The big split
The first versions of Bell Labs’ Unix. also known as ‘Research Unix’, included the full source code, allowing universities to improve and extend the operating system. As I wrote in the previous post in this series, UCB did a lot to add to Unix and created its own distribution – BSD.The first version [...]
Needing a new language
The first crude version of Unix was written in assembler language on the PDP-7 and later the PDP-11. But Ken Thompson thought it should be written in a higher-level language. In 1971 he first experimented with Fortran, but according to some stories, he gave up after only one day. He then [...]
This is what makes computing fun – you learn something new every day.
Today there was a post on LinuxQuestions.org by w1k0, who reported something strange with the Linux logo on his ThinkPad T60. The colors were all wrong (Tux had a green belly, blue background) and… to the left-side there was an inscription saying “Simon”.
I [...]
In the beginning there was…
CTSS, the Compatible Time-Sharing System, developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Computation Center and first demonstrated in 1961. It had some interesting features like:
inter-user messaging (what we would call ‘e-mail’ nowadays)
a program called RUNCOM, that could execute several commands put together in a file – like modern-day shell scripts
RUNOFF, [...]
I am a big fan of Lego. Unfortunately I haven’t had much time lately to build anything, but I try to keep up-to-date with the latest news.Yesterday I read that famous department store Neiman Marcus has a new item in it’s Christmas Catalog: A life-size sculpture of you made from Lego.
Price-tag: $60,000.00 (does not include [...]
For some time I’ve been reading texts on the history of Slackware, Linux, UNIX, etc. It all started with this old Slackware version I found and my quest to get this (and several older) versions working in a Virtual Machine on my modern desktop.
I’ve been using virtualization and emulation for several years, both professionally and [...]
Well, I finally managed to get a higher resolution in VMware, at least with Slackware 4.0I discovered that VMware-server 1.0.7 still includes the drivers for XFree86 3.* & 4.*
In XFree86 3.* there is a separate “server” for each type of interface: one for monochrome cards (who remembers Hercules?), one for simple VGA, one for SVGA, [...]
Working with fvwm2 wasn’t too much fun… So I started looking for and old Slackware version that had KDE.I found out that my oldest CD with KDE was Slackware 4.0:
As it says on the cover, it comes with KDE 1.1, so this was my new project.According to the cover from the original 4-disc box, we’re [...]
After successfully installing Slackware 3.5 and discovering that Slackware 1.1.2 was still available on the internet at sunsite.unc.edu I simply had to try it…
At first I had no luck, as this version does not support the standard VMware network card (PCnet32) and also lacks support for IDE CDRom drives. The VMware emulated SCSI cards (BusLogic [...]
Finally got X working on my Slackware 3.5 installation.Well, not perfectly, but good enough to capture a screen:
I had to configure X by editing XF86Config that’s stored in /etc in this version.After some tweaking I got it to work with the basic “generic vga” driver, with a resolution of 640×480. It should work with higher [...]
Dutch guy living in Brazil. Has worked in the IT business since it was invented (well, almost...). Interests: Slackware, Lego, Star Wars.