Comment by Yetanfou | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Yetanfou | Hacker News Reader

I used Linux on a Toshiba T1900C (20Mhz 486SX, 4MB/170MB) [1]. I started with SLS [2], later moved to Slackware 3.0. SLS was installed through floppies which I pulled from tape on an RS/6000 7012-32T, marking the transition from 'real but expensive unix' to Linux in one fell swoop. X was a bit sluggish on the thing but for the rest it was quite usable.

Using Linux in this early age had advantages but it also came with some risks. Not risks to me as a Linux user but risks to those exposed to things I produced. I managed to create a CD which was distributed with a magazine I was editor for in that period. The CD worked fine on Linux, it worked fine on OS/2 - the other system I used when not on Linux - but it failed miserably on Windows 3.1x due to the use of lower-case filenames. This was... unfortunate... as that CD had already been pressed, what to do? I ended up solving the conundrum by distributing a tailored version of MSCDEX [3] which could handle these files, affected users could order a floppy free of charge.

[1] http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/13145/Toshiba-T1900C/

[2] https://github.com/rdebath/SLS-1.02

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSCDEX

Interesting story, thanks for sharing! I too started off with Linux back in the day - I'd been on minix-list for a few weeks after just getting a 386 and wanting something decent to run on it, replacing the Desqview configuration I'd been using previously. So I was quite happy to download Linus' little kernel and see what it could do .. one floppy at a time from funet.fi, lol. What a great impression it made - a real unix on a 386! Of course, the fact that it took a week to compile X/Windows wasn't that big a deal. :)

Then I moved on from building everything from scratch - a great learning experience back in the day - to Yggdrasil, which was simply a great distro for the time. Ah, good ol' days .. I really wonder what I'd do different if I had a time machine and could go back and tell myself all the things Linux would be used for in the decades ahead, it would have really blown my mind .. Still does!

I still have fond memories of building a kernel in winter on a P4. No heater needed. Make menuconfig, because the TCL part was too heavy...

Its kind of balls that those moments are so far away, yet so near. I mean, we could if we wanted to, 'make menuconfig', I'm quite sure, even still.

But .. nah.

;)

`make menuconfig` still works fine, I use it to configure kernels for use on Android. Since I build those on a server somewhere on the 'net - actually it sits under the stairs but for all intents and purposes it could have been on the other side of the world - it is handy to be able to use a console-based method.

I do prefer `menuconfig` (combined with `oldconfig`) in any case, possibly out of habit but also because this type of text-based user interface often is much faster to use than its graphical equivalent.

You mean there's something fancier than `menuconfig`??

Not really. I just don't bother building my own kernel any more - the distro I use (Ubuntu Studio) comes with one that works great out of the box. Nice to know I still could, though .. ;)

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