Remember when the only way to have a GUI was to compile your own kernel modules and edit the xorg config by hand?
Posted by agfitzp@reddit | linux | View on Reddit | 217 comments
I'm feeling old this week, some younger folk asking about GPU support in linux is causing me to remember the "good old days" from the before times, back when slackware was bleeding edge and it was perfectly normal to compile your own kernel.
Who else is feeling the years this week?
nhermosilla14@reddit
I never used anything older than Debian Lenny, but I did have an old VIA ProSavage integrated GPU and, even though I have good memories from those days, I would never go back. It could easily take you a couple weeks, or even months, to get something (particularly a GPU or a WiFi card) to work, if it was possible at all (and yes, that usually involved recompiling the kernel to enable stuff such as madwifi drivers, but that was painfully slow to do). I remember editing the xorg.conf file by hand, tinkering with syslinux and grub, ndiswrapper and those tricks like enabling "shell" concurrency for sysvinit. I also tinkered with e4rat, when SSDs were still a dream and boot times were an issue.
inbetween-genders@reddit
startx
agfitzp@reddit (OP)
I felt that
bsensikimori@reddit
I still use starts :) Debian netinst with minimal bloat, boot tonconsole, type startx to start my config.
If only we could get rid of systemd
agfitzp@reddit (OP)
Given how much a segment of the community complains about systemd you would think systemd would actually have some kind of impact on my life.
It doesn't at all. And nobody has written anything better... and the community that complains thinks that we should just do it all with shell scripts.
Unclear if I'm just hallucinating the whole thing.
sidusnare@reddit
System d is great at service management, and I would be a lot happier if it stuck to that, but the scope creep is what annoys me.
Mars_Bear2552@reddit
the extra features are optional. and not part of the core init system.
nightblackdragon@reddit
They are not realized by single binary so how does it differ from things like GNU coreutils?
ModerNew@reddit
Even better, most of the tools are standalone, not requiring other parts of systemd ecosystem to work.
nightblackdragon@reddit
Yeah, it's not like PID 1 manages network with systemd.
Critical_Ad_8455@reddit
That's conjecture, and of questionable veracity. That is not even a viewpoint I've ever heard expressed, and certainly not one shared by everyone who criticises systemd.
afb_etc@reddit
You can. My Debian boxes use OpenRC.
sob727@reddit
Do you find yourself limited in any way? Is it not the case that many packages depend on systemd libs and you end up having half of systemd installed anyway?
itzVictoria_@reddit
mostly the ones developed by redhat, its in their corporate interest
afb_etc@reddit
I haven't run into any issues personally. Elogind is required/useful for some desktop environments, I think that's the only systemd component I've got on the Debian machines. My Void desktop and OpenBSD machines don't have any systemd components at all (obviously, lol) and they work fine. I'm using roughly the same software on all my personal machines so I assume I'm just not interacting with stuff that's got a hard systemd dependency.
TheReal_Deus42@reddit
Give gentoo a whirl. It uses whatever you want, but rc.d is the default. It can be a fun learning experience, or can be used as a daily driver. I run it on my workstation and main server.
It is fun to pick all of the pieces and parts that make up a Linux system which I found instructive, and the package manager is powerful.
No-Camera-720@reddit
Been on Gentoo over 25 years. As time goes by, I have fewer and fewer circular dependencies and conflicts. Just had a little PYTHON_TARGETS kerfuffle, but adding a bunch of stuff to packages.use fixed it. Then there was a qt6 issues. Dropping back out of xorg and unmerging that, then running my emerge fixed me right up.
PantsOfIron@reddit
Been a Gentoo user for over 25 years as well! The only dependency conflict I have is with QT. Every single update. Every single time. QT only lol
No-Camera-720@reddit
Yes, QT is basically shit, but I like my xfce4. Over time, Gentoo's team has improved the reliability of emerge updates, with less fear.
PantsOfIron@reddit
Definitely. I remember building from a stage1 back in the days. I just like my KDE plasma too much. Otherwise I always used either fluxbox, pekwm or xfce4.
No-Camera-720@reddit
Oh yeah. I remember when installing Gentoo meant bootstrapping from Stage 1, and then rebuilding everything twice.
fatfuckindoinkers@reddit
Devuan
RoomyRoots@reddit
Just use Devuan.
VE3VVS@reddit
I some how feel even older right now. My brain momentarily thought “well that’s perfectly normal” and then I remembered the date.
presentation-chaude@reddit
"Erh I think I have 4."
