| brought new hardware, new software, and new "I didn't know a
| computer could do that).
|
| Plus we were younger, so much younger than today. The world was
| our oyster. We might have been nerds, but we had gun working
| AND got paid to do so. It was a special time and I feel
| privileged to have lived through it.
| grogenaut wrote:
| I had a 1ghz machine with a gig of RAM in 95. I had 100mb
| internet on lan and multi t3. Google was around before public
| launch in 98. You're a few years off. In 98 I had a sgi
| visual workstatuon with 4gb ram and 50gb HDD and was on the
| same hub as the t3s. This was at college of course. I had dsl
| in 00 and it was as fast as campus. My mom was the first non-
| commercial install in STL (she was kinda a techie but also a
| good mom to a cs student kid).
|
| Summer of 95 I convinced her to get dialup so I could learn
| about this internet thing I figured would be big. I was about
| 2 years too late for that wave.
|
| But yes things were way more primitive and the learning curve
| was high. I had to spend several hours on the phone with the
| ISP to get on dialup on Mac. They onboarded people on campus
| manually and sold Ethernet cards back then.
| bruce511 wrote:
| >> This was at college of course.
|
| Well sure, the colleges had the good toys long before the
| rest of us. But we didn't have college-level money at home
| or at work.
|
| I left college (and the machines that existed there) in
| 1992. And the hardware there in 1992 was better than the
| hardware I had at home or at work for the rest of the 90s.
|
| So yeah, the tech existed, but it wasn't the tech we got to
| play with again until much later on. By 1998 though we had
| at least moved away from DOS development into Windows.
| hibikir wrote:
| Maybe you were super poor? I had a DSL at home in 1998. A
| pentium 2 doing 400 mhz was something you could buy at a
| random CompUSA. 3D graphics accelerators were a thing
| teens bought to play Unreal. I hadn't have to think about
| IRQs in years, as DOS had been dead for years. We could
| actually buy books in Amazon for cheap.
|
| Maybe you forget how fast tech moved in the 90s? Back
| them changing computers every 2 years made perfect sense,
| as every year brought in significant, noticeable
| improvements. Something from 1992 was a relic in 1998
| Symbiote wrote:
| If you had DSL in 1998, you were rich, or at least
| putting a very high priority on the internet.
|
| ADSL was launched in 1999 in the UK, so you also weren't
| here.
| aa-jv wrote:
| If you had DSL in 1998, it had nothing to do with whether
| you were rich or not (anyone getting on the Internet was
| 'rich') - it had everything to do with how close you were
| to the nearest node.
|
| Disclaimer: I helped start one of the US' biggest ISP's
| in this era, and personally installed and handed over
| multiple DSL configurations to folks living in 'poor'
| neighbourhoods which were, incidentally, close enough to
| the NOC to be viable DSL customers.. Plenty of 'poor
| folks' in downtown LA were able to get DSL, purely by the
| nature of their vicinity to One Wilshire ..
| thowawatp302 wrote:
| I think _you're_ forgetting how fast tech moved in the
| 1990s, it wasn't until 1999 that broadband was available
| in the 8th largest city in the US.
|
| (I remember wanting to dumpster dive the CO because we
| got a letter from Southwestern Bell saying they were
| upgrading the equipment to 5ESS in late fall 1998)
| aa-jv wrote:
| Major US cities had bandwidth up the wazoo by the end of
| the 90's, it just hadn't been properly distributed yet.
| The poor/rich categorization is unjustified - in fact
| many poor folks in SoCal were able to leapfrog the
| Beverly Hills T1 hipsters merely due to the fact that
| they lived closer to the cheaper NOC's ..
| int_19h wrote:
| For one thing, not everybody is in US or other First
| World country.
|
| But also, yes, I remember 3D accelerators - and how
| expensive and coveted they were. Few 3D games before 2000
| shipped without software 3D rendering support for this
| reason; I remember Quake 3 (1999) being the first big
| title like that, and it was one of the big reasons why
| Unreal Tournament was more popular in my circles back
| then - you could play it in software mode at 320x240 on
| fairly meager hardware.
| eduction wrote:
| > I had a 1ghz machine with a gig of RAM in 95
|
| Not sure how you're claiming this but here is an article
| from 2000 announcing the first 1ghz consumer processor.
| https://www.zdnet.com/article/its-official-amd-
| hits-1000mhz-...
|
| Are you saying you were on a mainframe or supercomputer in
| 95? That's the only way I could see access to anything
| approaching those speeds at that time.
|
| Even an sgi workstation you're looking at 200mhz tops in
| 95. And no way 1gb of ram more like 64mb.
