[ale] Fwd: [freeside] It's Official: Atlanta Maker Faire (Not Mini!)

[jdp at algoloma.com (JD)]

On 04/30/2014 03:16 PM, H P Ladds wrote:
>>
>> Maybe it's just my personal bias, but "no Linux presence" makes me wonder
>> how people can claim to actually hack things.

In the mid-1990s, a B-i-L was hacking together shared internet access using
parallel port networking ... because he didn't know better. His computers were
all full of illegally obtained, commercial software. The networking was flaky
and slow.

I left him with Slackware running in a hot, new, Pentium90 "server" and helped
him order 3 NICs and a router over the internet for about $70. I think the
machine was $2000.  For a long time, NICs were $100+ each, but Adtran was
selling NE2000 compatible versions for $15/ea.  A week later, I called and he
had a 10base-t network running AND sharing the cable modem connection throughout
his house.

He still runs Linux today and still uses Slackware for servers.  I don't think
any of the software in the house is illegally obtained anymore.  That is a
success story to me.