GNOME and Red Hat Linux eleven years ago (2009) | Hacker News Reader

GNOME and Red Hat Linux eleven years ago (2009)

linuxgazette.net

128 pointsmarcodiego81 comments

I remember this era. It was Slackware, Caldera, TurboLinux, Mandrake and lots of hours with `./configure; make && make install` executions, reading Linux magazines and big fat books on getting it up and running (losing "precious" data in the process as well). Seeing scary fsck messages when booting up a PC that wasn't properly shutdown. I also remember that there was WinLinux 2000 for those who where scared having a real linux installed. I can't recall the real reason nor how I heard about Linux at the time, but I'm immensely grateful that I did and with time switched permanently to the open source side.

Great skill building times!

I bought Redhawks 5.2 or .3 in the big box, bought the Linux Bible and went to town.

Was running Sgi IRIX full time back then. When Linux booted, I had two thoughts!

(Glances at spiffy Sgi Indigo Magic Desktop)

1) Hoo Boy, we have a long way to go

, and

2) YES, a lot is possible today!

Good times.

> ./configure; make && make install

This was what eventually lead me to Gentoo, if I'm going to have to compile some things why not all the things?

And being able to install mpg123 without installing X, that was nice.

I wish I spent that time compiling Gentoo a decade and a half ago farming bitcoins instead. What a waste of time!

Would it be as fun though?

Yea I would have spent it on pizza.

That’s a lot of pizza.

Not at 10k bitcoins per pizza.

I had the opposite, lots of that lead me to Debian instead. It wasn't so much the pain of compiling something once, but the ongoing pain of updating.

> if I'm going to have to compile some things why not all the things?

Time? Compiling the kernel took 10m on a reasonable fast workstation-like PC. It could easily take three times as long on a more budget-friendly PC. And the kernel wasn't the largest package by any means. gcc (wants to be compiled three times) or, shudder, TeX? Very little benefit of compiling that oneself over and over again while a quite substantial cost.

The Red Hat CDs had HOWTOs in them, you could use them to get many things done step by step.

If there was a packaged version you would prefer that, but not a lot of stuff was packaged in RPMs at the time.

When Ubuntu came out and they started sending CDs for free worldwide (kudos to Mark Shuttleworth), that's when the Ubuntu/Debian started dominating.

I miss the era of "startx"!

That brings back memories! As does running the desktop from one’s .xinitrc:

    panel &
    background-properties --init &
    keyboard-properties --init &
    mouse-properties --init &
    fvwm2 -f .fvwm2rc.gnome

Honestly, I think that there was a lot to love about that straightforward, discoverable way of doing things.

I do it this way even today, although I don't mess with gnome bits, just stumpwm and xmodmap, xbindkeys, etc

I still do this. And no systemd. I like simple things that I understand and can do from first principles.

no udev?

> Honestly, I think that there was a lot to love about that straightforward, discoverable way of doing things.

Still common for ArchLinux users.

People still don't believe me when I say this was a real thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_VxrcNgUlM (Red Hat Linux Once Featured A REDNECK Translation)

Pirate and Swedish Chief too if I remember correctly.

We tried this out a middle schoolers at an installfest in Alabama in the 90s, but something was broken with the resulting install and had to wipe it and start over. Funny that 25+ years later I learn that the problem could have been that the locale was set to en_RN…

Good times. My first Linux distribution was a copy of RH 6.1 that my parents bought me from OfficeMax. They weren’t too thrilled when I nuked the MBR on our family’s Windows 98 box, but they’ve subsequently benefitted from nearly 30 years of free tech support haha. Took me another year or so before I finally got X working on our Dell laptop, because I had to install a patched X server to work with its Rage Mobility graphics card. I remember thinking that my keyboard was broken because `su` didn’t echo my password back out to the console. We all have to start somewhere, and the manuals that came with that install were priceless to me.

