this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2024
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Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Linux during the mid to late 90s (Windows 95 and 98 era) (lemmy.world)
submitted 4 months ago by Tekkip20@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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For those veteran linux people, what was it like back in 90s? I did see and hear of Unix systems being available for use but I did not see much apart from old versions of Debian in use.

Were they prominent in education like universities? Was it mainly a hobbyist thing at the time compared to the business needs of 98, 95 and classic mac?

I ask this because I found out that some PC games I owned were apparently also on Linux even in CD format from a firm named Loki.

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[–] Blaster_M@lemmy.world 37 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Ah, yes, Linux around the turn of the century. Let's see...

GPU acceleration? In your dreams. Only some cards had drivers, and there were more than 2 GPU manufacturers back then, too... We had ATi, nVidia, 3dfx, Cirrus, Matrox, Via, Intel... and almost everyone held their driver source cards close to their chest.

Modems? Not if they were "winmodems", which had no hardware controller, the CPU and the Windows driver (which was always super proprietary) did all the hard work.

Sound? AC'97 software audio was out of the question. See above. You had to find a sound blaster card if you wanted to get audio to work right.

So, you know how modern linux has software packages? Well, back then, we had Slackware, and it compiled everything gentoo style back then. In addition, everyone had a hardon for " compiling from source is better"... so your single core Pentium II had to take its time compiling on a UDMA66-connected hard drive, constrained with 32 or 64 MB RAM. Updating was an overnight procedure.

RedHat and Debian were godsends for people who didn't want to waste their time compiling.... which unfortinately was more common even so, because a lot of software was source only.

Oh, and then MP3 support was ripped out of RedHat in Version 9 iirc, the last version before they split it into RHEL and Fedora. RIP music.

As for Linux on a Mac, there was Yellowdog, which supported the PPC iMacs and such. It was decently good, but I had to write my own x11 monitor settings file (which I still have on a server somewhere, shockingly, I should throw it on github or somewhere) to get the screen to line up and work right.

Basically, be glad Linux has gone from the "spend a considerable amount of time and have programming / underhood linux knowledge to get it working" to "insert stick, install os, start using it" we have now.

[–] MonkderDritte@feddit.de 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

In addition, everyone had a hardon for " compiling from source is better"

I mean, optimization had more of an impact on the weak CPU's back then, no?

[–] Blaster_M@lemmy.world 5 points 4 months ago

That only matters if there's anything to optimize by source compilation. If the program doesn't have optimization features in the source, it's wated time and energy.