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My first PC was a Pentium 90 with 16MB RAM in 1994. I bought it specifically to run Linux. I've never really used DOS/Windows as my main OS on my personal mac

My first PC was a Pentium 90 with 16MB RAM in 1994. I bought it specifically to run Linux. I've never really used DOS/Windows as my main OS on my personal machine. Everything was fast back then. I had X11, Netscape, ethernet in the dorm. In a lot of ways I prefer the simple text heavy web pages of the time. I've been designing integrated circuits including many chips in popular smartphones, network switches, and more. We make stuff faster but software manages to expand making my 8 core CPU with 64GB of RAM feel about the same when web browsing compared to back then. I don't want to go back to those days but in many ways my computer with multiple X terminals, XFCE desktop, and Firefox, is extremely similar.

dizhn 3y ago
Even years after that Netscape would crash without any error messages and vanish multiple times a day. The past might have been good but we take so many things for granted today. Even if a browser crashes, it usually keeps all your tabs intact when you start it back up.
- ghaff 3y ago
  Something disappears into the ether every couple of years these days, but losing most of a day's work to a crash or some fat-fingered muscle memory back in the day didn't used to be an uncommon occurrence at all.