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liam-on-linux.livejournal.com
Personal blog · liam-on-linux.livejournal.comhistoryhardwaresystems
liam-on-linux.livejournal.com is a personal blog at liam-on-linux.livejournal.com about history, hardware and systems. Since 2010, 13 different Hacker News readers have linked it 94 times, most often “What was the difference between Windows, Windows/286 and Windows/386?”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (6) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Linked for historical computing posts on topics such as WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3 on Linux, RISC OS, early Windows versus Unix, and CPU design history. Commenters also share a free WordPerfect for Linux link.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 6 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- What was the difference between Windows, Windows/286 and Windows/386?3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-02-26
- You can legally get and run WordPerfect for free2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-06-14
- Some thoughts about raising the profile of Lisp2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-08-31
- The disastrous effects of the longest technical generation in computer history2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-05-01
- Modernising RISC OS in 2020: is there hope for the ancient ARM OS?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-10-10
- /49259.html2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-01-02
What Hacker News says?
There is a free version of WordPerfect for Linux. https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/80768.html
Comment linking /80768.html
on “Lotus 1-2-3 For Linux”Submitted You can legally get and run WordPerfect for free as a story · 230 points
HN discussionThere is another big reason that Apple didn't buy Be and was right not to -- and I say that although BeOS is my favourite x86 OS ever. Dev tools. Remember Steve Ballmer's "Developers! Developers! Developers!" dance? https://youtu.be/I14b-C67EXY?t=10 He was right. Without developers for a new OS, you are dead in the water. Which is my MS has fought so hard to keep compatibility. Apple had to switch OS. That meant it…
Comment linking /55562.html
on “BeOS: The Alternate Universe's Mac OS X”Submitted Was Acorn's RISC OS an under-appreciated pearl of OS design? as a story · 162 points
HN discussion> I wish desktop OSes could be more simple, i.e. without multi-user and file access rights. Have a look into Oberon and its successor A2/Bluebottle. http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/04/22/oberon/ https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/46523.html
Comment linking /46523.html
on “BeOS: The Alternate Universe's Mac OS X”Submitted Apple's long processor journey as a story · 162 points
HN discussionI'm not that guy, but the Wikipedia article[1] is a decent jumping-off point, but I also found this blog article[2] talking about the different versions-- although it seems to get a couple things wrong according to discussion about it on lobste.rs[3] Finally, this long article from Another Boring Topic [4] includes several great sources. 1 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_2.0#Release_versions 2 - https://li…
Comment linking /78006.html
on “Windows NT vs. Unix: A design comparison”Submitted Starting Over: A FOSS proposal for a new type of OS for a new type of computer as a story · 157 points
HN discussion> AFAIK Windows NT was mainly influenced by VMS (which Dave Cutler worked on before NT). It had three parents: OS/2, DOS and VMS. However, MS could use code from 2 of them but not from VMS. I've blogged about this more than once: https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/67492.html https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/54464.html > The DOS-isms were mainly coming in via the Win95 side Nope. Not true, and you have the ti…
Comment linking /54464.html
on “Writing a Unix clone in about a month”Submitted The historical significance of DEC and the PDP-7, -8, -11 and VAX as a story · 134 points
HN discussionIt was. This was because Commodore was trying to keep the cost of the machine down, and BASIC 2 (along with the Commodore "kernal" [sic], the closest thing the computer had to an OS) fitted into an 8 kB ROM. CBM BASIC 2 was terrible . It didn't support any of the C64's excellent (for the time) sound and graphics. It didn't have structured command (IF... THEN... ELSE, REPEAT... UNTIL, WHILE... WEND etc.) or named pro…
Comment linking /71381.html