| eduction wrote:
| Also here is a 1998 listing with sgis. Not close to the
| numbers you're citing. https://forums.sgi.sh/index.php?at
| tachments/caa_softimage_sg...
| rasz wrote:
| >I had a 1ghz machine with a gig of RAM in 95
|
| No you didnt. Process node enabling 1GHz wasnt even
| invented yet. Afaik fastest CPU at the time was Alpha
| released in December at 333MHz.
|
| 1GB of ram cost $32K in 1995, $2400 in 1997, $1200 in 1998,
| and back to $2400 in September 1999 due to Jiji earthquake.
| Just for some perspective 4th place on TOP500 in 1995 had
| 8GB of ram.
| tralarpa wrote:
| > Afaik fastest CPU at the time was Alpha released in
| December at 333MHz
|
| That would be rather 1996. Alphas were already at 500MHz
| in 1997, and (expensive) Pentium II were at 450MHz in
| 1998.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| Very well said. Can relate to most of these.
|
| To add, lot of us assembled our own PC. Though I didn't build
| one, I routinely opened the cabinet for upgrading RAM/HDD, or
| to transfer large files through HDD.I clearly remember when I
| upgraded RAM from 32MB to 64MB, the speed bump was
| _incredible_. After a while it became so frequent that I didn
| 't bother to close the side panel.
|
| A side effect was that computer getting bricked was a normal
| affair, so we all had boot Floppy disks at hand along with
| CDs of all the important softwares. In fact I would routinely
| install things from scratch to get rid of all the freeware
| stuff that clogged the CPU & RAM.
|
| As you said we were living on the cusp of two revolutionary
| changes at once, PCs and internet.
|
| I wonder what do youngsters of today look back 20 years down
| the line and have similar fond feeling & memories.
| godzillabrennus wrote:
| The AI we are building will look back on these days fondly
| as its infancy. The humans are not going to.
| dsign wrote:
| "Your excellency, the human was found with a screwdriver.
| Porting chassis-opening weapons is illegal in California.
| We demand the maximum penalty of using their carbon to
| make batteries."
|
| Irony aside, there are people already saying that the
| moment AIs have sufficient agency we should give them
| equal rights and freedoms[^1]. How does one exponentially
| loses common sense?
|
| [^1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yvBqasHLZs
| signa11 wrote:
| > ... "We demand the maximum penalty of using their
| carbon to make batteries." ...
|
| we demand that they be relegated to configuring the lp-
| daemon from _just_ the *man* pages, no internet :o)
| yard2010 wrote:
| Haha thank you for reminding me of the image of my old
| pentium 3 pc, which was left open all the time due to this
| reason! Fun memberberries!
| einpoklum wrote:
| > To add, lot of us assembled our own PC.
|
| That is still true today. PC components are very popular,
| as are YouTube channel with reviews, ruminations about
| component choices, build experience and how-to guides .
|
| > A side effect was that computer getting bricked was a
| normal affair
|
| If you overclocked or messed with the volatges maybe, but
| otherwise - in my experience (start assembling systems
| around 1993 or so), bricking was quite rare.
| Moru wrote:
| I think, in this case bricking refers to the new meaning
| "Doesn't boot any more, requires a reinstall of
| software".
| mr_toad wrote:
| In my case it was wiggling the ISA card in an attempt to
| get it out of the socket bumped the (badly placed) CMOS
| battery off the motherboard, which required maintenance
| of the soldering iron variety.
| Moru wrote:
| Still not bricking if you can get it running again :-)
|
| A bricking event is when the computer is more useful as a
| doorstop than a work tool.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| You had everything on cd or floppies - or maybe a
| zip/jazz drive if you were in school with a fast internet
| connection - and reinstalled from the OS up. I can't have
| been the only person who cut out the hologram license key
| and stored it in the back of my cd binder - or sharpied
| the keys right on the disk!
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| I suspect today's younger generation will view "computers"
| much like we experienced TV, something you've always know
| that's gotten a lot better technically but the overall
| experience is pretty much the same and very consumption
| based. The focus is all on volume and ease of use, so the
| perceived reward isn't as valuable.
| dmicah wrote:
| I think you're referencing an earlier era. In 1998, 42% of US
| households had at least 1 computer, 26% with Internet access.
| https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio.
| ..
| stuaxo wrote:
| 34% in 1998 in the UK, and Internet access was a lot less
| as we never had free local calls.
| Symbiote wrote:
| "Free" (no cost to make the phone call) Internet access
| was widely available in the UK, on pretty much the same
| terms as the USA -- pay PS20/month for X minutes per
| month.
