Turns out the reply in my thread telling me the best way to combat not caring about Linux is to care about Linux was absolutely correct.

I picked up a laptop, installed Linux Mint Cinnamon, and I’m already obsessed. I haven’t had this much fun with a PC in a long time and it’s just a cheapo Dell Inspiron 3520.

  • jaybone@lemmy.world
    172·
    8 months ago

    You zoomers should try installing Solaris then write a kernel module for your wifi card.

      • jozep@lemmy.world
        9·
        8 months ago

        That’s because it is not :) especially since many WiFi card vendors do not give documentation so writing a driver for it is basically impossible.

    • lemmington@lemmy.ml
      2·
      8 months ago

      Not a zoomer but this is my dream proficiency in computers, it’s like saying ‘I will build my own habitat’.

    • pascal@lemm.ee
      1·
      8 months ago

      Last time I used Solaris, that thing locked itself if someone casually unplugs the keyboard. Good luck with the WiFi card! 🤣

      • jaybone@lemmy.world
        1·
        8 months ago

        lol you could hot swap memory cards on those sparc boxes. Not sure what you were doing with your keyboard.

    • LeFantome@programming.dev
      1·
      8 months ago

      One of my first memories with Linux was getting the same X config from a Sun Workstation at school onto my Linux box at home. Just seeing similar behaviour made it seem like my computer was suddenly more powerful. In the 90’s, I got an actual copy of Solaris ( in the box ) and I felt like one of the global elite. One of the first things I did after making real money was buy a Sun Ultra.

      Now, I can essentially get Solaris for free and I cannot even be bothered to install it. I want to say that the hardware still interests me but honestly I have no desire to use that either. It would be more of a decoration and act of preservation, like a classic painting hanging on the wall.

      If anything, the fun project these days might be to create a WiFi card that had a PicoPi or MilkV board on it running Linux as the firmware. Open Source has really changed the game. What makes old hardware fun is modding it to do stuff it never could. The software that is fun to run on old hardware is something still being actively developed—again, maybe Linux.