• @Stupidmanager@lemmy.world
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    422 days ago

    I remember getting a copy of linux from my friends at a local LAN party (though it was tokenring party for us) around ‘96. 2 floppy disks. I’m 99% sure it was slackware.

    • @pageflight@lemmy.world
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      62 days ago

      Hah, yeah I got a Debian floppy and then tried to install packages over DSL. Somehow it didn’t immediately kill my interest in Linux, eventually ran OpenBSD as my server for a while.

    • @acockworkorange@mander.xyz
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      52 days ago

      I started with floppies too, when I bought my copy of Conectiva Linux 3.0. It came with a hefty manual that was instrumental for a newbie like me.

      • @Stupidmanager@lemmy.world
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        112 days ago

        Token Ring is a network protocol where a token—a small data packet—circulates around a ring topology, allowing only the device holding the token to transmit data, thus avoiding collisions. We played Doom and Quake.

        • @gibmiser@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          I know what it is, and I played both those on lan, but my older bro set it up so I guess I just don’t remember. Fucking crazy that shit could work fast enough.

          I don’t remember, what was the lag like for token ring? Lan just feels like it should be 100 ping or less

          • @Colloidal@programming.dev
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            210 hours ago

            Not really. It was a local network, and sure the latency increased linearly with the number of nodes, but for a small LAN party it would be quite serviceable.

          • @Stupidmanager@lemmy.world
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            62 days ago

            Yeah, sorry. Nerded out there for a sec on description. I don’t remember the lag that much, doom was ok. I think we all upgraded to 10Base-T ethernet (you remember the bnc stuff) after playing quake and host tended to have the gaming advantage. A few of us worked at a pc repair shop, so we could source (aka borrow) the parts if we couldn’t afford to buy them.

            A few laters Quake world came out, someone finally popped for a hub and we all had 100mbit cards installed. But around then, we got @HOME in my neighborhood and gamespy was my new friend. I hated hauling my whole setup once a month after a year or so.

          • lime!
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            42 days ago

            doom’s netcode is weird as well, all the clients run in perfect lock-step. seems like it would be weird on non-duplex networks.