5 ms·

I'm quite sure that students, even grad students, at UIUC, had lots of access to windows based computers in 1993. Just because they weren't doing their work on

by dbt00 5y ago

I'm quite sure that students, even grad students, at UIUC, had lots of access to windows based computers in 1993. Just because they weren't doing their work on them didn't mean they didn't have PCs running DOS or Windows (and maybe dual booting Linux).

dotancohen 5y ago
They were most certainly not dual booting Linux in 1993.
- tingletech 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure we were dual booting linux in 1993, why were we certainly not?
  - ricardobeat 5y ago
    I think you could barely fit one OS in your 64MB hard drive at the time…
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - Kye 5y ago
      Windows 3.11 (1993) was ~15MB once installed.
    - bluedino 5y ago
      Computers came in towers back then which could contain many hard drives
    - kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
      250MB was common by then and Linux distros only took up a dozenish MB. Lilo existed by then and everyone dual booted to DOS/Win3. If you didn't want to modify the MBR you could boot Linux from DOS with loadlin.exe.
    - smhenderson 5y ago
      1993 is roughly when I bought my first computer and it came with 120 MB HD. I dual booted Linux (Slackware) on it in 1995. Still on Win 3.11 though, I believe I bought a bigger hard drive before upgrading to Windows 95, but still dual booting with Linux on another partition. You could fit a lot more OS on an HD in 1993 than you can now!
    - dredmorbius 5y ago
      Windows 3.11 required 14 MB HD space. https://www.technologytips.com/windows-system-requirements/ https://www.technologytips.com/windows-system-requirements/ At 64 MB, you wouldn't have a whole lot of space for data and applications / utilities, but you could certainly cram a couple of OSes on it. The first "user-installable" linux was arguably SLS, which came on 24 1.5 MB floppies. I'm unsure what the installed size was, but likely in the 24 -- 48 MB range. https://opensource.com/article/18/8/first-linux-install https://opensource.com/article/18/8/first-linux-install
  - fsiefken 5y ago
    Not in my university, i had a used toshiba 386sx25Mhz as a laptop with Windows 3.11. The fastest public desktop computer was a 486DX2 running at 66Mhz, around 6 of them on the 4th floor from the physics faculty, that was early 1994. It was running Mosaic and Netscape 0.9 or so with Win 3.11, no dual boot. When I got my own room and built myself a 486DX5@133 Mhz I got RedHat linux on it, dual booting, I think it was '95. My roommate had a pentium with Windows98SE running Moria, he was quite addicted to it. Perhaps some very adventurous types were trying out Linux on their own machines in 1993 but distributions were all pretty new, I am not sure it was written about in Byte or C'T magazine in 1993. Perhaps it was discussed on mailinglists or usenet groups, but it was not really findable on the www I think. I frequented a site called 'on the bleeding edge' featuring a picture of a knife (or so I remember) and a list of kernel version numbers and patches. Not sure what date, but might have been '95. I remember downloading and compiling kernel 1.1 or 1.2 - which were released in 1994. In 1995 I bought the offical RedHat CD's, I might have tried Slackware or Debian floppy disks earlier. A friend was running Linux with X-Windows, Emacs and Mosaic on his Pentium with WindowMaker or AfterStep. No dual-boot. He was on usenet (with the built-in netscape usenet reader) and played with Lisp, he had studied physics (or was it philosophy) at the Utrecht University. Heaps of Byte and Astronomy magazines and SF books littered in his room where he enjoyed a glass of wine and a cigar. I occasionally dropped by for a chat about linux, SF, astronomy and the meaning of life and my own troubles. I think he had dropped out of college for some reason years ago but I never dared asking why. He was brilliant and stayed in the student dorm as a senior. Unfortunately at 45 or so he died in his sleep I heard later when I wasn't living there anymore. He had a good job at the municipality and was well respected for his knowledge, seriousness, dry and dark humor and wit and was still living in the student dorm.
    - tingletech 5y ago
      my next door neighbor was running a dual boot DOS and slackware 0.8 kernel in 1992. I still have an account on a machine descended from it.
- ska 5y ago
  > They were most certainly not dual booting Linux in 1993. This just isn't true.
rahoulb 5y ago
I don't know about UIUC, but I was at university in the UK in 1993. We had "labs" with about 30 Windows/DOS PCs in them that were for general use (meaning word-processing). Probably 1 in 100 students had their own computer (and if so it was more likely to be an Amiga or Atari ST). My course wasn't computer-related, but I took a few computer-based modules (graphics, vision, AI, intro to programming). All of these apart from intro to programming where done on university SunOS/Solaris or Irix machines (and Intro to Programming was in Turbo Pascal for DOS on those Windows machines). The SGI Irix machines (made famous in the original Jurassic Park) were really nice.

