I started playing with Linux in the late 90s while I was in grad school. Slackware 3.x. I think I might have tried one or two others, but since I was somewhat familiar with Unix, Slackware was the easiest for me to learn.

I got them via CD ROMs; I’m pretty sure they came with a book on Linux (I think it included several distributions on CDs). I don’t think I have that book any more; I likely got rid of it long ago as it was badly out of date. But my memory is that it was published by Que, a publisher that I had good experience with on other topics. (dBase III, for example) I’m pretty sure it was this one…leave it to Amazon to still have it.

I recall recompiling kernel because it was “so much faster” (I cringe at myself now for thinking that - it probably wasn’t even true on my Pentium 133 machines). I also remember spending time trying to get X-windows configured, but I was successful. I think I was using fvwm95 window manager, a Windows-like experience. I started using Linux essentially full time pretty quickly.

A few times I got frustrated with Linux and tried to switch back to Windows, but the headaches of Windows always quickly drove me back to Linux. Linux is not perfect, but Windows is even worse.

I have an old S9 right here on my desk. I cracked the screen, and took it to one of those screen replacement places, and he asked if I had insurance. I told him I didn’t, and he said, wellllllll it’s going to be a lot more expensive than you think to replace this screen.

That wraparound screen they had was basically also the frame of the phone - you’re not so much replacing the screen as you are moving the rest of the components to a new phone body. I wasn’t sold on value of that wraparound screen in the first place; this didn’t improve my opinion of it.

We put a plastic screen protector on it and a new case, and I used it for a few months until we were ready to upgrade phones.

Welcome to the Dull Side.

Yeah…when I got the first IDE drive, it was like, “Wait, I don’t need to low level format it?”

“Oh what a mess we weave when we amiss interleave!”

Anyone else remember having to set interleave on an RLL hard drive? “First you have to low-level format…”

Chug-chug-chug? Are you sure you weren’t in a steam locomotive?

Forfty percent of people know that!

Statistician.

But the Simpsons lied to me. I have not been offered the opportunity to go to space.

She did a bit on Colbert that was a joint venture between her business and his spoof of her business. Either she’s extremely clueless and didn’t realize his fake store is mocking her real store, or she knows it’s snake oil and is continuing to sell it.

I bought a Lenovo about 2 years ago that I’ve been really happy with. I wanted something with a metal shell because I carry my laptop around sometimes and use it balanced on one hand, and my previous Dell (plastic) started flexing and having weird issues with the TouchPad as a result. The Lenovo has been solid. I’m running Kubuntu on it, but my plan is to go Debian at some point.

It would eat him up inside if he were capable of admitting he did something wrong. Every action he takes is the best, the most perfect action, no one could have done a better action. Every action he didn’t take, but his definition, is clearly wrong.

I saw one of the cult yesterday on a sidewalk waving a US flag with Trump signs around her. These people are delusional and nothing will stop them. They’ll probably vote for him even after he dies.

His fans: “Wow! That could have been me!”

News, businesses, and celebrities continue to use it for some reason. It won’t die until they stop.

Look how deep Twitter is in sports reporting. Any article about an event in a game (a goal, a hit in hockey, etc.) has the video… from Twitter. It’s the default and just won’t stop. Until that mindset changes, I’m afraid Twitter will continue to exist.

Yeah, I think you’re right. I forgot to add that there’s no mucking about with drivers and all of that, it really just works. Older scanners usually aren’t a problem with Linux, but Vuescan almost certainly supports them as well.

I paid for Vuescan. There are a ton of Linux scanning apps, but pretty much all of them require editing all pictures to some extent after the scan. Vuescan applies a useful set of defaults that work for most pictures, speeding up the work flow. I had over 4,000 pictures to scan so anything to simplify that was worth it.

The speaker at my college graduation was convicted of fraud a few years later. I can’t decide which is worse, that guy telling us what a great businessman he was, or an AI speaker.

Someone on lemmy commented that the purpose of those conversion drives is not to garner new members (though it’s a nice benefit if it works), but to help reinforce the “us” versus “them” division in the people out knocking on doors. It really makes a lot of sense to me.