1999 was pretty great! I was running Linux, with a nice huge full-colour display running XFree86. Back then it was Mozilla, not Firefox. I had Emacs. TCP/IP and Ethernet had won. MP3s were common. Streaming existed, albeit the options were pretty poor. I had a CD player in my computer and a DVD player in the den. OTOH, CPU, RAM and hard drives were a lot smaller, slower and more expensive.

Here in 2024, I am running Linux, with a nice huge full-colour display running XOrg (because Wayland is still not ready for primetime). I’m using Firefox. I have Emacs. TCP/IP and Ethernet are still around, although if I want spotty performance there’s always WiFi. FLAC and Ogg Vorbis have mostly replaced MP3s. I can easily watch high-resolution video, which is a definite improvement. Streaming, too, has gotten a lot better. I have a CD/DVD RW drive in my computer. CPU, RAM and storage are a lot larger, faster and cheaper.

It’s not really that different, other than the spyware infesting the web. That pretty much didn’t exist in 1999.

I wouldn’t mind going back to 1999. The software I used had a lot less bloat!