on “CP/M is really open-source now”Submitted Why did Apple's Copland fail when so many 90s OS succeed, dominate world today as a story · 128 points
HN discussionI used CP/M back in the day, on some of the last-ever CP/M computers, the Amstrad PCW series. I still have one: they ran CP/M 3.0, AKA CP/M Plus, the final and richest version. I don't think it was nicer or better. It was simpler , and so arguably cleaner. A CP/M machine generally had at most 64kB of RAM and floppy drives: machines with a hard disk, or with more RAM, were rare. So that meant CP/M could be a lot more…
Comment linking /79015.html
on “CP/M is really open-source now”Submitted Modernising RISC OS in 2020: is there hope for the ancient ARM OS? as a story · 111 points
HN discussionJust in case anybody forgot, there is a free version of Wordperfect for Linux (non-commercial use only). https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/80768.html
Comment linking /80768.html
on “WordPerfect for UNIX (1992)”Submitted Thoughts about the difference between European and American H/W and S/W design as a story · 109 points
HN discussionMainly or maybe even only in the USA, I think. Over the in the other significant English-speaking economy, we were a lot poorer in the early 1980s, and as such, anything priced in US$ was too expensive. So things like Atari 8-bits didn't sell well here. In fact only the budget C64 did, and it was an expensive machine in early-1980s Britain. Which was a good thing, because it encouraged a flourishing local market in…
Comment linking /71381.html
on “The lost ways of programming: Commodore 64 BASIC (2020)”Submitted Some thoughts about raising the profile of Lisp as a story · 93 points
HN discussion> PC DOS 2000 (the final mainstream MS/PC DOS release). FSVO "mainstream". IBM released PC DOS 7.1 (with full FAT32 and LBA support) as a free download as part of its Server Guide Scripting Toolkit. It can readily be combined with the rest of PC DOS 2000 to yield a complete OS, comparable to "MS-DOS 7.1" extracted from Win98SE. I have described how to do this on my blog: https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/59703.h…
Comment linking /58013.html
on “How FreeDOS Grew Up and Became a Modern DOS (2021)”Submitted The vagaries of 1990s 32-bit Windows networking as a story · 63 points
HN discussion> my feeling was that it would be simpler to map functional languages onto it I found this [1] blog post interesting - that mainstream architectures have defaulted to low level C-machines and that radically new CPU designs might return to the halcyon days of lisp. [1] http://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/43040.html
Comment linking /43040.html
on “Mill Computing in 2017”Submitted Shining some light on the history of OS/2, Win9x and NT as a story · 54 points
HN discussionUm. None? I suppose you could argue that the Amiga equivalent of a batch file was a Rexx script? But on PC-DOS 7, 7.01 or 7.1 you get a Rexx interpreter thrown in. :-) https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/59703.html
Comment linking /59703.html
on “DOS on Dope (2010)”Submitted Why I don't use Gnome Shell as a story · 25 points
HN discussion1. Because any time I've seen a newbie ask about Common Lisp dev tools, they're told it's worth the time to learn Emacs and that Emacs with Slime is amazing. 2. I've been trying to learn Emacs on and off for about 25 years and I personally think it's horrible beyond belief. Vim is just as bad, but at least as someone who's been using vi for closer to 35 years now, I know how to open something, change a few character…
Comment linking /81798.html
on “Gerbil Scheme – A Lisp for the 21st Century”Submitted Two complete, working, useful Raspberry Pi projects as a story · 7 points
HN discussionArticle author here. Thanks! I do quite a bit... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22265615 This talk was 2y earlier: https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/56835.html
Comment linking /56835.html
on “Apple's long processor journey”Submitted What was the difference between Windows, Windows/286 and Windows/386? as a story · 5 points
HN discussionHere's how I put it in 2010: What if OS/2 v1 had been a 386 product? I think it might have done quite well. OTOH, and I loved OS/2 - I have spent more cash on OS/2 than all other PC software put together in my entire computing life; possibly more than on anything except Spectrum games, and maybe more even than that! - but even as a fan, it was a pig to install, a pig to network, a pig to install drivers, etc. etc. W…
Comment linking /22311.html
on “A quick look at OS/2's builtin virtualization”Submitted What's so special about Lisp? as a story · 5 points
HN discussion