LukeStargaze@reddit
$ echo "exec xfce4" > ~/.xinitrc $ startx
refinedm5@reddit
Init 3
N5tp4nts@reddit
Error
mina86ng@reddit
To this day I start in console and use
startxto start graphical interface. Mostly because I have my own.xinitrcwhich works for me and I don’t wanna figure out how to configure stuff the way I want with graphical start.joogipupu@reddit
Yep. I remember.
prosper_0@reddit
as the good Lord intended. I dont want no stinking login manager GUI.
He_Who_Browses_RDT@reddit
uff... :/
UbieOne@reddit
init level 5
No-Camera-720@reddit
I do not boot to gui, either. If there's an xserver issue, it's easier that way.
son-of-a-door-mat@reddit
X
juguete_rabioso@reddit
I recall compiling the kernel in 1997. You can put your name in the booting message. I felt so a hacker!
Wonderful-Creme-3939@reddit
I remember that! I edited so much stuff with edgy jokes and memes when I was 15... I feel old. I had so many floppies, I didn't get a cdr until 1999.
Wonderful-Creme-3939@reddit
I remember learning how to set up pppd and getting calls about my PC reconnecting on the modem bank at my ISP after they dropped it.
Sure has changed in 30 years .
spin81@reddit
I don't remember that, but I do remember having a PCI WiFi card in my PC and having to wrap a commercial driver in wpa_supplicant to get it to work - which I never did.
tomscharbach@reddit
I am, but that's because I'm 79 years old, not because of Linux. I'm a relative newcomer to Linux, having started using Ubuntu after I retired in 2004. The more I learn about them, the happier I am that I missed the "good old days". A decade of using Unix was enough for me.
Kartonrealista@reddit
Relative newcomer? You've used it for 21 years, you're a Linux veteran by now. Maybe relative to Linus and the early adopters, but you've been using Linux for 62% of its lifespan.
bullwinkle8088@reddit
I’m not a latecomer, I started using it in early 95. But Thanks for making me feel older than the actually older than me person :)
JigglyWiggly_@reddit
You're only old when you reach 100, you're fine.
tomscharbach@reddit
All my friends say that it all goes to hell when you hit 80. I'll find out soon enough, I guess.
billyfudger69@reddit
Live life to the fullest, if you’re constantly afraid of death you’ve already died.
tomscharbach@reddit
If you are lucky enough to get to old age, you will find that accepting death is the key to understanding life's transient nature, and that understanding life's transient nature is the key to freedom. Death looks very different when you have had enough experience with life to see death as a culmination rather than an enemy.
agfitzp@reddit (OP)
Things certainly have improved.
I'm sure that my Dad would be messing with his computer a lot more if it wasn't for his failing eyesight and increasing dementia. Keep on fighting the good fight.
erehpsgov@reddit
Well, my home computer only had an 8086 CPU that couldn't run Linux. But at work we had a very modern 80386 that did. It even had a 3.5" floppy drive that took the four floppy disks that Slackware came on back then (1.44 MB floppies, that is).
Compiling a kernel took ages, while the industrial-grade saw bench noise of the Seagate Barracuda hard disk was driving everybody in the room insane.
Yeah, the bad old days of mechanical data processing...
agfitzp@reddit (OP)
On a clear disk you can swap forever.
Z3t4@reddit
I remember setting up irq to be able to have sound.
juguete_rabioso@reddit
Oh yeah!, the ISA cards you tested the irq 9 manually, and then it worked!... but you didn't have mouse anymore, so, you changed to 5, and now the printer and the sound was gone. Fun times.
NoTime_SwordIsEnough@reddit
IRQ 9...? IRQ 5...?
Getting your hardware working used to be a 9-5 job (cough).
wintrmt3@reddit
Yeah that was clunky and annoying, but not blow up your monitor bad, all the while even dos software could do it safely with vesa bios on the very same machine.
MatchingTurret@reddit
There were no kernel modules for graphics. The drivers were part of the X server which called ioperm(2) to gain access to the card's registers.
gordonmessmer@reddit
Yeah, we didn't have kernel modules for graphics until Linux DRM in like... 2001? By which time x86 hardware detection (plug-and-play) was mature, so users didn't need to build a custom kernel for their system.
I do remember the days before plug-and-play, when we had to build our own kernel to get working sound. In those days, the IRQ and IO ports had to be compiled in to the sound driver binary module. I do not miss those days.
Glimt@reddit
There was FBDev and KGI before DRI was released in 1998.
