[ale] Ancient desktop
Jim Kinney
jim.kinney at gmail.com
Wed May 10 08:33:53 EDT 2023
All night kernel compiles. Yep! And then only to discover I had left off a
part of chose the wrong one. Found the Linux channel on Usenet and learned
how to compile a kernel from that. Also found a nifty sc tool that
calculated mode lines for X. That helped keep me from burning up my new 21"
65lb Sony monitor a few years later. It required a lot of data about
speeds, widths, ramp times, etc. that Sony included in the manual.
Sadly, I didn't find ALE until just before ALS3
I have the license plate LINUX1. I've been followed into parking lots by
people who just wanted to chat about Linux 'cause they saw me driving down
the road. I used to carry a box of DVD distro to give away for the curious.
At the time I had to add the 1 as just LINUX was already taken (Who???).
Now it's a great pun because LINUX 1 😎
I have LINUX2 on my truck. Kernel compiles are shorter. -j 128 sure helps
even with -O3.
On Wed, May 10, 2023, 8:10 AM Leam Hall via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:
> Hey Jon, cool story.
>
> I never met Patrick, but it sounds like I'd want to. Too few decent humans
> these days. My wife was an E-1 (low pay) in the USAF at the time, and I
> couldn't afford Win 3.11/WfW. After an abortive attempt at OS2/Warp, she
> let me buy "Linux Unleashed", with the Slackware CD in it. A friend gave me
> a used Mitsumi single speed CD-ROM, and it took all night to compile the
> kernel on my i386.
>
> O'Reilly's "Essential System Administration" was my learning path of
> choice, and each time I read through it, I seemed to have a different
> highlighter color handy. It wound up with half a dozen colors inside, and
> went with me on vacations.
>
> And then I found Linux magazine...
>
> Leam
>
>
> On 5/10/23 00:57, Jon "maddog" Hall via Ale wrote:
> > OK Chuck.....since you mentioned me then told a great story....
> >
> > I too was a user of Slackware (and I will tell anyone who will listen
> what a fine human being Patrick V. is) so I was downloading and installing
> the 150+ floppy images of an early release of Slackware. Only I was too
> CHEAP to buy 150+ diskettes, so after I had downloaded 75 and installed
> them I started reusing the first diskettes and (of course) diskette ~85
> malfunctioned and O had to start the whole process over again.
> >
> > As I sat there cursing I happened to see an article about this little
> company that made a distribution that booted off CD-ROM.
> >
> > I did not have a CD-ROM at the time (remember that the first ones
> attached to your audio card) but I ran out THAT NIGHT and bought it along
> with a PC magazine that had that distribution in it.
> >
> > And that is how I started using Red Just.
> >
> > On Tue, May 9, 2023, 22:31 Chuck Payne <terrorpup at gmail.com <mailto:
> terrorpup at gmail.com>> wrote:
> >
> > DJPfulio, the good ole Walcreek CD Packs, I still have mine ( and my
> FreeBSD ones as well). Slackware was my first distro, I have my book from
> Matt Welsh that Patrick signed for me. One of my biggest Geek
> treasures along with my Linux License plate, that I got from the other geek
> that goes by Maddog gave me at the the Atlanta Linux Showcase.
> >
> > I wish I had known about ALE at that time. I was alone learning this
> stuff. As Maddog states, X was a nightmare and don't get me started on
> compiling software. The pain of spending all weekend compile a kernel so
> that it can support S3 Diamond, only to have it blow out my cheap 17"
> monitor, that I had hiked in the snow because I lived at the bottom of
> hill and wanted a PC monitor for my Linux install.
> >
> > Ugh! I had no programming background here. I am trying to understand
> how to use configure to make sure I had all the libraries for getting
> AfterStep running on my Slackware install because TWM SUCK!!! I had no
> clue that AfterStep was based on NextSTEP. What was worse, I wasn't a PC
> user, I was a Mac Head and I had to learn how to format a disk to work on a
> Linux box, Mac OS was a pain to deal with DOS or Fat formats, . and because
> I had a roommate and one phone line, I usually stayed late at the office to
> use their internet and the PC to get my disk, lucky my boss was cool with
> me doing that because I kick off 200 to 300 CAD prints for our field
> offices.
> >
> > I just remember that a friend told me to go CompUSA by Red Hat 4.2,
> and I was happy because it was simple, rpms were cool. No compiling but
> Ugh, don't get me started on Dependence Hell, which was an early issue
> with RH. The one thing that was so cool was the sound test that came with
> RH, "This Linux Torval and I pronounce Linux Linux!" and I was able to use
> X without the nightmare, I got ppp working for local mom/pop ISP I worked
> part at ( Avana Communications ), I got a news reader software working and
> what was the best thing that came with 4.2, Real Player, I know a lot of
> people hated but, but I could listen to WCW Events for free and more
> important, I could listen to the Japanese Jazz show I listen too while I
> lived in Japan. Netscape was cool too, I had bought a few copies back when
> you had to buy it.
