Slackware 13.37: Linux for the fun of it

Posted Mar 26, 2011 22:54 UTC (Sat) by malor (guest, #2973)
In reply to: Slackware 13.37: Linux for the fun of it by jcm
Parent article: Slackware 13.37: Linux for the fun of it

I'd argue that if you have to keep your brain engaged to use a computer without blowing anything up, it's most emphatically not getting out of your way. :-)

There's still plenty of brain-bending stuff in Linux these days -- a great deal more of it, in fact. Things must be a hundred times as complex, overall, as they were back then. You don't need as much knowledge to use the system at a basic level, but becoming truly expert is far more difficult than it was, simply because there's so much more to know.

Slackware 13.37: Linux for the fun of it

Posted Mar 27, 2011 4:50 UTC (Sun) by jcm (subscriber, #18262) [Link] (4 responses)

I'm thinking about the LWN crowd - people who work on Linuxy stuff. I'm all for using EDID provided data and doing everything automatically for end users, and even happy with lots of the prettification on that front, but if you're going to really work with Linux in terms of the features and experience provided to end users, you should be forced to at least know what a mode line is, etc. If this kind of logic were broadly applied, the results could only be a good thing.

Slackware 13.37: Linux for the fun of it

Posted Mar 27, 2011 7:20 UTC (Sun) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (3 responses)

Modelines are among the most arbitrary wastes of time ever inflicted on Linux users (and I say this as an ex-graphics driver writer). You'd spend the afternoon reading docs and fiddling little numbers just trying to get the stupid video card and monitor to sync without flickering. The only lesson you'd remember is that most graphics hardware is junk... which you already knew.

You'd rather see people monkeying around with VESA tables instead of working with Linux? You advocate FORCING people to learn this antiquated stuff?? You should force them to key in the bootloader using front-panel switches instead, at least then they learn the machine architecture.

Slackware 13.37: Linux for the fun of it

Posted Mar 27, 2011 17:38 UTC (Sun) by sfeam (subscriber, #2841) [Link] (1 responses)

You should force them to key in the bootloader using front-panel switches instead
Ah, nostalgia. But was there really a version of linux that would run on a PDP-8?

Slackware 13.37: Linux for the fun of it

Posted Mar 30, 2011 5:01 UTC (Wed) by cmccabe (guest, #60281) [Link]

> Ah, nostalgia. But was there really a version of linux
> that would run on a PDP-8?

No... not *yet*.

Just kidding. I don't think Linus would take that new arch. We've got enough archs that are pining for the fjords already...

But seriously, someone did write a UNIX for commodore 64 from scratch in the 1990s. It was called LUnix:

http://hld.c64.org/poldi/lunix/lun_about.html

Apparently it was written in pure assembly language. Wow...

Slackware 13.37: Linux for the fun of it

Posted Mar 27, 2011 18:13 UTC (Sun) by jcm (subscriber, #18262) [Link]

Certainly some velue in the front panel switch suggestion as well. Having a good understanding of computer architecture is never wasted ;)

Clearly I'm exaggerating. But I don't always like the world we live in because things are sometimes getting a bit easy. This is why I think occasionally doing something arcane or forcing yourself to skip the fluff for a few minutes can only be useful education.