About pnp: Detecting the VGA controller and configuring IO and IRQ was only a small part of the problem: In addition to a the controller , a (super) VGA card needed two programmable chips: ramdac and clock synthesizer. The same VGA controller (identified bt PCI ids, or ISA pnp) might be paired with different ramdac (or clock chip) which could not be identified, so the information had to be supplied by the user. By the end of the 1990s, most VGA controllers included internal clock and ramdac, so this problem (nearly) disappeared.
There was also the problem of identifying the display hardware and its capabilites. While EDID was defined in 1994, even ten years later many displays (especially cheap ones) did not support or had badly programmed EDID.
kwyxz@reddit
I am quite positive I remember having to enable support for my S3 Trio64 in the kernel back then. Linux 1.2.8 iirc. Without it there was no way to get any display with Xfree86.
gordonmessmer@reddit
Is it possible that you remember building XFree86? Or a driver for it?
kwyxz@reddit
You’re probably right and my memory is playing me for a fool…
gordonmessmer@reddit
Boy, do I know that feeling
MatchingTurret@reddit
I just did a grep over https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v1.2/linux-1.2.10.tar.bz2 and there seems to be nothing that could be enabled...
grem75@reddit
A bit before that there were framebuffer drivers in the kernel, which could be used with fbdev on XFree86. That was a way to get VESA before it was added to XFree86 since the kernel framebuffer supported it first.
agfitzp@reddit (OP)
In my defense, 2001 was 24 years ago and a whole lot of other shit was going down.
agfitzp@reddit (OP)
I definitely have compiled a whole mess of kernel modules to make graphics work on various cards so I guess you managed to miss out on the early days of proper GPU support?
MatchingTurret@reddit
I think at that time the manual editing of XF86Config was a thing of the past, mostly.
agfitzp@reddit (OP)
I wish.
perkited@reddit
It's a very different Linux today than it was 25+ years ago. I remember needing to keep a finger on the monitor power button when running
startx, because there was no guarantee a new Modeline entry wouldn't fry your monitor.To me it's funny seeing new users complain about very minor issues, but I guess that just shows how far Linux has come.
0xKaishakunin@reddit
I killed a DEC 19" CRT in 1997 with the wrong modeline.
perkited@reddit
Ooh. Did you see its soul (smoke) escape when it died?
0xKaishakunin@reddit
Yes, I could hear, see and smell the death of the CRT.
Dashing_McHandsome@reddit
I had my modelines written in sharpie on the side of my monitor
mofomeat@reddit
Post-It note, here.
jinks@reddit
It wasn't all bad though, there was that satisfying FWUMPH of pressing the degauss button...
perkited@reddit
I remember a couple times there was a very high pitched squeal coming from the monitor (before I could quickly power it off), but luckily it never did any permanent damage.
I had completely forgotten about degaussing.
6gv5@reddit
I have somewhere my 1st Linux distro CD: Yggdrasil fall 1994, bought I believe in mid 95. I won't celebrate 30 years though: the CD turned out to be defective but one would have to spot that following the entire install process as it gave errors in the middle but not at the end, and since the base system worked, it took a while to get why I couldn't do this or that. So I went back to -ugh- Windows and waited until I believe Red Hat 4.1 or 4.2.
I don't trust the cloud, so I'll yell at my NAS instead.
agfitzp@reddit (OP)
I still breath a sigh of relief every time I reboot and nothing fails... that I'm aware of.
MoW-1970@reddit
... the moment when you realize that you have not integrated the IDE card into the kernel. 😀
davidmar7@reddit
I remember installing Slackware from 3.5" floppies and then trying to install DOSEMU (DOS emulator) and having it fail because I didn't build my own kernel from source yet and wa missing a version.h file. So I had to go on USENET alt.linux or some other such group and ask. I was 17. That was how I learned Linux! It was different times back then and I miss them.
Scrubmagi@reddit
I remember blowing a deflection circuit by using bad sync values....
I do not miss those days if I'm honest
Negirno@reddit
We didn't fry our monitor even though it was a hand-me-down with no manual.
We wiped our hard drive when installing Red Hat though, because Linux fdisk...
agfitzp@reddit (OP)
IKR?
DatabaseHonest@reddit
Depending on how you define "worked". You could get lucky with Mandrake booting straight into X before Ubuntu existed. Getting working sound, modem or printer is another topic, though 😆
Diligent_End8130@reddit
Editing modlines...
Atlas_6451@reddit
Endless loops of compiling, editing configs, rebooting until glxgears would run with 3d acceleration
maryjayjay@reddit
I HATED tweaking my xconfig to get my video card working. I had a cache of 2 or 3 1M VGA cards that I knew the modeline for and knew they were well supported by the kernel. I held onto them way past when I needed them just because of PTSD
zyberteq@reddit
This! I barely got suse Linux 6.1 working with my video card because it wasn't supported by default. I had to change some lines, fuck up the output a few times, adjust for my weird monitor and if the position of the moon was right and I had done the proper sacrifice, would it work.
