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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • xycu@programming.devtoLinux@lemmy.mlBefore your change to Linux
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    2 months ago

    My “main” OS timeline was:

    • Apple II/C64
    • MS-DOS
    • OS/2
    • Linux

    Technically I used windows 3.1 at times in DOS and OS/2 for some specific piece of software, but it was never what I primarily used and I don’t consider Windows 3.1 a proper operating system, it’s just a desktop environment.

    Not sure exactly when, but I know by 2000 I was fully on board the Linux train.

    Started using Linux in the days of floppy boot and root diskettes. Lived through the days of hand-crafted SLIP scripts for dial up internet. The days of needing to pay for working sound drivers. Manually calculating modelines in Xfree86.

    I have primarily used Windows at work, probably been 99% windows and 1% Unix/Linux. I have had windows laptops and virtual machines for certain specific use cases but it has never been my main.



  • I do it because I can… I read release notes on every update and once you’ve configured a kernel for a particular machine you really don’t need to touch the config, barring major changes like when PATA and SATA merged. Or of course if I’m adding a new piece of hardware.

    I remove everything I don’t need and compiling the kernel only takes a couple minutes. I use Gentoo and approach everything on my system the same way - remove the things I don’t need to make it as minimal as possible.

    Compiling your own kernel also makes it easier when you need to do a git bisect to determine when a bug was introduced to report it or try to fix it. I’ve also included kernel patches in my build years ago, but haven’t needed to do that in a long time.

    I used to compile a custom kernel for my phone to enable modules/drivers that weren’t included by default by the maintainer.

    It’s not about performance for me, it’s about control.