Ah Slackware, the first time that I learned software could damage hardware. It has the option to also configure hsync on your CRT monitor, and if said monitor didn’t correctly validate the range it would permanently fuck it up.
I learned that lesson as a 12 year old in the early 90’s on an original IBM PC 5150 with a 5151 monochrome monitor, fucking with TSR’s in DOS 3.1. It must’ve made the graphics card change timing modes and the monitor immediately blew a fuse. My dad then soldered in a fuseholder so the fuse in the monitor can be replaces as needed.
Out of fear of doing further damage, I did stay away from the particular TSRs that had any relation to changing video timing modes and it didn’t happen again.
Haha, TSR, man, good old memories… Is there a famous TSR called sidekick? Chain of CD 09H… :)
Definitely a hardware issue, not a software one.
So I’m not the only one who fried a monitor trying to get X11 working…
Really? I didn’t know it was possible. How’s that happened?
Oh man, I completely forgot this happening to me lol.
That was my first distro… in 1993! Because I bought a book with a CD in the back that had the whole thing instead of having to download a bunch of floppies!
A system with a CD drive in 1993 was a luxury. I remember I had to use floppies in 1994.
I had a single speed CD rom, but it was hooked up under a weird SCSI arrangement that Slackware wouldn’t recognize.
So I swapped it out for a 2X IDE drive with a 3CD caddy! Good times!
Way back in 1993
<img src=“private_ryan_old.gif” />My first distro back in 1996. Tempus fugit.
“This looks cool and weird. I’ll try it!”
🫡
Happy 30th! Now you can legally call the distro oldtimer in Germany.
I’m not that old of a linux user, I think Slack may have been the second distro that I tried in probably 2000 after starting on Mandrake
Same here. Mandrake 8.2 was a buggy mess, but I have fond memories of it.
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My first distro. Installed it on my Win3.1 i386sx system (with 4MB RAM) in 1994.
This brings back so many memories! My first distro some 25 years ago now! Something to tell my kids about. I remember it took me a couple of days to get audio to work on my first install! And I still loved it. So much water has passed under the bridge. Now 100% of the production envirnoment at work is Linux-based and so are the devices at the other end of the wire/airlink. And so are our phones, home servers and on and on. Linux skills have had the highest return
how does it hold up today?
I can’t speak for Slackware itself but Unraid is based on Slackware and has been very successful. I’ve been running it for several years now with few hiccups.
On slackware-current. Latest kde, mesa, fairly new lts kernel. All vanilla software (with security patches). Xfce, and more. No official gnome. Everything works, simple system. No official package dependency resolution, install a lot of packages recommended (they in groups). Good for me.
Edit: oh, and very stable
Give the live os a spin-up https://slackware.nl/slackware-live/
First distro for me as well.
Still rocking Slackware today via Unraid! 😎
My first distro was Redhat back in like 96? Then I moved to Slackware and never looked back and still use it today.
Great to see
Closest I got to running it though was Zenwalk for about 6 months in 2009
Praise “Bob” and Slack off!
The best way to get Linux in the era was to get a box of floppies from a guy at the 2600 meeting. Got Slackware in 93 and a goofy little video game made by some guys up i45 in mesquite called Wolfenstein. Wonder what happened to them.
