this post was submitted on 09 May 2025
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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I didn’t know whether to mark this NSFW or not but it’s time to buy a new computer if you haven’t upgraded in multiple decades.

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[–] dan@upvote.au 6 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

Same with industrial automation. There's some robotic arms, assembly lines, etc in use today that still use PCs with ISA slots (the predecessor to PCI, which was the predecessor to PCIe) which is why you'll occasionally see newish "industrial" motherboards that have ISA slots and parallel ports.

A project I worked on at university (way back in 2010) was for one of the largest providers of air traffic control systems. Our project was interesting - usage of eye tracking and screen recording via VNC for training of air traffic controllers - but it was even more interesting to learn about some of their processes.

Whenever they built an ATC system for a client, they'd build one or two spares at the same time, with exactly identical hardware. They did this for two reasons:

  1. If the hardware breaks down, they can supply a new system that exactly matches the hardware that was verified.
  2. If a client has an issue with their system, they can try and replicate the issue on a clone of that client's system.

We got to see a storage room with a large number of these systems. Lots of different PCs anywhere from a month to maybe 15 years old. :)