[lug] Happy 30th, Linux

[Jed S. Baer]

On Mon, 30 Aug 2021 14:16:43 -0400
Steve Litt wrote:

> In 1998 I busted into Linux with Red Hat 5.1, but it quickly became
> clear I wasn't going to base a Daily Driver Desktop (DDD) on Red Hat
> 5.1 or the superior 5.2.

Other than word processing, I found 5.2 quite suitable. But, what it took
was discovering that I could ditch that psuedo-DE, AnotherLevel, and invoke
Fvwm directly with my own hand-rolled config file. The other hurdle was
dial-up networking, which I couldn't get working using RH's supplied GUI,
so I just dug around and figured out how to script it myself.

It was such a relief to be able to figure everything out just by reading
scripts and rc files. No Windoze registry getting in the way. I was
irritated when gConf came along - despite Miguel de Acaza's claim, gConf
was IMHO a registry.

> Then I tried Mandrake (with KDE of all things),
 [...]
> Somewhere in the early 00's I replaced KDE with a smaller wm/de (Window
> Manager/Desktop Environment) to make it more stable and less likely to
> swap and thrash on large tasks.

I tried a few other WMs, and even used KDE v3.5 for a bit, but I always go
back to Fvwm.

-- 
All operating systems suck, but Linux just sucks less
 - Linus Torvalds