>We all have to start somewhere, and the manuals that came with that install were priceless to me.

I made a comment above and it's worth repeating again, the manual was indispensable.

Red Hat Linux on the family PC in the 90's changed the course of my life.

Same. Finally had my own computer that could run a modern OS. I used to read manuals back then.

can I ask how it has changed the course of your life?

I've deen daily driving Ubuntu with KDE for about 2 years now. it's been great and I've had a lot of fun exploring things and learning the GNU tools in particular. I've been interested in contributing to some projects but that hasn't been very accessible so far.

Not sure about the person you're directly asking but I have a similar sentiment for Red Hat Linux of the era.

I've been a Linux sysadmin since 1999. Every dollar I've paid for food and shelter since has been a direct result of what I learned getting Linux up and running on a PC and dialed up (later connected via Ethernet/Cable Modem) to the internet.

I have no clue what I would have done otherwise. I'd probably be working in Public Health or recently unemployed from the EPA by the Trumps Doge Squad.

I got my PC in 1996, replacing my 1990 Amstrad CPC. I was contributing to free software projects a little over a year or so later, working full time customizing free software in house by 2001, made a short film about GNU in 2007 and a consultant at the FSF by 2008.

Introduced me to Linux. Nobody on the school playground had even heard of it. Helped fuel my lifelong interest in computers. The Linux and tech experience contributed to my current role.

Probably try to find something that hasn’t been around forever and seems solid but doesn’t have a huge contributor base.

I have never been paid to write code, and my formal CS education is limited to AP Computer Science, and a one-credit Java class in college. But like 2OEH8eoCRo0, I can say that Red Hat Linux changed my life. Experience running Linux from kernel 1.2.13/Red Hat Linux 2.1 onward at home, and contributing small bits of code to a project or two (and RPMs to community repos), got me into a career at Wall Street after college, covering hardware and software companies (including RHAT) as an equity analyst during and after the dotcom bubble.

First Linux I bought was Walnut Creek Linux CD-ROM. Second was Redhat. I would still be on Redhat if it were not for IBM and their bad faith source-available interpretation of the GPL. Then I bought Mandrake and used it as long as it was Mandrake and not the thing that became Conectiva. Then I heard about Ubuntu which would mail free CDs anywhere in the world. I was in education back then and my students would ask Ubuntu for CDs for a class I was teaching, and Canonical sent them a cardboard display, flyers, stickers, and about 50 CDs. They watched in class Revolution OS and contacted many of the people on it, which were kind enough to answer them. Those were the times; I'm old, yet still looking for a job because I love the industry.

I can't remember the name of the Linux CD set I would buy. It had a red background and a picture of the globe. The cds contained slackware/sunsite/gnu etc. I think it started with an "I"...

EDIT:

Found it, wild nostalgia! It was infomagic. This was my first Linux install: https://archive.org/details/ldr_0895_4cd

Hah, I downloaded floppy disk images from Walnut Creek CD-ROM's amazing FTP mirror site, wrote them to actual floppies in my university computer lab, and carried those home to try out SLS and later Slackware.

Starting with Linux in 1993, I was already using it productively for years before things like SSH and VMware existed!

I love those old project codenames. They were all connected to each other, but different. Manthattan -> Apollo (both were “Projects”). Apollo to Hedwig (both were characters), etc.

I don't anything will top Fedora's 'Beefy Miracle'.

RIP Beefy Miracle...

https://beefymiracle.org/

Cartman and Zoot!

First time I installed linux was around 98, something went wrong and I could not boot and once able to boot could not get on the net. Went through all the information I had printed out and the books I had to no avail, called everyone I could think of. For the next week I had daily bus rides to the library where I would get on IRC to ask any question I could think of, download anything which might help, take lots of notes, make a new boot disk or two and then back home to spend the night trying to sort things out.

First thing I did when I got everything working was sign on to a couple local BBS's so I could play LORD, had to catch up on all that lost time. Felt pretty great to play LORD from console.

