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In the Beginning Was the Command Line (1999)

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412 points conanxin | 2 comments | 27 Jul 24 06:25 UTC | HN request time: 0.723s | source
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xg15 ◴[27 Jul 24 08:46 UTC] No.41085291[source]▶
> Buyer: "But this dealership has mechanics on staff. If something goes wrong with my station wagon, I can take a day off work, bring it here, and pay them to work on it while I sit in the waiting room for hours, listening to elevator music."

Bullhorn: "But if you accept one of our free tanks we will send volunteers to your house to fix it for free while you sleep!"

Did Linux distros actually offer support at some point? (By what I assume would be some project contributor ssh-ing into your machine)

My impression was always the arguments were more like "Well yes, but we have this literal building full of technical manuals that describe every bolt and screw of your tank - and we can give you a copy of all of them for free! And think about it - after you have taken some modest effort to read and learn all of them by heart, you'll be able to fix and even modify your tank all on your own! No more dependence on crooked car dealers! And if you need help, we have monthly community meetups you can attend and talk with people just as tank-crazy as you are! (please only attend if you're sufficiently tank-crazy, and PLEASE only after you read the manuals)"

(This was decades ago, the situation has gotten significantly better today)

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1. delusional ◴[27 Jul 24 09:09 UTC] No.41085370[source]▶
> Did Linux distros actually offer support at some point? (By what I assume would be some project contributor ssh-ing into your machine)

I don't think that was the intended implication. I think the analogy is more akin to: "If send us a bug report, we'll fix it and ship a new version that you can download and use for free." In the olden days, you'd have to buy a new version of commercial software if it didn't work for your machine, complementary patches were rare.

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2. jmclnx ◴[27 Jul 24 12:59 UTC] No.41086299[source]▶
Depends on where you lived. In the early days there were lots of LUGs in some areas, usually in college areas, but some would be hosted at a few Companies.

I think DEC had one or two. And you could find someone who would meet you somewhere to help you out, it was an exciting time. Also there were lots of install fests for Linux.

Most activity took place on USENET, so getting help was rather easy.

For example, I had asked how I could connect 2 monitors to my 386SX, one controlled by a VGA card, the other via a mono-card, each monitor with a couple of VTs. That was doable with Coherent on install. A day later I got a patch.

Things moved very quickly back then :)