Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

....and it's still smaller than my Google Pixel 7 Pro!  Amazing!



srsly.....why are phones so big now?

srsly.....why are phones so big now?

Because for a lot of people, they are pretty much their primary compute/connectivity device outside of something used purely for work. 

I can't stand using my phone (Pixel 5) for much, because the screen isn't big enough. I'd personally love to have a Pixel Pro Fold, to have that level of screen size. 

AI and software stuff, I think.

They're still QUITE a player in the hardware game. Not just AI/software. It's all enterprise/datacenter stuff though, so not something a typical consumer would ever see. 

I don't want to get into it more, and assume our other resident EE doesn't want to either, because their business is interrelated to both of ours... 

Speaking of history and IBM....  I remember a time before the term PC was common, and the machines people had that would later be called PCs were called "IBM-compatible."  You might have an IBM desktop, or you might have some other brand which was IBM-compatible (we had a Vendex).  Near as I can tell, it just meant they operated on DOS, so I guess Microsoft was already behind the curtain.  I guess Apple was a thing at that time....I don't really know.  I don't know anyone who had an Apple Macintosh in the late 80's, if they were around.  But it seems like the term "IBM-compatible" would be meant to distinguish those machines from something else.

Fast forward a decade and the term had become PCs, which referred to Windows-based machines, and again, not-Apples.  The term PC is odd to me, because it stands for Personal Computer, which Apples also are.  And of course, nobody calls them Apples anymore, they're referred to as Macs.  

Speaking of history and IBM....  I remember a time before the term PC was common, and the machines people had that would later be called PCs were called "IBM-compatible."  You might have an IBM desktop, or you might have some other brand which was IBM-compatible (we had a Vendex).  Near as I can tell, it just meant they operated on DOS, so I guess Microsoft was already behind the curtain.  I guess Apple was a thing at that time....I don't really know.  I don't know anyone who had an Apple Macintosh in the late 80's, if they were around.  But it seems like the term "IBM-compatible" would be meant to distinguish those machines from something else.

Fast forward a decade and the term had become PCs, which referred to Windows-based machines, and again, not-Apples.  The term PC is odd to me, because it stands for Personal Computer, which Apples also are.  And of course, nobody calls them Apples anymore, they're referred to as Macs. 

The Wiki article on this is pretty solid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_compatible

There was a lot more to it... Much bigger proliferation of computers, all with proprietary hardware architectures. Proprietary architectures meant proprietary software. Then IBM came out with the PC with the Intel 8088 processor, and everyone copied the architecture so that they could all use the same software. Over that decade all of the other proprietary brands with the exception of Apple basically died off, Microsoft became king of the OS market, and Intel became king of the processor market.  

And as the article points out, the more modern term became "Wintel", for a Windows OS computer based on the Intel (or AMD) x86 architecture, because "IBM-compatible" no longer carried any weight. 

The good news if you've learned DOS is that it makes it a lot easier to learn Linux as you have already lived in the command line world. 

And all the coolest geeks run Linux these days. 

The good news if you've learned DOS is that it makes it a lot easier to learn Linux as you have already lived in the command line world.

And all the coolest geeks run Linux these days.

I started loading my old laptops with Linux years ago, but I'm not really a cool geek.  The distros of at least the last 15 years (the time span that I first messed with Linux) are very visually similar to the Windows GUI and everything seems kinda dumbed down and automatically "easy," even for somebody like me who had never been on a Linux OS before.  I never know how to do do something on Linux, but yet I'm almost always right on the first guess for where to find something.  

I never got into the command line stuff and don't know any Linux commands.  Never use the command line, tbh.  

On the ease-of-use thing, that's as opposed to me trying my hand at Macs, which are reputed to be super-easy and marketed as such......"everything just works," Mac users would always tell me.  Coming from a lifetime of Windows, I find Macs un-intuitive and I struggle with them, particularly the filing system.  In my experience, Linux is the OS that Macs are purported to be. 

There used to be an OU fan here on the board named CrimsonGaloot who helped me get going with Linux, and taught me how to load it side-by-side with Windows and dual-boot if I chose.  He's not around anymore, and I no longer have his email address, and that's a shame because he was a good guy and good tech support.