friend told me "ah you like hacking at DOS and stuffs, you may be interested in that, it's called 'linouqse' i guess..." so i gave it a shot.
"Slackware"... it was something like kernel 1.3.12 or 1.3.13 i am not sure... it came on 6 or 7 floppy disks.
from the boot already it seemed like nothing i had seen before: all (!) hardware seemed to be methodically enumerated, a bunch of esoteric commands and processed started their bizarre dance before my very eyes. looked already like i was accessing so much more information about the insides of my -then beloved- machine than ever?! this flashes very fast though and is a bit frustrating... then a rudimentary install menu, in text mode, asking a lot of questions.
.... trying all of this and failing many times, getting an old hard disk in a secondary bay to dedicate to the exercise... getting to it again and again (there was no Internet, where i was, then)... until finally, the thing boots up. a login prompt. i had remembered the password chosen upon install, that was it!
... a shell? i had never heard of Unix before, 100% of my previous practice before was with micro-computing, from 8bit to 16bit to DOS PC and its laughable Windows 3.1 (tm)...
...... what am i gonna do with all this, now?!
[fiddling...]
[months passed]
... "xf86something"....? what? some more configuration? some more esoteric? Where does that lead me? wait.
..... a graphical environment just popped out of my console?! with windows and shits?!!? this was there since the very beginning, like it was already there this whole time?!?!
🤯
Later on erring back on the side of Win3.1 because its "trumpet winsock" was the obvious, "easy" way to get connected to this new eldorado that opened up around (the year was 1995)... reading more about it on this new "online" helped me figure how to get back on that cool and hacky side, to finally (after months?) get the modem to connect, through PPP, to my ISP....
This is when I decided it would be cool, someday, to make this my primary OS, and that i'll work towards this end from now on. at the same time i heard for the first time of "free(libre) software" and that thing resonated within me as something i didn't know was possible: a way to organize society, based on virtuous principles of sharing knowledge and helping one's neighbor, through the same playful excitement of hacking that had kept me on my toes since i was a child? where do I sign?!
3 years later i decided to never boot a Windows OS again, and here I am, ranting on lemmy like i am 275 years old.......
Imagine a pile of floppy disks, with stuffs inscribed on it that you never heard of....
... will you insert one into your computer and reboot it?
Internet Libre o Barbarie!
"Allo, IT? Have you tried turning it off and on again?" ;)
yt-dlp -U ?
By "European" you mean "made in China"?
Sculptor Chavis Mármol has never owned a car, but that’s never inhibited his drive. Earlier this month, the 42-year-old Mexico City-based artist (who travels largely by bicycle) dropped a nine-ton replica of an Olmec head onto the roof of a blue Tesla Model 3 in a crushing display posted to Instagram on March 11. Mármol told Hyperallergic that his intention was “to satirize the Tesla brand and its creator.”
A European Citizen Initiative requires a massive investment to come through (quotas of signature per country, amount of signatures, quantity of personal data signatories have to give away, etc.) while at the same time it cannot force the EU to do anything. the Commission can just decide to file it vertically (in the trash can) and they often do.
So speak about a glorified, expansive petition... and you may find modes of action that are way way more efficient.
Netflix, Disney+ -> ThePirateBay
US government: “Make us an app that people can use so we are the only ones accessing their meta-data.” Developer: makes Signal US Government: 👍
oh yeah that, and compiling your kernel! Felt like opening an old spell book or something....