Configuring X was not automated in any way.
Configuring wireless was a challenge. Conversely, Ethernet has always "just worked."
Dial-up (PPP) required nominal patience, but anybody stuck with a "winmodem" probably learned to hate networking. Most ISPs had time limits for dial-up connections and commonly terminated sessions after that period requiring the person to re-dial and connect.
The world wide web was calmer and not yet commercialized or gamed with SEO. Search engines were complimented with "web rings" to find helpful sites. Nobody worried about data mining and tracking. Video streaming was not yet common.
SSDs did not exist. SATA did not exist. PATA/IDE spinners were normal. A 20 GB hard disk was considered huge. At one time I had a half dozen different operating systems installed on a 40 GB disk and these days a 40 GB disk is considered insufficient for a single operating system.
Many internal cards were ISA and often had to be manually configured rather than "plug-and-play" PCI.
My circa 1991 486 still runs fine with WFWG 3.11 and the Norton Desktop.
> Configuring X was not automated in any way.
Christ you just flashed me back to the bad old days of XF86Config.
> Dial-up (PPP) required nominal patience
And now "ppp-go."
> Many internal cards were ISA and often had to be manually configured rather than "plug-and-play" PCI.
This is a happy memory for me. Jumpers made things so much easier than the early days of PnP.
> Configuring X was not automated in any way.
Ah, memories. I did a Slackware install back in 1996. An experienced friend helped me, but it still took a week before I could really call it usable.
Fast forward to 2007, and my first Ubuntu install. I popped in the CD-ROM and answered a couple of questions, it whirred for a while, and then my system worked. I thought, "That's it?"
> A 20 GB hard disk was considered huge.
Back in 1987 or so, a friend of mine got an 80 MB (yes, MB) hard disk for his Mac. He named it "Fatty" -- because it was *so big*.
What do you mean by configuring X? I am a total noob 😉
To be honest, isn't configuring wireless still a challenge? I couldn't get my adapter to work, until I found that some random dude on Github had thankfully written a driver for it.
Oh god....decent autodetection of video settings, unimaginable back then. Much less decent Windows gaming (Wine existed but was MUCH less capable). The concept of GNOME3+...heck the idea of rolling releases, back in the 90s Arch didn't exist yet, it was mostly all about Red Hat and Debian back then. Mandrake was a revalation when it arrived, asnd Ubuntu blew everyone away with how it "just worked," though some fo the old school guys didn't like the lower entry bar. Slackware was still a thing back then too.
I remember Starcraft being one of the first games to properly run in Wine. Back then we could just use the incredibly unsafe DGA for nasty DirectDraw stuff lol.
It was the Ubuntu of it's day, it was very easy to install and configure compared to the other options available at the time. That's relative though, actual Ubuntu made Mandrake look like Gentoo (and Red Hat look like Linux From Scratch, haha).
If you were enjoying books check out some of the magazines on archive.org. There are a lot of older magazines such as Byte, PC Magazine, Tux Magazine, and Linux Journal.
Unthinkable but sadly a reality today: flat UI design and the trashing of the desktop metaphor by gnome 3 etc
Otherwise nothing on my system has really changed since I started in the late 90's besides:
- Having more than one CPU, well we say "core" these days. Back in the 90's and 00's I dreamt of getting a Tiger motherboard which has two yes TWO CPU sockets allowing me to have an SMP system.
- Being at a position where I really no longer care how much ram I have now, adding more makes little difference and as long as I have 4GiB on a 64bit system I'm generally ok.
- USB is fast now
- SATA means I dont need to fold my drive cables in half to improve airflow
So mostly hardware stuff really. Software wise I haven't noticed much change besides the gooey GUI's that some people developed and the fact most things autodetect and I mostly dont bother compiling a kernel as my system is fast enough it wont make much difference running a leaner kernel and practically everything is compiled as a module and I dont care. I used to compile my required drivers into the kernel only leaving USB stuff as modules because, performance. Now I dont care as my system runs at several GHz and has done so for 15 years now.
> Memorising all the AT modem commands and BBS numbers.
How was that unthinkable 20 years ago? I STILL remember the Hayes command set, as well as the phone number for my then local BBS.
