🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1993Jan5.152453.13303@crd.ge.com> davidsen@crd.ge.com (bill davidsen) writes:
>  I can remember installing V7 on a PDP-11, and it startet with toggling
>the boot so the paper tape could be read to boot the magnetic media...
>we have made progress in the last few decades.

But just barely. 

Yes, I too booted and installed V6 and V7 many times over the years.
Booting V7 (minus toggles) and going multi-user took about 30 seconds.
You would be hard pressed to do that today with your common workstation.

After a period of time, I was able to turn a stock '11 into
a production system in a morning. I find it still takes me a morning
to turn today's modern machines into something close to production.

Packaging of distributions, until quite recently, has been awful.
With V7 you would get one tape that was easily readible and accurately
documented. You would get boot images and tar files. You extract what
you wanted. You knew EXACTLY what you were getting. You could
COPY the distribution tapes. Can you easily do that with a distribution
from any of those 3 letter computer companies today.

CD's help, but they are ugly because their inherent structure was geared 
toward serving the DOS market.
-- 
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Man MUST reach for the stars,		| Tom Glinos @ U of Toronto Statistics
otherwise, he will wither, and die.	| tg@utstat.toronto.edu