But it was glorious.
It got a lot easier once I had a Voodoo Banshee card.
Last-Assistant-2734@reddit
Phew! I'm glad I entered at SuSE 9.2 and SaX2 was a thing, and good and stable at that point.
No-Camera-720@reddit
If you had just killed the chicken at the start you could have saved a lot of time.
zlice0@reddit
only thing worse i think was ndiswrapper
__konrad@reddit
Mostly
Option "NoLogo" "1"to disable NVidia driver adnobby-w@reddit
I can remember frigging with mode lines through a telnet session from another computer. I did get my screen doing 1024x768 at 70Hz, though - about its limit.
clotifoth@reddit
Can someone please link a video demonstrating modeline monitor squealing/breaking? I'm so curious to see what you guys experienced where you even had to degauss
mofomeat@reddit
Yes.
But Linux is no longer for UNIX enthusiasts. It's now for gamers and folks who want the clicky-clickums, and say that "typing arcane shit into a terminal is too hard".
oknowton@reddit
MODULES?! They used to be tricky! All my custom kernels that I had to use in my first couple of years had everything I needed compiled in.
I remember compiling a kernel being something I started before going to sleep on my 386 40 Mhz with 4 megabytes of RAM, because it would swap a lot and take all night to finish. Upgrading to 8 megabytes brought that down to less than an hour! Woo!
Horror_Hippo_3438@reddit
It was recent. 8 months ago. I spent some time to find the right drivers for the ARM SoC (Chinese TV box). And then to try to get the right display modes: 2k monitor; fake Chinese display with fake 1080p (real 800x600) for Raspberry Pi; 3D glasses with dual 1080p.
I'm still not done with it. The 3D glasses still don't work correctly.
I guess this seems old to you because you haven't tried new hardware for a long time.
AiwendilH@reddit
Suse's handbook (in analog form. For the younger ones....once upon there was that flat thing made from dead trees called paper. Back then handbook were printed on layers and layers of that paper and combined to one book. Here is a reddit post of a newer version) had a whole chapter dedicated to compiling your own kernel.
And ugh...I completely forgot about manual modelines for x11, thanks now I have bad flashbacks again ;). Well..at least it wasn't as bad a sendmail configs...
grem75@reddit
I've got a SuSE 7.0 VM in 86Box and decided to test out the dual video card capability of 86Box.
First version of XFree86 to support Xinerama, first version of Enlightment to support it. It was an adventure.
defel@reddit
Haha, I did not know that this manual x11 config thing is a collective trauma. I thought only I had to fight this while the greybeards would configure this in their sleep.
DaFlamingLink@reddit
https://xkcd.com/963
The line only goes up!
AiwendilH@reddit
You have no idea how much a "And then you put the modelines you got from xvidmode (I think that was the tool, not sure anymore) in your config file....oh, and if you put in the wrong numbers here your monitor is going to explode" in the official suse handbooks stressed my teenage self ;)
defel@reddit
Uff. Blissful are those who don't know, because I had no idea.
Yes, I had the SuSE handbook, but instead of reading it, I just scanned for possible values to try out. I had no idea what I was doing.
Good thing my monitor didn't explode while drawing those fancy tilted, skewed, and distorted images of static snow!
agfitzp@reddit (OP)
ONE OF US
agfitzp@reddit (OP)
> I completely forgot about manual modelines for xfree, thanks now I have bad flashbacks again
We should start a support group
crazyguy5880@reddit
/etc/X11/XF86Config
grem75@reddit
Only after XFree86 3.0, before that it was /usr/X386/lib/X11/Xconfig.
bobj33@reddit
When I first configured XFree86 in 1994 I used a calculator to get the front porch, back porch, etc. and create a Modeline. Then my monitor would freak out and I would hit ctrl+alt+plus/minus to cycle to a different modeline that would work. But X ran in user space. There was no DRM graphics kernel modules so you didn't need to compile a custom kernel for graphics. But there were a ton of other reasons to compile your own kernel.
agfitzp@reddit (OP)
Other people have pointed out that I’m conflating my memories of the 90’s with the 00’s when gpu kernel drivers started happening.
