4 ms·

I have fond memories of holding a printed out gentoo install manual and watching windows getting wiped from my box as a kid. Then the terror of getting the mod

I have fond memories of holding a printed out gentoo install manual and watching windows getting wiped from my box as a kid. Then the terror of getting the modem to dial from a terminal, using lynx to get some browsing going so i could figure out how to get some GUI going on the thing. Finally, getting Wine to run CS 1.6 so I could play at LAN parties with my buddies. They all thought I was a wizard because I was running this strange OS. I genuinely believed that gentoo was going to give my machine super powers because all the software was "compiled and optimised for my machine." Maybe that was a little off the mark, but a great learning experience! Now everyone has a smartphone, so it's hard to replicate that feeling of being cut off from the net with just a printed manual and your determination to carry you through. Good times!

isostatic 8y ago
I think in those days you had to use a terminal emulator of some sort (maybe minicom?) to dial the ISP, then background (without hanging up), then run up pppd. I had no idea what was going on with this process. Obviously at this stage, a working X was a fantasy. You had your 6 ttys and that was it. My first linux was redhat 5 from the CD on the back of a book - it didn't support my SIS 6326 card -- funny how I remember what graphics card I had 20 years ago, but have no idea what's in my desktop at the moment other than "some nvidia thing". According to a post I can still find on usenet: "I got X running in 600*480 but the mouse pointer was corrupt, so they were close, but not close enough." I assume I was dual-booting with windows 95 or 98 for my first year or so, at least until I got a better graphics card -- a Voodoo Banshee I think. I'd moved to debian by September 2000 though when I went to uni, and a year later when I saw in the Billenium with date running in an xterm. > Now everyone has a smartphone, so it's hard to replicate that feeling of being cut off from the net with just a printed manual and your determination to carry you through It's amazing how we used to survive without the sum knowledge of humanity available at our fingerprints.

isostatic 8y ago

I think in those days you had to use a terminal emulator of some sort (maybe minicom?) to dial the ISP, then background (without hanging up), then run up pppd. I had no idea what was going on with this process. Obviously at this stage, a working X was a fantasy. You had your 6 ttys and that was it. My first linux was redhat 5 from the CD on the back of a book - it didn't support my SIS 6326 card -- funny how I remember what graphics card I had 20 years ago, but have no idea what's in my desktop at the moment other than "some nvidia thing". According to a post I can still find on usenet: "I got X running in 600*480 but the mouse pointer was corrupt, so they were close, but not close enough." I assume I was dual-booting with windows 95 or 98 for my first year or so, at least until I got a better graphics card -- a Voodoo Banshee I think. I'd moved to debian by September 2000 though when I went to uni, and a year later when I saw in the Billenium with date running in an xterm. > Now everyone has a smartphone, so it's hard to replicate that feeling of being cut off from the net with just a printed manual and your determination to carry you through It's amazing how we used to survive without the sum knowledge of humanity available at our fingerprints.