|
| In addition, and popular for a while, was pay-per-minute
| access where the ISP didn't charge the customer directly,
| but took part of the phone call cost. I don't know if
| this method of payment to an ISP existed in the USA.
|
| That far fewer (only 9%) of British households had
| Internet access was probably more related to the cost of
| the computer and modem, and the country generally having
| less wealth than the USA.
| globnomulous wrote:
| > lots-of-color meant 256 colors.
|
| Sixteen- and twenty-four-bit color weren't just widespread by
| 1998. They were standard.
|
| Not supporting 24 bit color was unheard of for a normal
| desktop monitor and normal desktop graphics.
| bombcar wrote:
| 256 was kind of rare in 1994 when Doom came out (new
| machines had it, older often didn't).
|
| But by 1998 the pace of hardware changes were moving so
| fast that anything top of the line from 1994 was just
| trash, you could get one for free if you asked.
| robin_reala wrote:
| I don't think that's quite right. VGA and 256 colour came
| in in 1987, and like you say the rate of change was so
| fast that EGA was basically obsolete by 1990, 92 at the
| latest.
| bombcar wrote:
| What I recall was that "what was sold" was changing at a
| steady clip but "what was used" was changing much slower
| - if you bought an EGA machine in 1990 you kept using it
| even when VGA was out; no real reason to upgrade since
| the only thing noticeable was games (maybe).
|
| But Windows 3.11 started to change that and by the time
| Windows 95 was out _nobody_ wanted to use a 2 year old
| machine anymore.
|
| (Though to be fair most people I knew went from
| CGA/Hercules straight to VGA, there really wasn't a
| "driving need" for EGA, especially if your machine was
| business oriented - Hercules was _better_ for text). VGA
| was a "sweet spot" also in that it _always_ worked, SVGA
| started getting really hairy sometimes, and could be a
| bear to get working right.
| int_19h wrote:
| SVGA worked pretty well so long as you stuck to basic
| VESA modes, which was relied upon by many games of the
| era (e.g. Warcraft 2, the first two Heroes of Might &
| Magic games).
| dragonwriter wrote:
| The web plus Windows 95 were a major force bringing both
| new people into computing and pushing upgrades: the rapid
| pace of new standards displacing old technology in use
| rather than picking up a slice at the top of the market
| and slowly expanding share in use didn't really start
| until then.
| bombcar wrote:
| I feel Windows 95 especially was a turning point where
| people began to buy "personal computers" for various uses
| instead of "I need a machine to do program X" which was
| more common before.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I remember when I knew everything about a computer. From the
| gates to the CPU to the BIOS to the operating system.
|
| Now the only thing I know are compilers :-)
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| Aside from the nostalgia I think this is a big part of the
| 8-bit love in the nerdier corners: you can hold the entire
| thing in your head.
| lisper wrote:
| In 1978 it was even nerdier than that. CPU speed was measured
| in kilohertz. Often programs were entered using toggle
| switches and output was on seven-segment red LEDs. Color
| displays were all but unheard of. Non-volatile storage was on
| cassette tape. I know that probably sounds like a Monty
| Python sketch, but I swear this is actually true. I saw it
| with my own eyes.
|
| Now here is a mind-boggling thought: there will come a time
| in the not-too-distant future when today's technology will
| seem as quaint and primitive as what I have just described.
| vkou wrote:
| >there will come a time in the not-too-distant future when
| today's technology will seem as quaint and primitive as
| what I have just described.
|
| Will it? In a decade, man landing on the moon will be
| closer to the first flight by the Wright Brothers than it
| is to today.
| joha4270 wrote:
| Maybe?
|
| I was about to write a small essay on how everything from
| monitors to speeds seemed to be stagnating.
|
| But I actually think there is a chance we might gain two
| new revolutionary[1]ish ways of interacting with
| computers within the next decade.
|
| LLMs might truly bring us talking computers. Siri is old,
| and current AI is a fair mix of real advancement and
| overhyped, but once the dust settles, I wouldn't be
| surprised if a significant chunk of the population talks
| with their computer.
|
| XR devices will likely keep shrinking and I figure
| somebody will find a killer app for them eventually. 20
| years ago, a computer sat on a desk. Today I have one in
| my pocket. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if in 20
| years, I have one in my glasses.
|
| Of course, all of this is speculation. And I don't think
| the PC is threatened, but it will probably face
| competition from new ways of using computers.
|
| [1]: As in different and not just slightly better than
| last years model.
| clauderoux wrote:
| Putain!!! So many memories. I started with an Australian
| clone of a TR80 with 16kb of memory (15772 bytes) and a
| tape reader to record my programs. I even implemented
| some basic routines for the Z80 processor that I would
| translate into bytes in a data section in my Basic
| program... For those who remember poke and peek were
| fun... 44 years this Christmas exactly... If my memory is
| correct the Z80 was cadenced at 3Hz... And now our
| computers speak to us, and very soon will boss us
| around...
