[ale] Ancient desktop
Jon "maddog" Hall
jon.maddog.hall at gmail.com
Wed May 10 09:34:43 EDT 2023
Here in New Hampshire many towns have a "town dump" where people bring
their garbage and politicians meet to greet and shake hands on election
years.
I have met many Unix(R) and Linux(R) users because of my "Live Free or DIE"
Unix plate that I have owned since 1989.
md
On Wed, May 10, 2023, 08:34 Jim Kinney via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:
> 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
>> > freenode(irc) --terrorpup/lupinstein
>> > Register Linux Userid: 155363
>> >
>> > openSUSE Community Member since 2008.
>> >
>> >
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>> Scribe: The Domici War (domiciwar.net)
>> General Ne'er-do-well (github.com/LeamHall)
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