Chester_Linux@reddit
As I'm not from that era, I can't imagine how with such weak computers (compared to today) it was completely normal for you to compile anything for personal use XD
agfitzp@reddit (OP)
Me too, and I witnessed it! Different times.
truethoughtsgbg@reddit
I'd always mess up the settings manually and then just reinstall from scratch.
agfitzp@reddit (OP)
That’s why we got so good at it, any working install was usually the result of half a dozen attempts.
truethoughtsgbg@reddit
I usually got it the second or third time. Lol.
awdfffr@reddit
TUI is much better (nconfig).
mw44118@reddit
And compiling took hours on that awful 233mhz box
Sirusho_Yunyan@reddit
I remember being very afraid of accidentally fat-fingering my xf86config with the wrong refresh rate and frying my monitor..
raineling@reddit
You are not alone. I am an older girl (i know, unusual for that time) who went through similar feelings and pains. I do not miss X whatsoever.
Albos_Mum@reddit
There are some of you, one of my aunts used to work on Lindows way back when.
Sirusho_Yunyan@reddit
Not that unusual.. I think we were all just geeks and nerds back then, curious about everything in a world that had far fewer boundaries. Elm, pine, trn, ytalk, I still miss that feeling of getting email, - real email, from friends in other universities, and bbs updates, muds.. I don't miss the sharp edges of that time, but heavens I totally miss the feel of it, everything was new.
agfitzp@reddit (OP)
SO SAY WE ALL
natermer@reddit
I used to have to figure out custom modesetting configurations to make my monitors work with X. This was before monitors reported the resolutions they supported back to the PC, or at least before X11 supported it.
On every Linux install I would have to spend a lot of time booting into the BIOS settings, booting into Windows, and booting into Linux to figure out the IRQ and memory addresses for ISA devices in order to get those things working.
King0fFud@reddit
Ugh, writing out the damn modelines for each resolution with sync timings. /Shudders
michaelpaoli@reddit
Can't say I miss backing up to paper tape.
Don't feel that old though, dad's much older, he got his first hearing aid 'bout year ago ... he gets in and tinkers with the program code of it to well customize it to his liking, and he's still very active, healthy, and fit ... as am I too, of course. And early computers he dealt with ... memory ... yeah, think of, e.g. mercury.
Heck, in fact, just this morning - I headed out quite early - pre-sunrise. Hiked 'bout hour to hill ridge not too far from where I live, ... then hiked back ... breakfast ... all done before most folks have bothered to get out of bed.
zlice0@reddit
i was there gandolf
Suvalis@reddit
Yes. Want that feeling again? Go load FreeBSD on a laptop. Xorg hand editing is gone but fixing shit like it was Linux from 2000 is definitely the vibe I got today after thinking that FreeBSD had gotten better on laptops.
Zestyclose-Pay-9572@reddit
Very well! It was an intel 486 processor with 4 MB RAM I had. 630 mb seagate hard drive. Spent hours!
i_said_unobjectional@reddit
Good times. Good times.
TheNinthJhana@reddit
fglrx for the win :)
... uname -r .... modprobe.... I felt like I was working for the NASA haha... today is much better , I use my time for ~~real stuff~~ ricing
Busy-Scar-2898@reddit
I remember X11 on debian potato not giving me much trouble to set up.
parker_fly@reddit
Ah, the clock timings!
jdfthetech@reddit
I remember deeply the bug in the original x86config provided by nvidia that had more than one gpu setting configured which prevented x from running. It took me hours to figure out to comment out that one line.
VulcarTheMerciless@reddit
Wow, and I thought I was a geezer! LOL
prrar@reddit
hahahaha it used to be tough.
6gv5@reddit
Reconfiguring then compiling the kernel wasn't that painful, and I loved the dopamine rush when a piece of hardware started magically to work, but I hated every byte of XF86config, I don't miss anything of it.
jreykdal@reddit
I haven't had the need to compile a new kernel for 15 years or more.
undrwater@reddit
I do every few weeks or so.
agfitzp@reddit (OP)
I think I have done it exactly once in the past 10 years but I can't remember why.
But TBH, it's a good day when I remember my own name in the morning.
No-Camera-720@reddit
I still do 'make oldconfig' then 'make menuconfig'. Some say, "Why? There's no need?" Then they're online having likely Nvidia vs *some framebuffer issues and have no clue what to do. Oh well, time to change distributions, then. As far as xorg.conf, I used to have to do a manual config for two 1080p monitors of different sizes and orientations. The Nvidia docs were nearly flawless though, and modelines, dead zones we're all tackled after some reading and trial and error.
agfitzp@reddit (OP)
Time for your meds. :)
No-Camera-720@reddit
After I yell at this cloud and chase these kids off my lawn. I'll let the skateboarders alone. For now.
agfitzp@reddit (OP)
Over the pandemic I bought a longboard, I am totally on my way to your place now.