> >
> > 26 years ago, If I remember right, back then even number kernels
> were production and odd numbers were beta/test.
> >
> > I might not be a PUP anymore as I got white hair of an old dog, but
> I am so happy that I got to start then. A lot of distro have come and gone,
> but I can say that it has made me who I am today, why I still have my lab
> and the ton of computers I am running. Think about this, if someone told
> you 26 years ago, you can run a computer with 512 MB and 4 Cores on a board
> that the sizes of a stick of gum, want would you say. I got new Rock Chip
> Arm boards the same size of Raspberry Pi 4, that have 8 Cores and 16 GIGS
> of memory, more powerful that that AMD K 486 Series with 16 Megs of memory.
> >
> > I hate seeing everything to the cloud, I am lucky enough to have
> taught my son ( Who love my nic he stole it and just add a Jr. at the end
> of it. ) how to work hardware, he builds systems for his friends and is
> going to school for Engineering. Oh, that another thing, I never when to
> school for computers. I was just again lucky to be hang around Radio Shack
> with the TSR-80 came up and started learning from the guy that ran the
> store, at first he might me hanging around but once he saw I was picking
> up, he start teaching me a lot stuff.
> >
> > Jim, good luck with your old desktop, I can upload my disk on my
> Netcloud server if you need them.
> >
> > On Tue, May 9, 2023 at 2:59 PM Jon "maddog" Hall via Ale <
> ale at ale.org <mailto:ale at ale.org>> wrote:
> >
> > >Just the simple change from "running this may destroy your
> > >monitor" to "it just works out of the box" for X is huge.
> > Much of this was due to the change of ISA bus to PCI bus and the
> associated changes to the functionality of the hardware.
> >
> > There was not much information handed back when the CPU probed a
> card on the ISA bus, so you had to edit the config file to supply that
> information.
> >
> > The monitor being destroyed was mostly due to lack of power
> limiting circuitry. As the scan rate increased more and more power was
> pulled through the circuitry eventually heating it up to flames. This
> happened more times after the monitor was separated from the system it was
> designed for and was paired with other controller boards which would
> attempt to drive it at higher scan rates. Later "multi-scan" monitors
> eliminated that problem.
> >
> > md
> >
> > On Tue, May 9, 2023 at 1:23 PM Jim Kinney via Ale <ale at ale.org
> <mailto:ale at ale.org>> wrote:
> >
> > Ah. Old slackware floppy images. Needed 7 to get a working
> OS plus enough network bits to use the modem and get more.
> >
> > I LITERALLY learned scripting because my wife would pick up
> the phone to see if I was online :-)
> > I could get 1 floppy per night.
> > Now I can get 5gbps into my house.
> >
> > Kids these days have no idea how much easier things are now.
> Just the simple change from "running this may destroy your monitor" to "it
> just works out of the box" for X is huge.
> >
> > On Tue, May 9, 2023, 10:24 AM Boris Borisov via Ale <
> ale at ale.org <mailto:ale at ale.org>> wrote:
> >
> > There is some ancient stuff here:
> >
> >
> https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/historic-linux/distributions/ <
> https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/historic-linux/distributions/>
> >
> >
> > On Tue, May 9, 2023, 10:07 Boris Borisov <
> bugyatl at gmail.com <mailto:bugyatl at gmail.com>> wrote:
> >
> > slackware.cs.utah.edu <http://slackware.cs.utah.edu>
> >
> > On Tue, May 9, 2023, 10:05 DJPfulio--- via Ale <
> ale at ale.org <mailto:ale at ale.org>> wrote:
> >
> > On 5/9/23 07:31, Jim Kinney via Ale wrote:
> > > I'm gonna look at the v 1.3 I found in their
> downloads. My testing of
> > > it was from '95-97 time frame. Many thanks!
> > >
> >
> > I kept an old Walnut Creek 6-disc Linux
> collection. Used to buy $15 updates from Microcenter every 6 months during
> most of the 1990s.
> >
> > Can probably find a Slackware 0.96 disc
> somewhere here. I didn't have a CDROM at the time, so I'd buy 50 floppies
> and stay late at work to use the CDROM drive on my workstation there to
> build the floppies from the CDROM.
> >
> > I was living outside Houston then and it was a
> 45min drive on Sunday morning to get to the "PC area" of town. It was a
> full day to head over there and visit NewEgg, Microcenter, CompUSA, and a
> few others that have long died.
> >
> > Life these days with Linux is 1000x easier.
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> >
> >
> > --
> > Terror PUP a.k.a
> > Chuck "PUP" Payne
> > -----------------------------------------
> > Discover it! Enjoy it! Share it! openSUSE Linux.
> > -----------------------------------------
> > openSUSE -- Terrorpup
> > openSUSE Ambassador/openSUSE Member
> > skype,twiiter,identica,friendfeed -- terrorpup
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> >
> > openSUSE Community Member since 2008.
> >
> >
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