[Discuss] Community out-reach... convert the masses?

[Steve Litt]

Ron said on Fri, 21 Feb 2025 06:02:58 -0800


>People hated but put up with Windows Vista, loved its SP3 (called 
>Windows 7), hated 8, loved 10, hate 11, but they're just going to keep 
>putting up with it.

I loved Win95 and Win98. They were really cool. Except for one thing...

I could feel my mind turning to mush as solutions I used to make batch
files (DOS equivalent of shellscripts) for I was now memorizing recipes
of points and clicks. Oh, and the fact that making a GUI app was five
times harder than a CLI app, and in most cases it had no advantage over
the CLI app except "pretty", whatever that means.

In October 1998 I found myself 2500 miles from my beloved Los Angeles,
newly moved to Orlando, Florida. My nearest client was over 1000 miles
away. I took time to re-evaluate my career, and it was at that time I
came into possession of a Red Hat 5.0 CD, learned by installing it
about 40 times, each of which I screwed things up, learned some stuff,
and did it again. Two or three weeks later I went to an ELUG meeting,
successfully pretended to be a Linux authority, and pretty much faked
it til I maked it. In that fateful ELUG meeting only one person saw
through my bullshit: David Billsbrough.

Years went by. ELUG became LEAP became GoLUG, and I didn't have to fake
it so much. And our 1998-1999 Linux revolutionary zeal morphed into "oh
yeah, GNU/Linux is the OS I usually use".

Anyway, to this day, I view Linux as a well thought out MS-DOS or even
CPM that is multiuser, multitasking, and capable of running a GUI
subsystem, and very closely conforming to POSIX. I consider POSIX a
miracle. If I want my computer to do something for me, there's almost
always a way I can get it to it. This is why I still say Linux is a
wishing well...

https://www.troubleshooters.com/tpromag/199910/199910.htm#_editors_desk

SteveT

Steve Litt 

http://444domains.com