Debian User Forums

Just for fun, do we have any members that remember this announcement ?

At that time I was coding the Amiga in pure assembly language ...
Amiga was at least 20 years ahead of the IBM PC clones in all technical aspects - if only Commodore wouldn't took particularly stupid business decisions, nobody would even know today about those shitty CPUs from Intel and AMD, and no one would even heard about Microsoft

Anyway, I had no access to internet at that time - but obviously I know this announcement, since it's the most famous text in the Linux world

PS:
"Guru Meditation" was the first version of BSOD in the computer industry

Great, so we at least have 1 other person, thought we would have more, but then it is still a new post.
I remember because I was browsing USENET, I was looking for alternatives to MS windows, using ms dos, and someone pointed me to it, since I was asking about a small Unix version, that could be run on a PC,..then I got side tracked Minix 2.0.2, and it's a long story, TLD I guess, but any way later I actually tried it (Linux)... I was a OTR truck driver at that time, so my computer "play time" was limited, but essential because I was using a laptop in the truck, and ham radio for data transfers , rtty and pactor, to my home, where I had a "main station" and the Desktop PC,...any way it is tolong of a story, so for now that's all folks!

I don't think I ever saw that letter but I heard about it. My introduction to Linux was a Caldera floppy in the back of a magazine. It still amazes me that an entire working OS would fit on a floppy.

Sorry for the off-topic post but:

LE_746F6D617A7A69 wrote:At that time I was coding the Amiga in pure assembly language

That is ****ing awesome, you are a legend.

EDIT: I was completely unaware of Linux until late 2013. When Linus posted the message in the OP I was just preparing to go to medical school so I had other things on my mind.

I do. I was looking for some UNIX flavor I could run on my new PC. I actually paid for Coherent (I bet few people remember that). I kept an eye on Linux, but started using FreeBSD shortly after it was released. Oh, I dual booted Linux (via Slackware and the million floppy disks it took). I guess I didn't really start running Linux as a daily driver until around 1996-97. Oh, and about that new PC. I had a Commodore 128 and lusted after the Amiga and almost bought one, but bought a PC instead. SO, I almost joined LE_746F6D617A7A69's club.

I don't remember the announcement, but I do remember hearing about Linux around that time. We were using Unix at work, and I had a 386 with 2 megabytes of RAM running MS-DOS 5.0.

It's sad that I didn't discover Debian until 2014. I messed with Ubuntu for a while, but I didn't like it's lack of stability. Once I found Debian Stable, that is all I use if I have a choice.

I didn't start using Linux until Mepis in the 90's.

But, after doing tons of research on it, I bought the original Amiga that had one built-in 3-1/2" floppy (no hard drive) and only 512K of RAM. Paid a local guy $200 to solder on another 512K. Did my Master's thesis on it (was the first person in my university to use my own computer, instead of paying a typist $1/page to type it for me).

After my 1985 thesis defense, my thesis committee wanted me to strengthen one section of my writing, and move one section of it to a different chapter.

In less than an hour, I went home, made the changes they had requested on my Amiga, printed the whole 76-page thing out on my letter-quality, dot-matrix printer, and took it back to the individual committee members, for them to sign-off on it.

ComputerBob wrote:After my 1985 thesis defense, my thesis committee wanted me to strengthen one section of my writing, and move one section of it to a different chapter.

In less than an hour, I went home, made the changes they had requested on my Amiga, printed the whole 76-page thing out on my letter-quality, dot-matrix printer, and took it back to the individual committee members, for them to sign-off on it.

LOL. That was a damn good printer. As I recall (around 1990), I would stay up all night to write a 10-page paper, hit print, take a shower, eat breakfast, and finally get my tiny (by your standards) 10-page paper off my printer.

OK. One more story... I recall using WordPerfect (in DOS) to embed some charts and a graphic in a paper around 1991. The professor held my paper in front of the class and praised it. It was actually quite embarrassing and the whole class was staring at me...angrily. After that, my fellow students started handing-in their papers in binders and other things, but no one ever matched the slickness of what I could do with WP and a few other apps. Of course, few people at that time had a computer or knew how to use the software. It was funny what impressed people then.

neuraleskimo wrote: OK. One more story... I recall using WordPerfect (in DOS) to embed some charts and a graphic in a paper around 1991. The professor held my paper in front of the class and praised it. It was actually quite embarrassing and the whole class was staring at me...angrily. After that, my fellow students started handing-in their papers in binders and other things, but no one ever matched the slickness of what I could do with WP and a few other apps. Of course, few people at that time had a computer or knew how to use the software. It was funny what impressed people then.

Ha, ha! That reminds me, that I was also the first student at the university to take class notes on a notebook computer (one of those Radio Shack ones that was a keyboard with one or two LCD lines of text).

Professors hated it, because it "clacked" as I typed, so I removed all of the keys and installed tiny little orthodontic rubber bands underneath them, to silence them. Other students were all jealous, but they always came to me when they wanted copies of class notes. I filled one whole metal file cabinet drawer with printouts of class notes, but I never, ever looked at them. Tossed them out when I moved out of state, several years later.