Didn’t think Knoppix was obscure, but that was my gateway to Linux first on all my personal PCs.

I guess the years have passed it by.

I remember when 128 but SSL Encryption was export restricted in the mid 90’s. When I first opened an online banking account, the Bank sent a CD with a customized version of Netscape Navigator with 128 bit SSL, and the bank logo in place of the Netscape N.

I think it was PS3 that shipped with “Other OS” functionality, and were sold a little cheaper than production costs would indicate, to make it up on games.

Only thing is, a bunch of institutions discovered you could order a pallet of PS3’s, set up Linux, and have a pretty skookum cluster for cheap.

I’m pretty sure Sony dropped “Other OS” not because of vague concerns of piracy, but because they were effectively subsidizing supercomputers.

Don’t know if any of those PS3 clusters made it onto Top500.

The Cathedral and the Bazaar is considered a classic, but it’s been 20+ years since I read it. I’m curious how well it holds up.

I was trying to recall some points from C&B and I realized I was muddling much of it up with The Hacker Ethic by Pekka Himanen from the same era, so apparently that made an impression as well.

I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting by “Values of the Fediverse”, but I was pleasantly surprised! It focuses on what over the decades seem to be the core values of Open Source software movements, such as openness, independence, and freedom to use the software how you choose to use it. Just applied to the concept of social media. Which makes sense.

My main home account is on Lemmy.ca not Lemmy.ml ( or another Lemmy instance) because that is how I’ve chosen to associate, and I can. And I could spin up my own instance, and federate or de-federate with whomever I choose.

This isn’t a novel concept, OpenSource.com has a page on “The Open Source Way” which espouses transparency, collaboration, “Release early and often”, inclusive meritocracy, and community. I remember reading “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” back in the day, and Eric Raymond seemed to extrapolate several values or principle from the open source model.

The free software movement does implicitly have positions on “political” topics. Right to repair, DRM, and privacy come to mind immediately. These shouldn’t be seen as being “Left” or “Right”,

The police also knocked and only entered after he answered it sounded like. While certainly armed and probably prepared for something wild, they didn’t force entry with guns at the ready.

Once again, mostly comparing to videos of US police interactions, which is kind of weird as a non-USian commenting on a German police interrogation. Would be curious to see an “audit the audit” type review of this.

Respect. Only through destruction can we be purified.

VAX/VMS was still around then, and as far as I recall, that was the king for uptime.

Linux back then supported much less hardware. I can remember even in the early aughts, there was while families of popular wireless network chipsets that weren’t supported.

Pretty much exactly what happened to me. Mostly open source apps on Windows. Set up dual boot with Windows default. One day I noticed I was switching to Linux more often than not, so changed to Linux default.

If you can get one of those cassette adapters, you can test the tape deck of interest first.

Technology Connections on YouTube had an episode on those tape adapters, but I can’t remember the reason why she some tape decks don’t work with those cassette adapters.

So far I’ve only had that one tape deck not work.

Love mine, but the newer version that my wife has is just a little bit better all around. Plus the extras it comes with are a pure nostalgia hit.

Yes… in the cassette players that work with those adapters. Annoyingly, the old stereo we have set up at work in one shop doesn’t work with those casette adapters or the Mixxtape.

Also, if you use it in a tape deck, it doesn’t use the spools as inputs. You just set it playing and pop it in. Similar to my old Digisette Duo Aria.

I will admit, I have rarely used the tape deck function, but it has been useful on occasion.

I use the Kickstarter version of the Mixxtape. My wife uses the newer version, which offers some improvements.

It’s fantastically retro, but you will need to use a micro-SD.

I’ve got a 15 year old SD/USB combo card on my keychain. I plugged it into a TV around 6-7 years ago because there were a couple of kids movies on there.

I also know I have some Portable apps on there, but probably a little out of date

This has been my experience. I used Fedora for a while years ago, but rpm was already second fiddle to deb. Plus, I was already selling into my “old man distro” so I kept ending up with some Ubuntu version.

I did recently Manjaro and Linux Mint, but ended up with Ubuntu again, although this time Kubuntu, Ubuntu with KDE!

No shade from me though for going with Red Hat.

Yep, can confirm. I used Xubuntu primarily for years, and never had an account on the official XFCE forums or Git, because why would I? I’m just a user, the software is very stable, and stuff tended to just work.

The classic joke:

Rabbi Altmann and his secretary were sitting in a coffeehouse in Berlin in 1935. “Herr Altmann,” said his secretary, “I notice you’re reading Der Stürmer! I can’t understand why. A Nazi libel sheet! Are you some kind of masochist, or, God forbid, a self-hating Jew?”

“On the contrary, Frau Epstein. When I used to read the Jewish papers, all I learned about were pogroms, riots in Palestine, and assimilation in America. But now that I read Der Stürmer, I see so much more: that the Jews control all the banks, that we dominate in the arts, and that we’re on the verge of taking over the entire world. You know – it makes me feel a whole lot better!”

I accept no credit, I simply copy-pasted from Wikipedia.

Just started using Thunderbird again a couple of months ago. Like it! I never really stopped liking it, just stopped using it because all the webmail interfaces and “appification”.

Was just trying to get K-9 Mail working on my phone again (after years of using umpteen different apps) and it’s not as smooth as I remember.

I stopped distro hopping around a decade ago, and just use default Ubuntu LTS releases. No shade from me.

I’m not going to pretend that Ubuntu is the coolest, hippest, trendiest distro around, but it’s good enough, stake enough, and gosh darn it I’m just used to it.

I’m with you.

I sort of petered out distro-hoping 10-ish years ago, I’ve just used boring old Ubuntu LTS ever since. All the Unity/Gnome/KDE, Snap/Flatpak and systemd stuff I’ve successfully ignored.

I have no doubt that there are “better” distros out there, but Ubuntu works.