nowadays Mint is Ubuntu with sane default settings that will run out of the box

There’s also an official version of Mint based on Debian (LMDE)

What’s on your “Everyday Carry” USB stick?

• scans of my DL and other licenses
• scan of my DD214
• system rescue ISO
• a TEMP dir with random things I need in the short term
• portable apps versions of putty, WinSCP, etc.

Do normal people who don’t do this stuff for a living use Linux now, outside handheld gaming devices?

I run into folks using linux fairly often in tech hobbies. Ham operators, DIY solar folk, people dorking around with a RasPi, etc. And some Normals who want a lighter experience than Win.

Last dedicated windows box I ran at home was Windows NT 4, IIRC. Last time I had to use it at work was Win7 (?) before I retired. I do have a Win7 virtual somewhere around here I spin up every couple years to run something obscure I can’t get to run in WINE.

Was it mainly a hobbyist thing at the time

Yes, I’d say so. Lots of tech geeks were playing with it but no Normals. Getting audio running was not always pleasant…

When I was in the army the S1 desk jockeys were using dedicated word processors with 8" floppies. Get off my lawn! :-)

Wireguard self hosting

I parsed this as Wireguard self-loathing and thought “that’s a little harsh”. :-)

warning: some non-linux included below

• minix
• slackware
• early Debian
• FreeBSD (ftp installs instead of 20 floppies! OMG!)
• Debian
• Crunchbang <-- loved that original project
• Solaris (friend gave me a Sparc 5)
• DSL, Puppy linux (had a tiny netbook)
• **Debian on workstations and servers since ~2014 **
• various debian-based distros on RPI

I do spin up other distros in a VM from time to time to see what’s what. Most recently NixOS since people won’t STFU about it. :-)

I ran a FidoNet BBS back then on a 386-16 and 2400 baud modem. Woot! It would run WordPerfect 5.1 while people were logged on to the board but compiling brought it to its knees.

Sebastian

In the early 90s I was running a BBS on DesqView over DOS and was annoyed by the limitations. My older hardware didn’t have grunt or RAM (SIPP at $50/MB) to run OS/2 like the big dogs. I also had nearly no money (grad student).

I started experimenting with MINIX, and from there to linux. IIRC I started with Slackware, flirted with Red Hat, then found Debian and it was true lurve. Since that time I’ve generally run servers on Debian stable and workstations on Debian testing.

1940 Turkish Mauser (8mm), at the newest 83yo. But that year’s production was cobbled together from old stock receivers and barrels made just before 1900. So parts of it could be ~120yo.

Might not be tech now but in the late 19th c. the Mauser bolt action was absolute tech.

I worked an ISP in the nineties and a coworker registered atdot.com, ran a home server for it with sendmail, and assigned himself the dotat username. He would tell people over the phone that his email was “dot at at at dot dot com”. This was when you had to contact InterNIC directly to register a domain.

Could be the same guy for all I know.

Digression: I registered mouse.net in ~1996 back when TLD categories were being enforced. But the NIC bungled the renewal and by the time I proved it to them it had been snagged by a Korean company. NIC threw their hands up because no one there spoke Korean. I think Altavista’s Babelfish existed then but I don’t remember if it supported Korean.

Cf. Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation

Also Behind the Bastards’ John Wayne podcast

IMO xtians want Strong Daddy Figures they can prostrate in front of like they do the Strong Sky Daddy.

scrooged

capybara

I’ve got a kindle keyboard 3 and want to know if there’s anything better out now

Better in what way?

KK3 + calibre is hard to beat. I own a paperwhite and some kind of nook (thrift store pickup for $10) and prefer the K3 experience the most. I typically end up using the paperwhite more because I am often in low-light conditions.

When these die my perfect ereader would be

• eInk
• android-based so I could run my preferred reader (FB Reader)
• google play supported so I could choose my own browser

Do you prefer digital or physical books?

Digital. I live in 76ft² and can no longer store thousands of physical books like I did in a “sticks and bricks” house. But there are ~13,000 easily stored between the e-ink kindle and waiting in the wings in calibre.

Reading is a big part of my retirement plan.

It’s more likely that a Google data center exists in 100 years than your house.

Yes, but it’s more likely that Google will have killed a particular service like Drive. Cf. Google Reader, Hangouts, Data Saver extension, Buzz, etc.

google graveyard

I emerged from a blackout drunk sitting in a classroom; it was the last hour of the GRE (graduate record exam). I was reeking of alcohol and I remember feeling sorry for the poor bastards seated next to me. I finished and walked directly across the hallway to the bathroom and vomited a while.

I’d gone to a bar the night before for one dollar draft beer; I had $2, so 1 beer + tip. I don’t know exactly what happened but later heard people thought it would be funny to buy me drinks before the exam and I was too young/dumb not to accept.

The most bizarre part of the story is I scored a dead-average score on the exam.

• Slow Horses (UK/US) Gary Oldman and Kristin Scott Thomas? Yes, please!
• Broadchurch (UK)
• Glitch (AUS, first season only)
• Chef! (UK, first two seasons only)

Forgetting many others but just having first cup of coffee