No-Camera-720@reddit
Bring it bitch. I'm putting on fresh depends.
agfitzp@reddit (OP)
Never mind I've sprained my back bending over to put on knee pads.
No-Camera-720@reddit
Lightweight. I sprained my back peering in the mirror at a spot on my face.
undrwater@reddit
Thank you for brightening my day.
Both of you!
Now get off my lawn!
jqVgawJG@reddit
Old gentoo user here 🙈
undrwater@reddit
Bootstrap stage 1! Go on vacation.
bsensikimori@reddit
2050 is closer than 2000, have a nice day
WokeBriton@reddit
I've never met you, but I dislike you already :P
WokeBriton@reddit
A recent post asked everyone for their favourite cli programme.
My response was "startx".
While I never had to compile my own kernel modules and the SUSE6.something installer made a good enough job of configuring x for me, it took a lot of tinkering to be usable. That was the fun part, though. The tinkering with my computers innards.
JustADirtyLurker@reddit
I dont. I've been using Linux since uni years ~ 2001-04. My first ever install was Red hat 5.3. my first stable distro was a year later, Mandrake 7. In both cases, I didn't absolutely need to compile anything in order to run Xwindows.
Undergrid@reddit
I remember starting a kernal compilation, going out to a full day at university (mid 90's) and coming back to find the compilation still hadn't finished.
jimicus@reddit
I know what an XFree86 config is, but xorg? You’ve lost me there.
LonelyMachines@reddit
It's a new thing the kids are into. Like saying skibidi and snorting detergent pods.
What's worse is, there's an even newer thing called Wayland, and I'm not even going to go into that.
agfitzp@reddit (OP)
I'm blame my aging brain for not remembering that correctly. In my defense it was the previous century and my now adult children were just starting primary school.
RegularCommonSense@reddit
I didn’t have to compile it, but I did. Also, speaking of old: are you sure you mean Xorg in Slackware? I used XFree86 version 3.x and did msnual conf files to add virtual screen space.
Antique_Tap_8851@reddit
Comments are like "we totally still want to use Linux like we were in 1998, screw modern conveniences that makes everything just work, if I don't spend 99% of my time on Linux reconfiguring basic stuff it's a waste".
I mean, your kink I guess, but damn. You might as well run Linux From Scratch.
ZenoFairlight@reddit
Yes, and I remember purchasing OSS/4Front to make sound work.
... and XiGraphics Accelerated-X
... and Metro-X
... and the complete chokehold that Window Maker had on the community. Such a nice upgrade from Motif/Lesstif and XVWM.
daemonpenguin@reddit
I've been using Linux since the 90s and I've never had to compile a kernel module to get a working desktop. I have adjusted an X.Org config now and again to adjust max resolution, but not to get a basic desktop session working.
Top-Classroom-6994@reddit
I only have been using linux for 7 years, so no...(I am only 17 that probably adds to me not knowing the times of having to compile your own kernel)
drancope@reddit
And after that, you had to add printer, sound card and modem. Everything selecting the modules to compile, manually loading them after boot time and editing every etc config file.
shroddy@reddit
And entering modelines, and if you screw up your monitor might release the magic smoke. At the same time, in Quake, on Dos, you could just set your resolution, up to 1024x768 I think on my pc, and it just worked.
Rigamortus2005@reddit
how were the dinosaurs unc?
agfitzp@reddit (OP)
I'm on day 9125 of trying to migrate the local Diplodocus population from Windows to Linux but no matter how I try I can't get to them to type accurately enough to configure their old video cards and when I say Wi Fi they just get angry.
whatyoucallmetoday@reddit
The magic of getting X to work with my Diamond Speedstar 24x and generic VGA monitor. So much mode line magic while hoping my monitor would not catch fire.
chasmodo@reddit
No.
LegallyIncorrect@reddit
Remember trying to figure out your monitor’s supported refresh rate?
agfitzp@reddit (OP)
I'll be drinking all evening to forget now.
damn_pastor@reddit
Just install kiss Linux.
HystericalSail@reddit
Slackware? Luxury! I remember starting with the bare .96c kernel source code and tracking down my own login.c so I could have a login & password prompt for a real unix-like!
Figuring out my monitor's timings so I could get 1024x768 on that luxuriously huge 17" screen after an upgrade from my 14". Oh yeah.
We truly lived in a magical age.
agfitzp@reddit (OP)
I've got a boot floppy from that release somewhere, I should probably frame it.
