Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 10:09:14 -0500 From: Will Andrews <andrews@technologist.com> To: James Howard <howardjp@wam.umd.edu> Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Wow, it has been a while Message-ID: <20000317100914.C404@argon.blackdawn.com> In-Reply-To: <200003162031.PAA24296@rac1.wam.umd.edu>; from howardjp@wam.umd.edu on Thu, Mar 16, 2000 at 03:30:54PM -0500 References: <200003162031.PAA24296@rac1.wam.umd.edu>
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On Thu, Mar 16, 2000 at 03:30:54PM -0500, James Howard wrote: > I was just sitting here, thinking, wow, 4.0. I remember (like it was > yesterday) the first time I installed FreeBSD. It was 2.2.2. It was so > clean and smooth, unlike Linux, or Solaris, or OpenVMS. This was > different. On a 486 with 16 megs of RAM, it was faster and more > responsive than a dual P5/133 with 96 megs of RAM running Linux. This was > different. It managed uptimes of 80 days, before I would do something > dumb and crash the system (kill -9 -1 as root once:). That same Linux > system wouldn't do 10 days if it had to. This was different. *chuckle* It certainly has been awhile. I started with a shell on a FreeBSD 2.1.5-RELEASE box in February 1997, and first installed on my own with 2.2.6-RELEASE (a P100) in June 1998. I never tried Linux after that. ;-) That box managed to get about a 45 day uptime before I had to kill it and convert it to Windoze for office purposes. These days, I run 3.x-STABLE with 30-60+ day uptimes on a PII-450 with 128MB RAM. I also have 5.0-CURRENT on this laptop I'm typing into. ;) > The 486 I used sat in a computer lab at Miami University. I had walked > into the lab one day with a FreeBSD boot disk. I made a sign saying > "Workstation Down" and hijacked a random PC, in the middle of the lab. It > ran for 9 months before one of the schools employees found something > amiss. They pulled the plug. But by then I was running FreeBSD at > home. And on one production server. In fact, since that first install of > 2.2.2, I have not installed any other OS, except for a simple install on a > throw-away system. And even then, it never lasts more than a few hours, > or long enough to see what they have changed in the past year. Heh.. that P100 I had was my old gaming box.. I wasn't in college yet (and still aren't, but that'll be this fall). > So what I am saying here is thank you for making such a kick ass system > and I'd love to hear about other's first expereinces with FreeBSD, or BSD > if you are older. In fact, I was born in December of 1979, if someone has > a first BSD story that predates that, I would be endlessly amused. There's plenty of folks around who still have 386BSD boxes running here and there. I've been using computers for almost 15 years, but unfortunately didn't discover FreeBSD until 1997. But then, I've used FreeBSD more in the last 3 years than I've used any other operating system in all 15 years. ;-) There are plenty of old archives on -chat for reference if you want to hear other peoples' stories. Somebody might feel obliged to post, but other than me, I doubt very many. :-) toodles, -- Will Andrews <andrews@technologist.com> GCS/E/S @d- s+:+>+:- a--->+++ C++ UB++++ P+ L- E--- W+++ !N !o ?K w--- ?O M+ V-- PS+ PE++ Y+ PGP+>+++ t++ 5 X++ R+ tv+ b++>++++ DI+++ D+ G++>+++ e->++++ h! r-->+++ y? To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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