Wish I'd been that successful. I tried to install Red Hat in '98 with absolutely no support or help. Got the disks from a friend of mine whose dad was a SWE. I ended up (figuratively) crawling on my belly back to the computer shop where I bought the hardware to reinstall Windows. Not my proudest moment!

But in hindsight very expected. When I switched to Linux full time around 2010 I started realizing how disadvantaged I was at the time and forgave myself :-)

I also first tried Linux (with zero unix knowledge) about 98 or 99 with RH5.1 which I think was the 2.0.3x kernel.

Frankly I'm amazed I got as far as I did despite it was mostly uninformed blundering about and bashing my head against the wall. I managed to figure out the specific AT codes to make my modem connect, and even managed to download and compile KDE 1.1 (the default UI was so ugly and clunky). KDE took about a day to compile from memory.

I don't think I can say that I was successful, various people on IRC were the ones who were successful and I was just lucky they were willing to compile kernels and make disk images for me since the library computers lacked the required software to do all that stuff.

:) It's difficult to imagine this today, but back then most households had a single ("the") computer shared by everyone. This was a challenge for adventurous geeks interested in Linux for two reasons. First, you couldn't get help with setting up Linux from the internet if the computer was out of service or you couldn't get online (getting your "winmodem" recognized and working was an endeavor all by itself). So I totally relate to your trips to the library. I used to print all the possible manuals and tutorials up front before attempting an installation, and have all the drivers I might need on floppies ready to go.

But most importantly, if you messed up the Windows installation for any reason (Linux was unusable after all in those days for mere mortals...), you broke the machine for everyone else in the household. I remember getting into trouble for this several times, and tinkering with Linux was always a rush because of it. I finally got my own _personal_ computer a few years later, which was a huge relief.

Bought my copy at a flea market. Installed it on my Compaq, 233mhz or so, 128mb. Got it going by booting the system using the floppy. The article doesn't mention it much, but the distribution came with a booklet helping you install the distro. and an intro to unix. This was my start. For a while all I had was the text interface as X and GUI was a problem to get going. Then the modem, you ever try to dial up, never having used computers before, using new to me everything. Still love it to this day. I also went and got my RHCE, which was pretty hard. Anyway, enough remembered...

If you had to integrate it into an existing office network, you might do things like this:

https://www.neilvandyke.org/lab-linux-1999/

For more Linux history, see the "Free Software Business" mailing list, https://web.archive.org/web/20001219073400/http://www.crynwr...

In 1999, RedHat acquired Cygnus for $674M, https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/press-cygnusa...

Or just the Linux Gazzete itself:

https://linuxgazette.net/archives.html

This Github repo has every issue. Lots of info it's outated, but stuff on FVWM, TWM, scripting, sh, sed, awk, Perl... will just work.

Heh. I used to write for the LG...

Some of the information is out-dated yes, you'd expect that. Especially when people were asking for help about dial-up modems, for example.

But I bet if you were to try some of the other stuff on there, it would still work today...

Motif is peak UI

It is showcased in the SGI Indigo Magic Desktop.

You can build similar GUI apps with FLTK today

Or just the same OpenMotif as it was libre since a while ago.

The API was horrible, though.

Ahhh, what a lovely trip down memory lane. For me it was Mandrake. I ordered a copy of it from Linux Distros circa 2004 or so; once it arrived, immediately arranged for a sleep over with my buddy so we could hack together a machine to run it. Literally took _all night_ to get it running, and then when we did, realized the machine required a PS/2 keyboard and mouse, which ended up delaying our initial use by another day.

If you go through the trouble of trying one of these ancient distributions, use a mode line calculator (e.g., https://arachnoid.com/modelines/index.html ) for your XFree86.config. With that, it's straightforward to get it working on a 16:9, 16:10, or any other resolution.

