cross-posted from: https://lemmy.today/post/44849946
Now when trying to activate the OS by attempting to call the phone number for Microsoft Product Activation, an automated voice response says the following: "Support for product activation has moved online.
Linux is this way, guys.
now now, 20 years ago was 2005. cable internet, xDSL and some fiber were around and semi common. distrowatch.com was just starting but plenty of distros had complete ISOs with full environments. source forge, freshmeat and ibiblio were all big on hosting ISOs.
now in 1996/97 redhat 5.x series had the anaconda installer that installed all components without touching anything Internet related (though it could)
94 had slackwares release and it was as you say
So? Yes, we had CDs with packages.
point was many flavors of Linux did not need internet for functionality 20 years ago.
Formally? No, they didn’t need the Internet. De facto – you weren’t able to actively use it without the Internet.
whaaat? I don’t understand your de facto to argument if it pertains to 2005. I incidicated there were some difficulties in the mid 90s but not mid 00’s. Just boot up knoppix CDs? they were very popular at that time and perfectly usable without internet. usermodelinux could run Linux within Linux without network stack as a poor man’s docker back then.
people post about the old QNX bootable floppy that had a browser and desktop environment.
TL;DR there were tons of usable mediums of *nix 20 years ago that did not require internet connectivity.