by dbt00 5y ago

dotancohen 5y ago

They were most certainly not dual booting Linux in 1993.

tingletech 5y ago
I'm pretty sure we were dual booting linux in 1993, why were we certainly not?
- ricardobeat 5y ago
  I think you could barely fit one OS in your 64MB hard drive at the time…
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Kye 5y ago
    Windows 3.11 (1993) was ~15MB once installed.
  - bluedino 5y ago
    Computers came in towers back then which could contain many hard drives
  - kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
    250MB was common by then and Linux distros only took up a dozenish MB. Lilo existed by then and everyone dual booted to DOS/Win3. If you didn't want to modify the MBR you could boot Linux from DOS with loadlin.exe.
  - smhenderson 5y ago
    1993 is roughly when I bought my first computer and it came with 120 MB HD. I dual booted Linux (Slackware) on it in 1995. Still on Win 3.11 though, I believe I bought a bigger hard drive before upgrading to Windows 95, but still dual booting with Linux on another partition. You could fit a lot more OS on an HD in 1993 than you can now!
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    Windows 3.11 required 14 MB HD space. https://www.technologytips.com/windows-system-requirements/ https://www.technologytips.com/windows-system-requirements/ At 64 MB, you wouldn't have a whole lot of space for data and applications / utilities, but you could certainly cram a couple of OSes on it. The first "user-installable" linux was arguably SLS, which came on 24 1.5 MB floppies. I'm unsure what the installed size was, but likely in the 24 -- 48 MB range. https://opensource.com/article/18/8/first-linux-install https://opensource.com/article/18/8/first-linux-install
- fsiefken 5y ago
  Not in my university, i had a used toshiba 386sx25Mhz as a laptop with Windows 3.11. The fastest public desktop computer was a 486DX2 running at 66Mhz, around 6 of them on the 4th floor from the physics faculty, that was early 1994. It was running Mosaic and Netscape 0.9 or so with Win 3.11, no dual boot. When I got my own room and built myself a 486DX5@133 Mhz I got RedHat linux on it, dual booting, I think it was '95. My roommate had a pentium with Windows98SE running Moria, he was quite addicted to it. Perhaps some very adventurous types were trying out Linux on their own machines in 1993 but distributions were all pretty new, I am not sure it was written about in Byte or C'T magazine in 1993. Perhaps it was discussed on mailinglists or usenet groups, but it was not really findable on the www I think. I frequented a site called 'on the bleeding edge' featuring a picture of a knife (or so I remember) and a list of kernel version numbers and patches. Not sure what date, but might have been '95. I remember downloading and compiling kernel 1.1 or 1.2 - which were released in 1994. In 1995 I bought the offical RedHat CD's, I might have tried Slackware or Debian floppy disks earlier. A friend was running Linux with X-Windows, Emacs and Mosaic on his Pentium with WindowMaker or AfterStep. No dual-boot. He was on usenet (with the built-in netscape usenet reader) and played with Lisp, he had studied physics (or was it philosophy) at the Utrecht University. Heaps of Byte and Astronomy magazines and SF books littered in his room where he enjoyed a glass of wine and a cigar. I occasionally dropped by for a chat about linux, SF, astronomy and the meaning of life and my own troubles. I think he had dropped out of college for some reason years ago but I never dared asking why. He was brilliant and stayed in the student dorm as a senior. Unfortunately at 45 or so he died in his sleep I heard later when I wasn't living there anymore. He had a good job at the municipality and was well respected for his knowledge, seriousness, dry and dark humor and wit and was still living in the student dorm.
  - tingletech 5y ago
    my next door neighbor was running a dual boot DOS and slackware 0.8 kernel in 1992. I still have an account on a machine descended from it.
ska 5y ago
> They were most certainly not dual booting Linux in 1993. This just isn't true.

rahoulb 5y ago

I don't know about UIUC, but I was at university in the UK in 1993. We had "labs" with about 30 Windows/DOS PCs in them that were for general use (meaning word-processing). Probably 1 in 100 students had their own computer (and if so it was more likely to be an Amiga or Atari ST). My course wasn't computer-related, but I took a few computer-based modules (graphics, vision, AI, intro to programming). All of these apart from intro to programming where done on university SunOS/Solaris or Irix machines (and Intro to Programming was in Turbo Pascal for DOS on those Windows machines). The SGI Irix machines (made famous in the original Jurassic Park) were really nice.