[TriLUG] Distros...

[Pete Soper via TriLUG]

On 2/20/19 10:23 AM, Paul Boyle via TriLUG wrote:

> On Wed, 20 Feb 2019 09:46:21 -0500
> Dwain Sims via TriLUG<trilug at trilug.org>  wrote:
>
>> I found this interesting.  I did not know Slackware had an ancestor.
>>
> Wow. That's a blast from the past. My first Linux distribution was SLS
> the kernel version was 0.99pl4  Before loadable kernel modules, I
> remember customizing the configuration and recompiling many kernels.
>
> Paul

Likewise. Steve Goldman (RIP) and I were at Encore and had BSD, Mach and 
SVR4 Unix multiprocessor systems at our fingertips. We'd been on Arpanet 
cum Internet since the mid 80s and so we had an embarrassment of 
personal computing riches just by staying at the office or dialing in 
from home. I had an Amiga and some S100-based stuff, but hardly used it. 
But when I found myself with an AMD 386 PC I followed Steve's lead and 
put Slackware on it with 35-40 floppy disks (Intel had screwed my second 
startup in the early 80s and it was only late last year that I built my 
first new PC system with a non-AMD chip). Steve contributed some video 
driver work and people from all over the planet were after him for 
support. Coincidentally early this morning I was reading an amazing 
discussion 
<https://www.erlang-solutions.com/blog/let-s-talkconcurrency-panel-discussion-with-sir-tony-hoare-joe-armstrong-and-carl-hewitt.html> 
about concurrency (attracted by the fact that one of the panelists was 
one of my earliest heros: Tony Hoare 
<https://smile.amazon.com/Structured-Programming-P-I-C-studies-processing/dp/0122005503/ref=sr_1_1?hvadid=77653061725511&hvbmt=bp&hvdev=c&hvqmt=p&keywords=structured+programming&qid=1550686563&s=gateway&sr=8-1&tag=mh0b-20&sa-no-redirect=1>) 
and thought about how fun it would be to discuss it with Steve. I still 
miss him.

-Pete