Comment on Microsoft kills official way to activate windows without internet
Lembot_0006@programming.dev 3 days ago20 years ago internet was the main pro-Windows argument, actually. Windows was completely comfortable without the internet, while Linux was barely usable offline without access to online repositories and forums to keep the system working.
now now, 20 years ago was 2005. cable internet, xDSL and some fiber were around and semi common. distrowatch.com was just starting but plenty of distros had complete ISOs with full environments. source forge, freshmeat and ibiblio were all big on hosting ISOs.
now in 1996/97 redhat 5.x series had the anaconda installer that installed all components without touching anything Internet related (though it could)
94 had slackwares release and it was as you say
So? Yes, we had CDs with packages.
point was many flavors of Linux did not need internet for functionality 20 years ago.
Formally? No, they didn’t need the Internet. De facto – you weren’t able to actively use it without the Internet.
I had a winmodem at the time, which of course wasn’t supported. 😓
I had one up until about 2003 probably. We were out in the country and couldn’t get cable or dsl. I remember trying out linux and fighting with the wintel modem and gpu drivers, writing down the errors, rebooting the machine back into windows, going online and researching the errors online, writing down the commands I needed to use to fix it, or downloading the rpm packages (fedora) I might have needed, rebooting, trying again in linux, failing, etc.
When i finally trees ubuntu on my laptop around 2007, it was amazing that the WiFi and graphics “just worked”.
PapaSkwat@lemmings.world 3 days ago
I remember when Linux was a bear to install. While the pro-Linux people were kinda assholes and not cool with helping complete noobs. Things have changed.
Lembot_0006@programming.dev 3 days ago
They have? I don’t know – I’m still an ashhole.
PapaSkwat@lemmings.world 3 days ago
haha, good point. In my personal experience tho, the linux community has been super helpful for a while now. lol