HystericalSail@reddit
I was running Interactive Unix which came on like 30 5 1/4 floppies before experimenting with Linux. Interactive was really good, and cost a fortune. But 386BSD (later NetBSD and FreeBSD and OpenBSD) and especially Linux caught up and blew past it in features and hardware support in months, not years. I ran the BSDs until about 2006 or so when I made the switch to Linux in earnest. It took forever for the BSDs to support multiple CPUs well, Linux was so far ahead at the time.
oxez@reddit
Wondering why games were laggy and figuring out that was because you didn't build "agpgart" module.
Or because you were using a trash tier video card (ie: AMD (ATI at the time) with their godawful garbage piece of shit driver) :)
elijuicyjones@reddit
I keep going back to memories of being ten years old sitting in a computing center in the early 80s typing in Fortran code into a TYY to send down to Austin to be compiled overnight on what would become “the internet” ten years later and how I felt like freaking Gandalf the Wizard of high technology.
I really cherish those years. I had been writing BASIC stuff and playing with my Apple II, but the networked mainframes were something else, and it was that time of my life when I first felt agency, and power, and saw my first flashes of the future and what it could be. Birth of a technologist stuff.
agfitzp@reddit (OP)
I sometimes wonder if it would have changed anything if I'd managed to convince my parents to buy an Apple ][
I suppose in their defense, $1000 then would be the equivalent of $3500 now.
This is probably why when my kids were in high school they both had (used) laptops and brand new desktops.
elijuicyjones@reddit
I didn’t even realize how much it cost until the 90s after my mom passed away. She took out a huge loan she couldn’t afford, and I never even asked for it. I just was a kid who loved every electronic thing everywhere and was always talking about it, and she was simply somehow aware that computing was the future. Strange and wonderful woman, I want to say I was lucky but she died super young so maybe a bit melancholy.
agfitzp@reddit (OP)
I never got any computers at all from my mother, but she's still around at 80... and still working, a few months ago I helped her set up a new laptop to "retire" with.
Still hasn't retired.
elijuicyjones@reddit
lol that’s terrific. Great excuse to hang out. A couple of years before she passed I bought my mom a Mac II and she became a crazy Tetris champion it was kinda hilarious. Today I bet she’d be on YouTube doing cat videos haha
PhantomNomad@reddit
Remember when writing mode lines in xorg and if you got the frequency wrong your monitor would scream. Trying to shut down X before your monitor smoked.
wottenpazy@reddit
Calculating timings and modelines was so frustrating, my spergy mind could never figure out why the damn thing couldn't just do it itself if it was just a series of commands to read the edid, etc. And basically the reason was because the X11 project wanted YOU to be responsible for frying your monitor.
agfitzp@reddit (OP)
It's surprising how long it took to automate the setup.
kopsis@reddit
I remember when neither GPUs nor Xorg existed. Super VGA was the bleeding edge and if you wanted a GUI you compiled the recent Linux port of X11 (which took three days on my 16MHz 486SX).
agfitzp@reddit (OP)
I was almost finished my degree by the time I got my hands on a 486... looking backwards I should be very angry with my parents.
FeetPicsNull@reddit
Yea, I also remember running netbsd and getting xorg to work.
agfitzp@reddit (OP)
This is where I'll admit I had FreeBSD running before linux.
Pitiful-Valuable-504@reddit
We were happy and we didn't know it
Xatraxalian@reddit
Started in 2001 with Suse 7.1, and YAST was already powerful enough to prevent having to set up my own xorg.conf. I never needed to compile my own kernel, but I did have to compile some drivers back then. I still compile some command-line utilities such ad mdbook and lgogdownloader myself, to get the latest version.
DarkTrepie@reddit
Little bit. Mostly I remember setting a virtual resolution way bigger than my dinky little 15" CRT and edge scrolling around my desktop like it was a Sims game.
agfitzp@reddit (OP)
Well that brings back a memory I thought I lost.
sernamenotdefined@reddit
I remember switching from Minix to Linux (slackware).
With Matrox Millenium, because it was the best supported option for Xorg.
agfitzp@reddit (OP)
I had to beg, borrow or steal to get my hands on a third hand 386 just to do my university courses. It took quite some time before I had hardware that could run a Windows GUI much less linux.
sernamenotdefined@reddit
I had a well earning job when I was in the last two years of high school, managed to buy a 386sx for myself. (486 was where it was at already, so they were cheaper. (I did get it new though) IIRC that system had a Trident SVGA videocard.
Then in 1993/4 I bought a Pentium 60 (with FDIV bug, I still have the chip in a box, never exchanged it for a correctly functioning one) and an ET4000 videocard. Later replaced with the Millenium, which I kept until I upgraded to a Millenium G200 and then G400MAX.
