I am only a few pages in, but speaking as a Linux user in the 2020s, I am skeptical of the claim that Linux in 1999 would “never, ever break down.”
I was there Gandalf…
In comparison to the alternatives we had at the time, Linux was a fucking tank. Once it was up, you could expect to get 6 months to years of uptime unless you were installing new tools or changing hardware (no real USB/SATA yet, so hardware was a reboot situation).
If you got a Win98 machine up, it would eventually just hang. Yes, some could got a whole, but if you used it for general use it would crash the kernel out eventually. Same for MacOS (the OG MacOS).
The only real completion for stability was other UNIX systems, and few of those were available to the general public at a reasonable price point.
Netware was rock solid.
Do you remember the article about some university that accidentally walled in a Network server? It ran for years until they needed to put hands on it for something. They had to do the “follow the Ethernet cable” game until it went through the sheetrock into a dead space.
The Register still has the article from 2001: https://www.theregister.com/2001/04/12/missing_novell_server_discovered_after/
Our tanks break down here and there but i appreciate the compliment
Snow Crash is one of my favorite books.
I’m a Cryptonomicon person. The modern timeline is dated now, but the overall information warfare themes are delicious.
Anathem is my personal favorite. One of the very few books I’ve read multiple times.
I have it on the shelf, but haven’t gotten to it. I’ll put it in the reading queue.
Written in 1999
Never forget that in 2001 he switched to Mac OS X and has been using it since.