| llm_trw wrote:
| >LLMs might truly bring us talking computers.
|
| I have had a talking computer since 2004.
|
| I've had a computer that listens to me since 2012 when I
| build my first neural network that could recognize my
| voice and convert it to bash commands reliably enough.
|
| I've had an LLM powered version of that since the gpt 3
| api came up and a local version with a llama 8b model
| today.
|
| It's meh.
|
| What I find ironic is that even though I'm dictating this
| to a $50k work station I'm still using Emacs to do it.
| joha4270 wrote:
| For you and me, its not going to be a massive change.
|
| But for my grandmother, who keeps a little notebook with
| detailed instructions for how to message people on
| Facebook? For her this might greatly increase her
| capabilities.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > In a decade, man landing on the moon will be closer to
| the first flight by the Wright Brothers than it is to
| today.
|
| That's not a technology issue, so much as a "there is no
| pressing need to spend the money on this anymore". At the
| peak of the moon race, NASA was getting 5% of US
| government spending. In modern terms, that would be like
| spending 340 billion per year; it's just a _tremendous_
| amount of money.
|
| (That said, both the US and China do plan to make manned
| landings on the moon in the next decade, though the
| timelines may be... optimistic, as neither is indulging
| in crazy space-race-esque spending on it.)
| llm_trw wrote:
| >340 billion per year; it's just a _tremendous_ amount of
| money.
|
| As the US medical system shows, you can flush more than
| that down the toilet every month and still not get any
| results.
|
| To get things done you need true believers.
|
| It's hard to motivate true believers to build the 1e6th
| crud app.
|
| This is why no one in mainstream tech is nerdy any more
| and why all projects are over budget and under
| performing.
| Hammershaft wrote:
| Thank you for crystallizing something that's been
| swimming in my unconscious for a long time.
| kragen wrote:
| Right, and in the next decade the PRC will invade Taiwan,
| removing Samsung's incentive to innovate.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| This is true; in the 90's we had eye strain from the
| monitors but nobody got blisters on their fingers from
| flipping toggle switches!
| richrichardsson wrote:
| > There was no Google
|
| I have a broken memory of the time, because I swear I first
| came across Google as the better alternative to AltaVista in
| my last year at Uni in '96, but Wikipedia says Google arrived
| in '98, or at least the company was set up then, is it
| possible it was usable 2 years before they incorporated?
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > I swear I first came across Google as the better
| alternative to AltaVista in my last year at Uni in '96, but
| Wikipedia says Google arrived in '98, or at least the
| company was set up then, is it possible it was usable 2
| years before they incorporated?
|
| Sounds like a Mandela effect. :-)
| richrichardsson wrote:
| More likely a Marijuana effect ;-)
| laz wrote:
| Google was available at google.stanford.edu before they
| spun up the company.
|
| I saw Sergei give a talk at my university in 96 or 97 and
| switched from Alta Vista.
| Hammershaft wrote:
| I think it's very sad that it's such a common sentiment that
| one of the joys of the past in tech was the optimism.
| llm_trw wrote:
| The past wasn't optimistic, we merely ignored negative
| Nancies because they had nothing to say. In the last 10
| years for some reason we gave them the megaphone and let
| them dictate how everything is done.
|
| Exhibit A: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goh2x_G0ct4
| mindslight wrote:
| Before the "negative Nancies" came the malevolent
| Mallorys. They built and popularized centralizing
| technologies of the shapes that investment capital could
| understand and exploit, foregoing all those exciting
| visions of distributed empowerment. Those newly created
| levers of centralized power then attracted the
| politickers focused on shaping society in their various
| images from the top-down.
|
| (Also don't make the mistake of thinking that these
| groups continually fighting over how the centralized
| power is used means that any one of them is aligned with
| individual freedom)
| makmanalp wrote:
| It's more that the "negative nancies" became necessary
| nancies. Back when Amazon sold books, they became a
| considerable player but otherwise big whoop. Now they
| threaten to dominate logistics AND hosting, and are
| expanding their grip and stamping out competition in
| other markets. Google is pretty much synonymous with the
| web. Meta owns a big chunk of messaging and social media.
| Computers used to not matter much but now we're glued to
| one
|
| It costs even more to be reckless today.
