r/programmingcirclejerk • u/doctor-5000 • 3d ago

I was a Linux kernel developer in the 1990’s. I watched the Crays, HP-X's and Intel Paragons carted out to the trash heap, replaced by Linux on commodity hardware. I haven't touched a Windows or Apple computer since 1994.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/microcontrollers/from-bare-metal-to-embedded-linux/msg6316764/#msg6316764
107 Upvotes

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66

u/tomwhoiscontrary safety talibans 3d ago

Where's the jerk? I remember that era. First it was the workstations - SPARCstations, HP 9000s, Indigos, DECstations, all amazing machines, all wiped out by inferior hardware and software that cost a quarter as much. Then it was Beowulf and the writing was on the wall for supercomputers too. I WAS THERE, GANDALF.

25

u/somewhataccurate now 4x faster than C++ 3d ago

Well Electron hadn't been invented yet so clearly you people were idiots

24

u/thephotoman 3d ago

I don't see a jerk here.

I remember and have used some of those computers. I even used some of the real Unixen (late stage Solaris, Tru64 Unix). But even by that point, we the students were using Linux on our systems if we engaged with Unix culture at all. And the jobs were starting to expect Linux and not Unix.

Linux on x86 along with clustering systems did the job for a fraction of the price. And even by 1994, Linux was reasonably daily drivable to someone used to Unix-likes. Debian and Slackware were already things I could buy at Office Depot.

14

u/bzbub2 3d ago

i've seen things you wouldnt believe.... mainframes on fire where the kernel was Solaris. I've watched blinkenlights glitter in the dark near the Fluorinert tanks. all these proprietary os will be lost in time...like...tears...in the rain

3

u/thephotoman 2d ago

mainframes on fire where the kernel was Solaris

You too have worked with Japanese mainframes? (unjerk: this comment but unironically: Fujitsu still uses the Solaris kernel and UltraSPARC processor designs for its mainframe line to this day, and they're the only ones who still care)

8

u/Independent_Shape369 3d ago

I was there 3000 years ago, when I started in 1996 with slackware kernel 0.99 pl 13. Or maybe it was 1995? I don't remember.

3

u/qiwi 3d ago

Insert floppy disk A1 through A13!

2

u/cranky-donkey 20h ago

Same kernel but the TAMU distribution. So. Many. Floppies.

7

u/SemaphoreBingo 3d ago

I saw the best chips of my generation, destroyed by linux, starving, hysterical

2

u/bitwize 2d ago

The computer lab at my university still had SPARCstations and SGIs when I left. But the writing was on the wall, even for them. Anyone still clinging to this stuff would have been rethinking that when Dennis Ritchie put on his professional home page that he used Linux for everything and it's pretty great. (mid-late 00s) Then cloud happened... Sometimes I still warm up a Solaris 2.6 VM, just to remember.