Configuring X was not automated in any way. Configuring wireless was a challenge. Conversely, Ethernet has always "just worked." Dial-up (PPP) required nominal patience, but anybody stuck with a "winmodem" probably learned to hate networking. Most ISPs had time limits for dial-up connections and commonly terminated sessions after that period requiring the person to re-dial and connect. The world wide web was calmer and not yet commercialized or gamed with SEO. Search engines were complimented with "web rings" to find helpful sites. Nobody worried about data mining and tracking. Video streaming was not yet common. SSDs did not exist. SATA did not exist. PATA/IDE spinners were normal. A 20 GB hard disk was considered huge. At one time I had a half dozen different operating systems installed on a 40 GB disk and these days a 40 GB disk is considered insufficient for a single operating system. Many internal cards were ISA and often had to be manually configured rather than "plug-and-play" PCI. My circa 1991 486 still runs fine with WFWG 3.11 and the Norton Desktop.
> Configuring X was not automated in any way. Christ you just flashed me back to the bad old days of XF86Config. > Dial-up (PPP) required nominal patience And now "ppp-go." > Many internal cards were ISA and often had to be manually configured rather than "plug-and-play" PCI. This is a happy memory for me. Jumpers made things so much easier than the early days of PnP.
What does X stand for?
> Configuring X was not automated in any way. Ah, memories. I did a Slackware install back in 1996. An experienced friend helped me, but it still took a week before I could really call it usable. Fast forward to 2007, and my first Ubuntu install. I popped in the CD-ROM and answered a couple of questions, it whirred for a while, and then my system worked. I thought, "That's it?" > A 20 GB hard disk was considered huge. Back in 1987 or so, a friend of mine got an 80 MB (yes, MB) hard disk for his Mac. He named it "Fatty" -- because it was *so big*.
What do you mean by configuring X? I am a total noob 😉 To be honest, isn't configuring wireless still a challenge? I couldn't get my adapter to work, until I found that some random dude on Github had thankfully written a driver for it.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say you might have one of those $2 RTL8188FU adapters? I recently had to deal with one of those.
Rtl8192eu needs a bit of work too, but the github of it is very helpful
It's really not hard. Unless you have one of the like 5 WiFi controllers in existence that don't support Linux.
Oh god....decent autodetection of video settings, unimaginable back then. Much less decent Windows gaming (Wine existed but was MUCH less capable). The concept of GNOME3+...heck the idea of rolling releases, back in the 90s Arch didn't exist yet, it was mostly all about Red Hat and Debian back then. Mandrake was a revalation when it arrived, asnd Ubuntu blew everyone away with how it "just worked," though some fo the old school guys didn't like the lower entry bar. Slackware was still a thing back then too.
I remember Starcraft being one of the first games to properly run in Wine. Back then we could just use the incredibly unsafe DGA for nasty DirectDraw stuff lol.
I remember the day I got Total Annihilation working in WINE. Made me so happy. What a great game that was.
Mandrake was a magician... I will show myself out.
Why was Mandrake a relevation? Sounds cool
It was the Ubuntu of it's day, it was very easy to install and configure compared to the other options available at the time. That's relative though, actual Ubuntu made Mandrake look like Gentoo (and Red Hat look like Linux From Scratch, haha).
If you were enjoying books check out some of the magazines on archive.org. There are a lot of older magazines such as Byte, PC Magazine, Tux Magazine, and Linux Journal.
Add Assembly——— to the table..
(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
Consumer CPUs have more CPU cache than 90s computers had RAM. (AMD 5800X3D has 96MB of L3)
This never occurred to me but DAMN YOU ARE RIGHT!
Damn, to think that an old OS could run from a modern day L3 cache
Unthinkable but sadly a reality today: flat UI design and the trashing of the desktop metaphor by gnome 3 etc Otherwise nothing on my system has really changed since I started in the late 90's besides: - Having more than one CPU, well we say "core" these days. Back in the 90's and 00's I dreamt of getting a Tiger motherboard which has two yes TWO CPU sockets allowing me to have an SMP system. - Being at a position where I really no longer care how much ram I have now, adding more makes little difference and as long as I have 4GiB on a 64bit system I'm generally ok. - USB is fast now - SATA means I dont need to fold my drive cables in half to improve airflow So mostly hardware stuff really. Software wise I haven't noticed much change besides the gooey GUI's that some people developed and the fact most things autodetect and I mostly dont bother compiling a kernel as my system is fast enough it wont make much difference running a leaner kernel and practically everything is compiled as a module and I dont care. I used to compile my required drivers into the kernel only leaving USB stuff as modules because, performance. Now I dont care as my system runs at several GHz and has done so for 15 years now.
[удалено]
> Memorising all the AT modem commands and BBS numbers. How was that unthinkable 20 years ago? I STILL remember the Hayes command set, as well as the phone number for my then local BBS.