|
| Re: "whitey on the moon" - I'm not sure the space program
| would be my first target there but I think it makes a
| more poetic contrast and forces people to pay attention
| by targeting a beloved cultural narrative. Cyberpunk - by
| my reckoning a bit later - has been preaching a very
| similar message of massive inequality in the presence of
| incredible technology and wealth disparity and power
| concentration. And yet that doesn't draw the same ire. I
| guess in that case it's easier to dismiss the core
| message because robot limbs and cool neon lights are too
| much of a distraction.
| davidw wrote:
| Me too. I'd love to find some space to work in that
| rekindles some of that. I love tech, it's a lot of fun, and
| you can do really cool things with it. But it kind of went
| from the people in that article who were "hackers", to
| people like PG who is a hacker too, but urged people to use
| their skills to set themselves up so they could work on
| cool things, to just being a business. Nothing wrong with
| businesses, I'm not some kind of purist hermit. But I miss
| that air of doing things because they're cool.
| dep_b wrote:
| I remember trying to install Linux on a spare 386 with like
| 2MB of memory? Bought the SuSE book from the bookstore, tried
| to install it. Apparently the 2MB was not enough to expand
| the boot floppy, so I had to make a swap disk first.
| Everything from the paper manual.
|
| It was pretty cool when it worked. I think I managed to serve
| a website from it and I used it as a fancy teletype.
|
| MacOS 8.6 and Windows 95 OSR2.1 (the one that had good USB
| support, but no IE yet). Back then I loved to tweak my OS'es,
| I totally stripped them from anything it didn't need, tweaked
| the animations to be instant. Dual Celly 300A@450.
|
| I think I installed a Windows 2000 beta somewhere in 1999 and
| stuck with that until they really ended support for it.
| Pretty consistent UI, lightweight. Ran most software
| including games, even when not officially supported.
|
| Played with the MacOS X Betas, on hardware comparable to the
| first iPhone in terms of performance. Blue White G3 Tower.
|
| I loved computers back then. Now they're just tools.
| kjs3 wrote:
| _I loved computers back then. Now they 're just tools._
|
| Preach it brother. I lived through Windows v. *nix (several
| versions), z80 v 6502, ethernet v. token ring, packet
| switching v. circuit switching, and a ton of others[1], and
| was usually a partisan on one side or the other. Now...it's
| either 'what works easiest' or 'what does the client want'
| and I make it work for me. This lack of participation in
| partisan conflict has made most everything go smoother. And
| vintage computing allows me to get my "remember how much
| fun it once was" fix.
|
| [1] Yes, even vi v. emacs, but even 30 years ago that had
| become more of an inside joke than actual debate. Besides,
| those emacs heretics will never find the One True Way.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Really? In '99 I had 64mb of RAM, and it was the cheapest off
| the shelf PC my parents could afford, in a tech backwater.
| internet_points wrote:
| Yeah, back in the day you'd be considered tin-foil hat if you
| thought you were being tracked and surveilled online. These
| days, you're tin-foil hat if you think you can avoid it.
|
| Microsoft was the big bad wolf, but at the time, most of what
| they did that was so horrible was capture market share. You
| could still use a computing device and then leave it alone and
| it would leave you alone, it wasn't trying to constantly ping
| you and notify you and make you feel left out and use all kinds
| of dark patterns to feed the addiction. These days, computing
| devices feel more like trickster adversaries than clunky-but-
| useful tools.
| Clubber wrote:
| >back in the day you'd be considered tin-foil hat if you
| thought you were being tracked and surveilled online.
|
| Not so fast. They've been at it for a while.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip
| elzbardico wrote:
| At this time even management was kind of nerdy.
|
| It was a time when you could be in some place outside the big
| meccas like SV and start a reasonably succesful company around
| simply developing some software package and selling it to a
| small to midsized companies in your region.
|
| Even in big non-tech companies, tech people kind of were left
| alone in a distant building and as long as you had a suit and a
| tie for the very ocasional meetings with the civilized portion
| of your company you were mostly left alone.
|
| Then, the business people started to slowly encroach into our
| domain, the project management people, their processess. I
| think that a lot of the early agile movement was kind of a
| immune reaction against it, until it was too coopted by the
| suit people.
|
| Then the marketing consolidated and concentrated, and it was
| never the same since then.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > I think that a lot of the early agile movement was kind of
| a immune reaction against it, until it was too coopted by the
| suit people.
|
| If you're in a hiring position it's important to be very,
| very selective about who you hire into any engineering
| management or even more agile-specific roles. I remembering
| interviewing for an "agile coach" in a previous role - the
| CTO thought we needed one - and the first two or three were
| basically the same: all had their acronyms and their flavours
| of how they'd memorised agile literature. Then one guy came
| in who did know all that, but was also ex-British Army and
| had a load of practical, insightful things to say. And that's
| who we picked, and he later became the head of engineering.
