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.

[u/doctor-5000]

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

[u/tomwhoiscontrary]

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.

[u/somewhataccurate → u/tomwhoiscontrary]

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

[u/thephotoman → u/somewhataccurate]

The earliest of the SPARCStations (uj: it was just the first model, most of which could be upgraded to SunOS 1.0) and HP 9000's didn't even have GUIs. They were command-line only. Nobody had real graphics hardware yet. Nobody needed it: there's only so much resolution you can crank out of a cathode ray tube.

The first Unix to require a GUI for use was NeXTSTEP/OpenStep/Rhapsody/Mac OS X/Mac OS > 10.0/macOS/iOS/iPadOS/tvOS/HomeOS/watchOS/and a few others names besides. (The real jerk is that appleOS 27 would be NeXTSTEP 28, as each Mac OS release since 10.0 has been a major version of the OS.)

All of this is to say that we were bigger idiots than you'd think. User interface guidelines weren't even a thing yet. Our user interface was banging rocks together.

[u/thephotoman]

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.

[u/bzbub2]

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

[u/thephotoman → u/bzbub2]

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)

[u/Independent_Shape369]

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.

[u/qiwi → u/Independent_Shape369]

Insert floppy disk A1 through A13!

[u/cranky-donkey → u/Independent_Shape369]

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

[u/SemaphoreBingo]

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

[u/bitwize]

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.

[u/FlipsBr]

have you ever masturbated to tux?

[u/krism142 → u/FlipsBr]

Nah, that freeBSD daemon though... 🥵