What was Linux like in the 90s
What was Linux like in the 90s
I really wish that I was born early so I've could witness the early years of Linux. What was it like being there when a kernel was released that would power multiple OSes and, best of all, for free?
I want know about everything: software, hardware, games, early community, etc.
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Honestly, it sucked. Like most computing at the time. Everything came on a ton of floppy disks, it was impossible to update online unless you had a good connection (which nobody did), and you had to do everything by hand, including compiling a lot of stuff which took forever. I mean, I’m glad I got the experience, but I would never wanna go back to that. It sucked.
Remember the slow internet had to wait overnight for 40 megabyte game and finally finding out it didn't work.
Up all night, and all you got to see was a boob
Half of it because random disconnect happened in the middle and download did not resume.
In glorious 256 colors !
Up all night, and all you got to see was a boob
Sometimes a boob who spent the previous night compiling a custom webcam driver. :(
Remember the Internet at these speeds, Moss? Up all night and you’d see three women.
jad
Remember when packages like RPM were first introduced, and it was like, “cool, I don’t have to compile everything!” Then you were introduced to Red Hat’s version of DLL-Hell when the RPM couldn’t find some obsure library! Before YUM, rpmfind.net was sooo useful!
I still use pkgs.org pretty frequently when I need to find versions of packages and their dependencies across different distros and versions of distros. I had to use that to sneakernet something to fix a system just this past week.
Oh sites like that are absolutely still useful! Especially for older distros or when you need a specific version that you can’t find for whatever reason.
Shit like that was the last straw for me and I ended up bailing on Linux for, like, 10 years until I got back into it around 2006.
Poor Annie.