An affinity for specific versions
There was a time before Chrome where software versions were comprehensible to mere mortals. They still are for some software, but I couldn’t tell you off the top of my head (or any other body part) what version of Firefox I’m currently running, or LibreOffice, or honestly even macOS on my work machine. There’s something to be said for remembering version numbers, and maybe even the idea of “living specifications”, but that’s a discussion for another time.
What I can say is that I do remember specific version numbers for software that had an impact on my life in positive ways. Here are just a few:
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NetBSD 1.6/macppc: This was my first BSD, which I ran on an iBook G3. It felt like such a massive performance upgrade from those early versions of Mac OS X. I still remember sitting at school pouring over the NetBSD Guide and getting it configured; it felt like electronic LEGO.
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FreeBSD 7: I first ran 6.x, but it was 7 where I really hit my stride with it. I still have all the installer ISOs for it, and the disk image backup from my first home server that ran it. I’ve been using it ever since.
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Debian Wheezy. This was the Linux distro and release I first supported at my longest job. Incidently, it was the last version not to mandate systemd.
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Lotus Organiser 4: This was the release that came with my old man’s work ThinkPad back in the day, and what I ended up using as my life organiser for many years.
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KDE 3: This was peak UI. I’ve come to love Plasma, but I’m struck by great it is every time I fire up a retrocomputer.
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TextMate 1: I settled on MacVim as my primary GUI editor on my Macs, but that original TextMate was stupendous. I’ve since moved to Kate from the KDE project for more complicated projects, but I’m still hit in the feels when I launch it on my classic machines.
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Lotus SmartSuite Millennium Edition and Microsoft Office 97. I used these well into the late 2000s for school work, uni assignments, and personal projects. I’ve long since moved to OOo/LibreOffice, but I think these represented the usability peak of graphical Office software. I’m surprised that they feel more responsive on my Pentium 1 than Office for Mac does on my current work M3 MacBook Air.