There was a game from that Red Hat era that I loved so much, I **think** it was in Red Hat in that same period. It was a really simple adventure game in 2d, you could play in a window after typing/entering startx. But can't remember the name, I was 12 and it seems today like I dreamt about the game lol.

Would appreciate if anyone remembers it!

Sure! How about a description?

It looks like Lode Runner, but even more simple as I remember. Not sure if it came together with KDE. So long ago.

Any more information than that? Abuse?

maybe this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocks%27n%27Diamonds

https://apps.kde.org/kgoldrunner/

Could be xscavenger?

> Scavenger is a cool arcade/thinking game very much like Lode Runner. You've got to run around and collect objects while avoiding enemies. Some objects are buried and you've got to dig down to get at them. It's an addictive game and some of the levels are devilishly (cruelly) complicated to solve.

https://linuxmotors.com/linux/scavenger/index.html

There was a game from that Red Hat era that I loved so much, I *think* it was in Red Hat in that same period. It was a really simple adventure game in 2d, you could play in a window after typing/entering startx. But can't remember the name, I was 12 and it seems today like I dreamt about the game lol.

Would appreciate if anyone remembers it!

I would suspect something on ScummVM. That is a lot of games though: https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=Category:Supported_...

My Linux life started even earlier, with a borrowed Red Hat 4 CD around 1995/6.

But it took quite a few years before it ran well enough for me to consider using it full time.

I remember the first versions of GNOME being buggy as hell.

Then I spent a couple of years compiling Gentoo, can't remember actually using it much.

RH 8.0 was my introduction to Linux and fighting with winmodems. After a few months I found an external US Robotics 56k modem which made exploring the web much easier. My whole career in tech can be traced back to that time.

I seem to recall my first RH install/live demo, was a cover disc from one of the comp mags at the time. I guess these days the disc would just have an unlock code for a vast download, followed by another vast download to update.

>From switching on, I can get to the 1998 GNOME desktop in two to three seconds, whereas with a recent kernel and KDE it takes thirty

This is what I miss. I remember installing my first SSD and thinking thank goodness I am back down to 6s boot times, but it didnt last long. Although Asahi on my M1 is feels just about fast enough that I do a complete shutdown after each use.

Can’t recall if it was this exact one but I got one of these for my Dell. And I am gonna be honest and say it was not a good experience for me.

Great times. Slackware then redhat in the late 90s was how/when I got started with linux and built solid cmdline skills.

From that era I love the wmicons package (it's under OpenBSD's ports and maybe Debian too).

Why does this Gnome beta preview have TWM windowing? Was the Gnome kind not available yet?

The article notes Gnome didn't have it's own window manager yet.

I'm slightly surprised it's using TWM, rather than something like FVWM95, I'm sure I used an ancient version of Red Hat that used that, but it might be the author's preference.

(Edit: another poster says FVWM95 was the release after this...)

I remember when GNOME used the Sawfish window manager. This was after that but before Metacity.

IIRC on this version of Red Hat TWM was the default window manager installed. FVWM, WindowMaker, and maybe Enlightenment shipped on the disc. Again IIRC the next version (5.2) used FVWM95 by default. Maybe 6.0 shipped with FVWM95 by default. It's been a minute.

5.2 had FVWM95 as the default. There were menu options to restart in AfterStep and something else, probably twm. That was my first Linux. I also compiled qvwm, mlvwm, IceWM from scratch. And ultimately settled on Blackbox.

Gnome used to run with E and Sawfish.

I'm glad how we have come in terms of UI/UX since then!

> I'm glad how we have come in terms of UI/UX since then!

Yes, we thought twm and Win 95 sucked. Now we have Material design which sucks many li. /s

Gnome was indeed garbage then

"I used to be garbage. I still am, but I used to be, to."

-Gnome

I always assumed that Mitch Hedberg was above average height.

> Gnome was indeed garbage then

And now it's a landfill.

This belongs in a museum!

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