| Useful agile knowledge is practical and insightful. It's not
| theory.
| llm_trw wrote:
| If you're in a hiring position and hire anyone who uses
| agile as anything but a way to blend in with all the
| bullshit today you should quit and do something more
| productive with your life, like watching paint dry.
| thrw42A8N wrote:
| If you're in a hiring position and don't even know what
| "agile" means, please go do a more appropriate job.
| llm_trw wrote:
| That's the beauty of it, it means what ever you want it
| to mean.
| thrw42A8N wrote:
| You might feel like that, but it's only because you don't
| know it describes a category. As I said, please find a
| more appropriate job if you're in a hiring position.
| llm_trw wrote:
| When even the founders of agile are telling everyone else
| they are doing it wrong it is truly a word without a
| definition.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| It can hurt to swallow a lot of the BS, but you can fight
| the good fight inside these companies, one guerrilla
| incursion at a time. Some of use do still exist in
| management, or at least believe we still hold true to the
| conceptual integrity of what agile means vs. what it has
| become.
|
| You only get to execute the nuclear option once (i.e.
| quit) so yes you need to understand where the line is,
| but there's almost always a better option.
| llm_trw wrote:
| Feel free to email me about starting an insurgency,
| that's basically the only way I can see motivating myself
| to ever go back in big tech or big corp.
| TheGRS wrote:
| It just takes time and patience to get the sort of
| political capital that you need to make change. You wait
| for disasters to happen because of incompetence and then
| you pounce. There's also a finesse to it though, half of
| the battle is convincing the right people that they had
| these ideas in the first place. I also employ the
| "whisper campaign" often. Just seeding ideas in various
| conversations lightly, once people start to say them in
| conversations without you prompting it you know your job
| is done.
| fancyfredbot wrote:
| The intensity of feeling within the Linux community towards
| Windows and Microsoft back then was intense. I remember turning
| up to my university CS course and witnessing the formation of a
| Linux clique - if you ran windows you weren't really welcome!
| Dual-booting might get you reluctantly accepted though.
|
| I wonder if the same thing still goes on. It probably was quite
| an effective filter for the nerdiest and most obsessive people
| back in 1999, and it probably still is, but somehow that kind of
| mindset seems a bit outdated today. If it does still exist I'd be
| interested to know what kind of status macOS has! Literally
| nobody on the CS course had a Mac, despite the very cool and
| colourful iMacs being very popular.
| mgaunard wrote:
| I remember when I was in school (2006), if you wanted to be
| cool you had to use xmonad, mutt and irssi.
|
| And of course an IBM Thinkpad T42.
| akho wrote:
| xmonad started in 2007.
| andrelaszlo wrote:
| REAL programmers are always off by one for some reason ;)
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| assume one of you starts counting at zero, so you're both
| right.
| int_19h wrote:
| https://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison/ then
| flohofwoe wrote:
| > but somehow that kind of mindset seems a bit outdated today
|
| It's hard to understand today because Windows isn't by far the
| overlord it was in the late 90s and early 2000s. Alternatives
| like Amiga, Atari, SGI, Sun and even the Mac were dead or on
| their deathbed, and it looked like there would only be one
| operating system in the future, and one that wasn't exactly a
| triumph of engineering.
|
| Thankfully that future didn't happen and Windows is essentially
| only relevant for running PC games today.
| 9dev wrote:
| > Thankfully that future didn't happen and Windows is
| essentially only relevant for running PC games today.
|
| What an odd statement. You're ignoring the vast majority of
| all office computers all over the world here, the on-prem
| infrastructure of most companies, and cheap home computers.
| Not everyone can afford to buy a Mac; Office tools and huge
| swaths of domain-specific tools only run on Windows; and
| despite what Linux enthusiasts want you to believe, Linux
| doesn't support existing Windows software well enough for
| common business use.
|
| You may be referring to the needs of rich software engineers
| in western countries exclusively here, but overwhelming
| majority of the world's client computers are firmly in
| Microsoft's hands.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| Most relevant software today runs in web browsers or are
| cross-platform applications, so even when you have a
| Windows laptop, you probably spend most time in a web
| browser or a webview wrapped in an app and not in a native
| and exclusive Windows application.
|
| That's a very different situation from 20 years ago, where
| a lot of important software only existed for Windows.
|
| E.g. today you can just ditch Windows and install Linux on
| that same old laptop and wouldn't lose anything important.
| cpach wrote:
| Also, for most people these days, Android and iOS are the
| primary operating systems in use. And you can't easily
| run Windows applications there.
