• 6 Posts
  • 91 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 23rd, 2023

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  • open source wasn’t really a thing in the 90s and early 2000s

    Truly written as someone who wasn’t alive back then and just makes stuff up.

    Open-source - which was called free software back then - was very much alive and totally a thing since forever, and especially in the 70s, 80s and 90s. I learned all I know with free software in the 80s. Linux came out in 91 and was a pure product of open source: Minix - the forerunner of Linux - was a fully open-source OS created in 87, and GNU had been around since 83.

    Please read up on things you don’t know before posting nonsense.




  • Install Linux in a VirtualBox virtual machine to try it out. No change to your existing Windows system is needed.

    Better: install it in a virtual machine on a second hard drive: if you like it and you’re ready to switch, switch to booting the real Linux hard-drive and turn the Windows hard drive into the virtual machine, to use within Linux when you need it.

    If you switch to Linux, this will happen:

    • It’s gonna be tough: it’s a different system, you’re not used to it. Like everything else, it’s hard to change and get used to new things. So realistically expect some learning curve and some pain. It’s normal.

    • If you give it an honest shot but you decide Linux is not for you, you’ll switch back to Windows. You’ll be back to your old normal, but you’ll start to notice how infuriating and spirit-crushing it is a lot more, having been exposed to a non-insane, user-centric OS for a while. And then you’ll be that much sadder in Windows and you’ll wish you had the best of both OSes - which you can’t.

    Just be aware than exposure to a non-Windows OS will probably make you hate Windows more and make your life in Windows ever slightly more miserable, even if you don’t stick to the non-Windows OS.