Hey everyone! I'm working on a story featuring a character who has a laptop that's 20 years old and runs Linux. I'm curious to know what would appear on the screen when you first boot it up. Just like how a Dell logo might show up on startup, what kind of boot sequence or visuals would someone see for a Linux machine from that era? Thanks a bunch for your insights!
5 Answers
One term that might come up is LILO, which was used for loading Linux systems back in the day. Kind of an interesting fact: LILO was named after an IRC user involved in some dark history—just a little trivia for you!
Yeah, for those wanting to know more about LILO, you can check out the Gentoo wiki for some background on it.
Back around 20 years ago, you'd generally see the BIOS or bootloader when turning on the laptop. Most of the time, a vendor logo would pop up, but true Linux users might have disabled that splash screen, so you’d see the boot process right away instead. Funny how those Num Lock lights would switch on too!
The initial screen on boot doesn’t actually come from Linux; it’s usually the POST screen displaying info from the BIOS. You could see a logo from the manufacturer or just a generic screen showing processor details, RAM, and drives. As for Linux itself, what shows when it starts loading really depends on the distro and whether it has features like a framebuffer console enabled.
If you're setting this in the present day but the laptop is 20 years old, I think it’s unlikely someone would keep the original OS that long. I've had my computer for about 15 years, and I've replaced parts like the power supply and switched to an SSD. Updated my OS every couple of years, so I can imagine the screen appearing quite modern despite the old hardware!
Same here! My PC has gone through so many upgrades that only the case is left from what I originally bought! It’s just a matter of keeping up with tech!
Ah, I remember when Linux used to scroll through those matrix-style kernel checks on startup. The last time I saw something like that was ages ago with Red Hat 6.2!
Wow, I didn't know that backstory behind LILO! Crazy how names also have such interesting tales behind them.