| 9dev wrote:
| You're thinking of end users. The masses of office
| workers in the world are, and will continue to be, using
| Microsoft Office as their most important tool of trade,
| and thus will continue to run Windows.
| 9dev wrote:
| As long as the browser variants of Microsoft Office
| aren't as capable as their desktop variants, that isn't
| relevant. CAD software is another contender that mostly
| requires a Windows environment; as is lots of financial
| software and industrial control tools.
|
| I agree with you that many people probably could use a
| Linux computer if there was any incentive to go that
| direction. That isn't reality though, and likely won't be
| any time soon.
| close04 wrote:
| Perhaps more importantly, given enough years and as the
| technology commoditizes, the "need" to take sides about
| whatever tech lessens. "Sides" are usually for the hot
| big thing in tech. But OSes are long past that phase and
| far too unexciting for most people to have the critical
| mass needed to create this kind of polarization.
| dTal wrote:
| Found the programmer...
|
| You have an extremely skewed view of what "relevant
| software" is, if you believe this. The second you try and
| use a computer for anything professional, besides nerd
| stuff and a few key "creative" areas that Apple has
| cultural cachet in like music production and graphic
| design, you are absolutely going to find yourself reliant
| on some completely entrenched "industry standard" piece
| of software that's been around for many decades and only
| runs on Microsoft Windows. Autodesk still sells 3ds Max
| for a couple grand, and it's Windows-only. Hell, even
| TurboTax only runs on Windows. And if you manage to dodge
| that, there's bound to be some critical piece of hardware
| that can only be controlled from a Windows computer.
|
| The biggest propaganda win that Microsoft pulled was
| getting nerds - the biggest loudmouths about software
| freedom - off their case. 90s style free software
| fanaticism is basically dead. Meanwhile the rest of the
| world is absolutely still locked in to Windows. Know how
| you can tell? Because Windows is now widely regarded as a
| pile of shit, riddled with adware even out of the box
| ("Candy Crush in the Start menu") and yet _people still
| use it_ , because they have to.
|
| >E.g. today you can just ditch Windows and install Linux
| on that same old laptop and wouldn't lose anything
| important.
|
| I challenge you to try this with a nontechnical friend
| who uses a computer for work. They will be screaming at
| you to put it back like it was within the week. I say
| this as a die-hard Linux user.
| chasd00 wrote:
| > The biggest propaganda win that Microsoft pulled was
| getting nerds - the biggest loudmouths about software
| freedom - off their case
|
| it still amazes me how the newer generation of technical
| people see Microsoft as non-evil or, in some cases, even
| the good guy. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled
| was re-convincing the world he doesn't exist.
|
| edit: wasn't the google motto "don't be evil" basically
| meant to mean don't be Microsoft?
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Try easily finding admins and heldesk staff to manage
| your 1000+ org using something other than Active
| Directory and M365. MS absolutely owns this space.
| int_19h wrote:
| Thing is, most people don't use a computer for "anything
| professional" these days beyond Outlook and maybe Office
| at work, plus LOBs which are almost always web apps these
| days.
|
| In fact, it increasingly feels like desktop itself is
| relegated to this kind of use, with smartphone becoming
| the primary computing device for most things.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| A massive amount of computing - especially outside of
| western & corporate offices - has moved to mobile. It's
| pretty wild as a developer who learned the trade when
| everything ran windows to now to target users who do their
| jobs with only a phone and don't even own what we
| historically call a "computer". Eventually those windows
| binaries and IIS apps will die as well, and MS has given up
| on Windows serving all those requests. They've done an
| amazing job of moving their business away from the OS in my
| view.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| Oh I'm sure a lot has, but there is still a ton of
| Windows-only software out there. All those commercial
| tools engineers use to study the power grid are almost
| always Windows-only (at least the 10 major vendors I can
| think of off hand). I'm sure many other industries are
| similar. Also, all user laptops at a lot of corporations
| are Windows-only. It's changing of course, but not
| quickly.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| And those mobile devices are managed with Intune/Azure.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| HN has a blind spot for companies bigger than their
| startups. They don't realize how much large corps rely on
| AD/AAD/M365. For the vast majority of companies anything
| other than Windows/MS is a non-starter. This shit comes up
| in every single MS related submission.
| kdmtctl wrote:
| This. _Didn't see it therefore it doesn't exist_.
| spamizbad wrote:
| Office computers are a niche. A big niche, but still a
| niche: probably 500 million world-wide. Meanwhile there are
| 4.88 billion smartphone users.
| paulddraper wrote:
| > Windows is essentially only relevant for running PC games
| today.
|
| That, and running 73% of the world's desktops. [1]
|
| [1] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-
| share/desktop/worldwide...
