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Joined 7 months ago
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Cake day: November 29th, 2023

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  • My first Linux installation was done using Red Hat CDs that I purchased for around $20. Probably around 1996. Patching was difficult. Drivers for many pieces of hardware didn’t exist. Remember Plug and Play was pretty new at that time frame. Lots of manual resolution of things like driver interrupt conflicts (boards had physical jumpers that you could move to change which IRQ they asserted). Looking back on it, I can’t believe any of us were doing it. But the eventual payout was wonderful. I can’t imagine what 1996 me would think about how easy something like the latest Ubuntu is. I would probably be pretty awed because I have a decent understanding of the massive amount of work that has been poured into the ecosystem now to make it what it is today.

    All that said, I will always have a soft spot for Solaris on an Ultraspark. That shit worked great.


  • I had an HP laptop in the early 2000s, the hard drive crashed (my wife set some mail on top of it and the mail had a large advertising magnet in it). I bought a replacement. When I opened it up, the hard drive connector was HP proprietary. A replacement drive from HP was $475 for the same size that I paid $80 for an industry standard drive. I bought a replacement laptop instead and have been warning people against HP for the last 20 years. Many people come to me for IT help (entire extended family), so I am sure I have hurt HP some. Their printer drivers are the biggest bloatware crap too. Absolutely scum company.