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by znpy 3 days ago
“Floppydistros” were a thing back in the day.

When i was 12 or 13 in the very early 2000s i tried to download something called “coyote linux” (from sourceforge iirc) and boot it on an internet cafe pc because i really wanted to try this linux thing.

But i was very nooby and of course it mostly didn’t go anywhere. I have vague memories of maybe getting it to boot, getting a shell and then not know what to do with it.

Fun times :)
2 comments
enneff 2 days ago
I used to run tomsrtbt (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomsrtbt) from a floppy on an old 486 hooked up to a monitor and keyboard for use as a terminal. Was nice and silent, pretty convenient to be able to just turn the screen on to check irc or whatever.
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dddw 3 days ago
I remember qnx
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smilespray 3 days ago
Full network stack and a web server on a 1.44MB floppy!
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d3Xt3r 3 days ago
And a Javascript capable HTML4 browser, and a decent-looking and performant GUI desktop too.

It's a shame QNX (desktop) died, used to be way more performant and stable compared to Linux or anything else back in the day.

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userbinator 3 days ago
The problem is it wasn't really compatible with anything else, at a time when DOS/Windows and Unix-likes were the most common.
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smilespray 2 days ago
It was compatible with the radio and crypto equipment aboard my coast guard ship!
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w84death 2 days ago
Isn't it still alive in automobile/infodesks?
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d3Xt3r 2 days ago
The embedded version is, yeah. I was referring to their PC version though, which came with a full-fledged DE called Photon microGUI[1]. It was extremely responsive and could multitask without any stuttering, even on ancient hardware like the Pentium II - something wich other operating systems struggled with for a long time. In fact I would say Linux didn't "officially" resolve the issue until they introduced the EEVDF scheduler with kernel 6.6 in 2023.

[1] https://www.qnx.com/developers/docs/6.5.0SP1.update/com.qnx....

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dredmorbius 2 days ago
Do you recall which browser?

BrowseX, written mostly in Tcl/Tk, was included in one microdistro. Probably LNX-BBC, per Wikipedia.

<https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/BrowseX>

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootable_business_card#Operati...>

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w84death 2 days ago
QNX is to this day the biggest "floppy" thing I ever saw.

I would love to have a modern recreation of it.

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