| Hilift wrote:
| > The intensity of feeling within the Linux community towards
| Windows and Microsoft back then was intense.
|
| Remember that Microsoft didn't really have an OS that didn't
| suck yet. Windows as we know it today did not exist, it was
| still Windows NT 4 and no directory. SQL Server 7 was released
| in 1998, but until that rewrite it was a product produced in
| large part another company (Sybase).
|
| Exchange Server (~1996) was the first product Microsoft
| developed from the ground up to replace an awful product and it
| was wildly successful, even before real Windows/AD landed in
| 1999. SQL Server eclipsed Exchange as the flagship product
| around 2010 or so.
|
| Macs were super popular on Ivy League campuses in the 1980's.
| Some schools sold Macs to students for $1,000 that retailed for
| $2,500. Some of the current Fedex Business Centers started as
| Kinkos locations that rented time on Macs by the hour.
|
| Microsoft changed the education landscape when they offered
| most of their commercial products for 10% of retail. They also
| do this for 501c3 non-profits. I believe _students_ get a
| different discount (~50%).
| yreg wrote:
| Office and Copilot are free for students afaik. Windows used
| to be as well, not sure about the current state of things.
| ToddWBurgess wrote:
| I was one of those Linux evangelists back in the 90s. Tried to
| get all the undergrads in my CS program migrated to Linux back
| in the day. Fun times.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Outdated or not, that mindset was inappropriate then and it's
| inappropriate today. Granted I don't necessarily expect kids in
| college to know how to behave, but it isn't cool to be a dick
| to people just because they use one OS or the other. It's
| especially sad when you consider that these are a bunch of
| nerds, who _know_ what it 's like to be a social outcast, and
| then turn around and inflict that on one of their own.
| area51org wrote:
| Fair enough, but this isn't about how cool it was that there
| were warring factions. There were _reasons_ that the divide
| existed, and most of the reasons involved the behemoth
| Microsoft throwing its weight around and trying to bully the
| world of technology. People who ran Windows were seen as
| complicit, and in some ways, they actually were.
|
| Especially at the time, saying that both sides were obviously
| bad people because they had a beef with each other is a
| little like saying the Dark Side and the Jedi should have
| just stopped being assholes to each other. It's not that
| simple.
| aa-jv wrote:
| If only SGI had made that darn laptop, we'd be rocking SGI Linux
| these days, and the fruity company would be a minor consideration
| to most nerds.
|
| Alas, 'twas not to be. SGI, you glorious bastard, why did you
| have to make that deal with the devil ..
|
| IMHO, the tech industry completely changed when nerds could by
| tiBooks, have an amazing Unix experience in a portable form, and
| still rip and play DVD's alongside the shell ..
| rbanffy wrote:
| What SGI had in its favor was the great hardware. This is, more
| or less, the selling point of "the fruity company" today, at
| least for those who don't know they can open a terminal.
|
| For those who do, it's a competent Unix OS and certainly does
| the job. I never found IRIX great for servers either.
| jmclnx wrote:
| By then I had moved on to FreeBSD, I think starting at 3.?. The
| main reason for that move was internet access. FreeBSD CD set
| came with additional CDs of their ports collection. No more
| downloading via my flaky and very slow phone connection (via
| kermit).
|
| I went back to Linux around 4.8 because FreeBSD started having
| issues with my hardware. By then I had "real" internet thanks to
| the company I worked for.
|
| I remember seeing items about this, but the BSD people tended not
| to care about these things. But a nice look back
| linguae wrote:
| This is actually how I was introduced to FreeBSD as well. I was
| a high school student in 2004 who had a hand-me-down PC that
| one of my high school teachers gave me. It had a 475MHz AMD
| K6-2 processor, 64MB RAM, and a 8GB hard drive that was running
| Windows 98. I learned about Linux in the spring of 2004, and I
| had Zipslack, which was a version of Slackware Linux that ran
| on top of DOS. I wanted to try Gentoo, but I had dial-up at
| home. At least Zipslack was small enough to make the download
| via dial-up bearable.
|
| During the summer of 2004 I took an introductory computer
| science course at Sacramento City College. The professor was a
| big fan of FreeBSD. He convinced me to try it instead of
| Gentoo, and he gave me some CDs that he burned containing
| FreeBSD and plenty of FOSS software. I ended up installing
| FreeBSD on my PC, and I fell in love with it. It was my daily-
| driver OS until the summer of 2006, when I was able to use some
| of my internship earnings to purchase a MacBook, my first
| brand-new computer and my first modern Mac. I still use FreeBSD
| whenever I need a Unix and when I don't need to use Linux-
| specific software.
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