I'm writing these lines on my "old" Pentium 133 running NetBSD 5,
using ed. This is a nice machine, actually. If it wasn't for browsing
the web, I could still use this machine on a daily basis (for my
private stuff). For work, of course, I need the power to run ...
Windows.
What I'm seeing right now, is just ed on a 80x25 character terminal.
No X11, no XTerm, no nothing. On one hand, I'm surprised how well this
works. I've adapted to using the shell and plain text tools pretty
well. In other words, I'm not missing anything. It doesn't feel like a
strange and foreign world anymore. (Remember, I've been using Windows
for over 15 years.)
On the other hand, this is not a surprise at all. Firstly, this
machine is blazingly fast compared to the 8MHz 8086 which was my first
computer. Secondly, it integrates very well with my other hardware --
it has a standard ethernet controller and I can run a standard TCP/IP
stack without any hazzle. After all, NetBSD 5 is not a very old
operating system. It's from 2010. This means, I can easily use SSH to
connect to my Raspberry Pi and, thus, my IRC client. I'm pretty sure
that I could install the latest version of NetBSD or whatever, I'm
just too lazy for that.
Still, compared to those huge machines like my i7 with its 32GiB RAM,
a Pentium 133 appears to be from the stone age -- which is not true.
It's modern technology. It's slower, sure, but nothing *fundamental*
has changed. It's still (mostly) compatible. And what I keep
forgetting: This machine happily ran Windows 95 and SuSE 6.1 with KDE1
when I bought it. So, yes, using ed is pretty much over the top.
One nice thing is that I can use my IBM Model M keyboard. :-) Being
used to my Das Keyboard, it feels very heavy and the keys are harder
to press. But it still works flawlessly and it still feels RIGHT --
unlike the keyboard of a C64 of one of my colleagues. That one feels
very old, "overused", or "stale" (the german word I have in mind is
"ausgelutscht"). Yeah, well, IBM quality.