My switch to Linux coincided with the Millenium purchase.
At the time 90% of what I made went to PC parts :X
noir_lord@reddit
Or when fucking around with modeset could straight release the magic smoke out of some CRT's yeah...I don't miss it at all.
jdefr@reddit
I remember my first distro was Mandrake Linux I convinced my mom to buy me it in sixth grade. Went all over Best Buy trying to find it and I did… I remember getting compositor and beryl manager (or whatever it was called) running on Slackware. At the time such GUIs with transparency and such were new as hell and barely worked..
agfitzp@reddit (OP)
You were a lucky kid, I was in university in that era and couldn't convince my parents to buy me a decent computer at all despite the fact I was studying computer science.
jdefr@reddit
I was indeed… I started very young.. Now I’m a researcher at MIT.. Didn’t realize computers would become my profession at the time as most said “computers are a fad ..” but I didn’t care..
quadralien@reddit
I miss modelines. Before there was hardware scaling I would make custom modelines to fullscreen videos with weird resolutions.
Feeling the years in my hip joints today.
abagofcells@reddit
I also remember doing that. It was the only way to get full screen video without stuttering on my old Pentium laptop. Weirdly enough, it would scale those resolutions to fit the LCD, so the hardware was able to do the scaling, it just wasn't supported by the X server.
agfitzp@reddit (OP)
I got a fancy gaming chair from Secret Labs during the pandemic since I was working at home all the time and the pain in my hip almost went away entirely.
Liarus_@reddit
haha I do NOT remember those times (I started using Linux last year)
I'm glad I didn't have to go through this thankfully
agfitzp@reddit (OP)
We learned a lot, but got scars and PTSD...
radarlock@reddit
I remember compiling a new 2.4 kernel because of some ptrace vulnerability in a overclocked pentium at the blazing speed of 130~ mhz until it died
Good days.
grnis@reddit
I remember those days and I don't miss them. Everything was so hard and if stuff worked, they often worked poorly.
I still compile my own kernel though.
Scrubmagi@reddit
Sometimes I just revdep-rebuild for the feels
grnis@reddit
Wow! There's a command I haven't used in ages. Together with stage1
thedoogster@reddit
Slackware was the only distro I could find where the GUI worked out of the box. So no.
jjoorrxx@reddit
Ctrl+shift+{+,-} to switch resolutions defined by.modelines. A lot of effortmaking those Tseng Labs VGA ISA cards work on my AMD386DX.
Rich-Engineer2670@reddit
You had a kernel -- back in my day, all we had was access to the video memory and assembly language.....
I don't mind feeling old, but please, don't bring back configuring X.org. I'm old enough to remember NCD terminals.
agfitzp@reddit (OP)
Video memory and assembly? I did that very briefly, and not very successfully as a student.
How I had any free time for that nonsense is a mystery to me.
Rich-Engineer2670@reddit
I just told people "You wanted something on the screen? There it is.... Green screen was good enough in 70s, it's good enough now!" But then again, I'm not a UI person.
RedditMuzzledNonSimp@reddit
Well to be fair that's when I refused to waste my time running it.
Icaruswept@reddit
My intro was MEPIS Linux off a free CD I got with a magazine. Man, getting that thing to display took some effort, although once it was running it kept running.
spreetin@reddit
I'm so happy that the good old days are over. I never want to write a modeline ever again.
Deliberately launching XFree86 using startx when you needed to use a graphical program was pretty nice though.
agfitzp@reddit (OP)
I mean, if you love that old timey feeling you can always reboot in console mode and start the display manager manually.
I feel dirty just thinking about it.
spreetin@reddit
It wouldn't give the same nice feeling when it isn't "the way it is done"™
I'm pretty happy with my minimalistic tiling Hyprland setup using GPU rendered terminals as well. Nostalgia shouldn't be relived.
defel@reddit
Never forget how I had to guess a whole afternoon the resolution/hsync/vsync values for the x11 config until I finally got it running.
Next was to learn how to shutdown -h the machine, without using the Internet.
Aww man, thanks for the throwback :D
Using linux since ~23y now, never had windows on my own computers, and never windows at work. This afternoon x11 config session was such a good investment, feels good.
the_abortionat0r@reddit
Wasn't in that long ago but I do not miss the days of xorg simply giving me my native resolution and refresh rate (if I was lucky) and nothing else which required edit fragile xorg files just to get basic functionality.
Thank God for Wayland.
ominous_anonymous@reddit
I mean, Xorg has been plug-and-play for the majority of cases for quite a long time now, Wayland doesn't really have anything to do with that.