Back in the early eighties I started off on a TRS 80 running Unix, with FilePro database, and of course a dozen or so dumb terminals. It's what I cut my teeth on and have never looked back. I eventually settled into Solaris just when they brought in VLSM in 2.6, so learning networking was a whole new world... no more UUCP!

Scripting in shell & Perl is fun for me, so I must be a geek...

I used to think it aàs cool to write a linux system to fit on a hd3 1/2 floppy.. 720k was so much space! (single sided ..duh). My first linux kernel build fit on a 360k floppy.I went through all the RH bulds..( stiĺl have a RH5 on cd from 97). I like freebsd better.. just noone uses or developes it much now. I liked it because of zfs in the kernel. zpools rule! Still not sure on the new systemd? I have done at&t for decades.. and solaris systemd for decades. bash is easier to write than xml.. just not as structured. I choose ansible now for both. yml is soòo much easier.

Thanks for the post. I just remembered that I have an old laptop that I would like to get working again, I will try one of these and see what happens.

I have never been a programmer just an end user. I remember administrating the set up of a professional accountant's word processing, accounting and tax form completion system running on a 486 with six terminals back in the late 80's. The OS was Xeni and I think that we had a huge 40 megabyte hard disk and 5¼” floppy disks to store individual client information on.

Some years ago I discovered A Linux an audio-video Linux OS and peripheral programs suite. It was contained from memory in less than 1Gb of storage which meant the whole could be loaded onto those tiny netbooks. At the time they were sold with I think Windows 7 which after a time slowed down to geriatric crippled snail pace. The AVLinux in comparison travelled at light speed loading in about 30 seconds.
I have loved how the Linux platforms have improved over the years particularly with the checking sequences that ensure that all contents are included in the final compilation chosen. Retirement and the advance in Android phones and OS have largely resulted in my ceasing to use computers. ... In fact, now apart from the audio editing of my recordings with Audacity, I can do everything I need to on the phone - I recently discovered that the Open Source versions of MS Office - Libre and Open Office have been ported to the 'phone.

Fortunately I have been a Linux user since about 1995, started with Red Hat, moved to various distributions until I got to Debian, found the command line and have not looked back. I use Ubuntu now as I do little programming or builds as I used to, kind of got away from it. Now I just keep up with the versions and use the machine to write and learn Blender. Glad to hear there are people like you out there plugging away at making things old work, soon there may be a day when this is needed for more than just the fun of doing it.