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.

  • @ik5pvx
    54•5 months ago

    It was a struggle. You went to buy some device and you had to check it was not one of those windows-only ones. Modems were particularly bad, for example.

    You had to read the how-tos and figure things out. Mailing lists and newsgroups were the only places to find some help.

    You had to find the shop willing to honour warranty on the parts and not on the whole system, as they had no knowledge of Linux at all. But once you found them, you were a recurring customer so they were actually happy. You might even have ended up showing them memtest86!

    You would still be able to configure the kernel and be able to actually know some of those names, compilation would take several hours but it was a learning experience.

    You could interact with very helpful kernel developers and get fixes to test.

    You could have been the laughing stock of your circles of friends, but within you, you knew who’d have had the last laugh.

    And yes, Loki games had some titles working on Linux natively, Railroad Tycoon was one. Too bad they were ahead of the times and didn’t last much.

    • @[email protected]English
      27•5 months ago

      windows-only ones. Modems

      And, of course, they’d almost never actually SAY that on the box, so you had to see if you could look at what exact chip was on them and explain to a retail employee why you needed to look in the box, and that no, you certainly weren’t doing something sketchy, you just use Linux instead of wait why are you calling security…

        • @[email protected]English
          1•5 months ago

          Ah yes, the (in?)famous mWave cards come to mind here.

          So shitty they not only didn’t work in Linux, they ALSO never fucking worked right in Windows, either, and got IBM sued over what utter trash they were.

    • @[email protected]
      9•5 months ago

      compilation would take several hours but it was a learning experience.

      the first time i put gentoo on a g3 imac back in 2004; it took 3 days to compile everything and the computer got so hot that it warmed up the entire room like a space heater. lol