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liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org
Personal blog · liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org · on HN as lprovensystemshistory
liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org is a personal blog at liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org about systems and history. Since 2022, 17 different Hacker News readers have linked it 46 times, most often “A Plea for Lean Software (1995)”. The last post was in 2011, but the archive is still widely read.
Most-linked posts?
- A Plea for Lean Software (1995)5 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2022-10-14
- What's the point of lightweight code with modern computers?3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-12-13
- The pivotal importance of IBM's PS/2 range on computers, even today2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-09-29
- Everyone seems to forget why GNOME and GNOME 3 and Unity happened2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-07-27
- A Fresh Look at FreeBSD2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-09-09
- Plan 9 Is a Bicycle2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-12-21
What Hacker News says?
(!) Thanks for remembering and linking to my (old) blog. BTW, it's on Dreamwidth now, because Livejournal is Russian, and I live 1 country away from Ukraine. https://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/
Comment linking /
on “WordPerfect for UNIX (1992)”Submitted Everyone seems to forget why GNOME and GNOME 3 and Unity happened as a story · 418 points
HN discussionI'm a Vim user and I've made this point when I rail against IDEs; it's even on the front page today [0]: "5. The belief that complex systems require armies of designers and programmers is wrong. A system that is not understood in its entirety, or at least to significant degree of detail by a single individual, should probably not be built." I think I agree, but I think there are a lot of things you could say about t…
Comment linking /88032.html
on “Is the "modern data stack" still a useful idea?”Submitted Everyone seems to forget why GNOME and GNOME 3 and Unity happened (2022) as a story · 144 points
HN discussionI've uploaded the script I wrote for it to the FOSDEM site, and it's on my personal blog as well. https://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/90185.html I also also shared both the slideshow, and the slideshow annotated with speaker's notes -- basically the script, cut into bits and added to each slide. Either should help. That's about all I can offer; I'm not a video person and I know nothing of sound processing or anythi…
Comment linking /90185.html
on “Drowning in code: The ever-growing problem of ever-growing codebases”Submitted A Plea for Lean Software (1995) as a story · 144 points
HN discussionSuperb. Excellent sleuthing and development, and well written-up too. I supported a few Apricot machines in production in the late 1980s, and Sirius too, although I had forgotten the strange keyboard layout. It always was a better design than IBM's PC, or XT or AT come to that. It had long seemed to me that if Apricot and the other non-PC-compatible DOS vendors had just been able to hang on in there until later in t…
Comment linking /97149.html
on “Windows 2 for the Apricot PC/Xi”Submitted On the strange joys of mainframe OSes that have survived into modern times as a story · 111 points
HN discussionHere's a 5 page one from its author: https://cr.yp.to/bib/1995/wirth.pdf Here's a plain text version on my own blog: https://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/88032.html Michael Franz' classic Oberon -- the Overlooked Jewel is also short and highly readable: https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.90...
Comment linking /88032.html
on “Oberon System 3”Submitted I think the GNOME designers are incompetent as a story · 94 points
HN discussion> One interesting turn on the ST side was the creation of from-scratch GEM implementations. Oh yes indeed. I was on the edge of the FreeGEM project: I did some bug-fixing, documentation, translation, and stuff like that. I ended up learning a lot about the history of ST GEM, and one aspect was how its cleanly-layered design let people just re-implement bits and plug them back into the original. Which is what led to…
Comment linking /96552.html
on “Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes”Submitted The pivotal importance of IBM's PS/2 range on computers, even today as a story · 63 points
HN discussionIt is a bit. I tried to cover some of that here: https://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/96552.html
Comment linking /96552.html
on “What Happened to Gem?”Submitted How to tell a mainframe from a minicomputer from a micro as a story · 62 points
HN discussionI wonder why GEM is back on bloggers' radar again? Last September, Nemanja Trifunovic did a good in-depth history, here: https://nemanjatrifunovic.substack.com/p/history-of-the-gem-... He missed out on the recent history of the environment, and at the time, I wrote a blog post adding more info on what happened next: https://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/96552.html You do mention OpenGEM and FreeGEM, but not what's in…
Comment linking /96552.html
on “What Happened to Gem?”Submitted The reason that the first version of Windows NT was called 3.1 as a story · 43 points
HN discussionMy tech blog: https://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/ Personal: https://lproven.dreamwidth.org/ These replaced the roughly 20 year old, but now Russian-owned... http://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/ ... and... https://lproven.livejournal.com/ ... due to the Ukrainian invasion. I cannot abide by the LJ AUP that requires me not to criticize the Russian government. Слава Україні! These days, the vast majority of my writi…
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on “Ask HN: Could you share your personal blog here?”Submitted DOS live USB image with tools for writers as a story · 30 points
HN discussionI'd say it looks like nothing so much as Project Oberon: http://www.projectoberon.com/ This is a good quick overview: http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/04/22/oberon/ This is a deeper dive: https://people.cs.ksu.edu/~danielwang/Investigation/System_S... This is Wirth's "Plea for Lean Software" (re-laid out on my own blog) https://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/88032.html
Comment linking /88032.html
on “Ask HN: What does artisanal software look like?”Submitted MS-DOS was *not* an illegal clone of CP/M as a story · 19 points
HN discussion> Nothing beside remains. This is wrong. The influence is far wider than you realise. The PS/2 standard for keyboards and mice is perhaps the only one that bears the name PS/2 but it is very far from the only standard that came out of the PS/2 range. VGA is a PS/2 standard. The VGA port and the still-ubiquitous SVGA plug and the SVGA modes is a PS/2 standard. My Core i7 nVME-only native-UEFI laptop still has both th…
Comment linking /87108.html
on “The Plan-9 Effect or why you should not fix it if it ain't broken”Submitted “A Plea for Lean Software” by Prof. Niklaus Wirth (Non-PDF Version) as a story · 10 points
HN discussionSubmitted Reviewing a Dell Linux PC 23 years ago (by me in PCW magazine, Sep 2000) as a story · 8 points
HN discussionSubmitted What's the point of lightweight code with modern computers? as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted Plan 9 Is a Bicycle as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted Plan 9 Is a Bicycle as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Fresh Look at FreeBSD as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted My review of the Tadpole-RDI Ultra Book lli from 25 years ago this month as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted What's the point of lightweight code with modern computers? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted How the Linux-vs-BSD culture clash looked in the 1980s/1990s as a story · 3 points
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