HOME · Welcome. This is my earlier site (~1997 to 2010); my new website is now here but some stuff remains on the scorpioncity site. - David Joffe

Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy
Subject: Re: Wanted Screen Shots
Date: 18 Jan 1999 01:26:45 -0800

"Jonathan D. Gift" writes:

> Is there any site that has some screen shots of the assorted versions of
> Linux?
> Thanks.
> 
> EMail replies appreciated.


In response to your request I installed 13 additional Linux distributions 
(varying release versions included in the total) onto my home system, 
justified my new digital camera by taking pictures of the actual monitor 
displaying each version of Linux, transferred these images onto my machine, 
loaded them into GIMP, averaged the grayscale values (a crude form of data 
compression, I realize, but not that lossy in this case, as you will see), 
and then ASCII-fied it, making it possible to send directly over Usenet 
and to you, Jonathan, with hardly a blip on the old traffic-o-meter.

In the process I seemed to have lost some of the scaling, but the general
idea is still very clear.

I believe that it's good for just about all distributions:



-------------------------------------------------
|///////////////////////////////////////////////|
-------------------------------------------------
|///|                                       |///|
|///|                                       |///|
|///|                                       |///|
|///|                                       |///|
|///|   Login: _                            |///|
|///|                                       |///|
|///|                                       |///|
|///|                                       |///|
|///|                                       |///|
|///|                                       |///|
|///|                                       |///|
|///|                                       |///|
|///|                                       |///|
|///|                                       |///|
|///|                                       |///|
|///|                                       |///|
-------------------------------------------------
|///////////////////////////////////////////////|
|///////////////////////////////////////////////|
|////Panasonic////////////--/--/--/--////--/////|
|///////////////////////////////////////////////|
-------------------------------------------------



Of course, it would look _entirely_ different with your 
monitor, unless you also happen to own a Panasonic 
PanaSync/Pro P17.

Oh, and also, keep in mind, I have a Matrox Millenium II
card, which allows me to do fancy things like have that
underscore following the prompt; on more bare-bones
type machines without video cards you don't get an 
underscore, which can be confusing.  That's only when
you're at the machine, though, because if you log in
remotely I'm pretty sure that your telnet software could
provide you with an underscore, or possibly a block if 
you are lucky.  Although, I actually prefer an underscore,
it's so much less obtrusive.  I think it's easier on the
computer as well.  I mean, the mass of an underscore must be
one-twentieth that of a block and at the velocities that
my Linux command line has to whip that thing around (due to
my ultra-professional Dvorak-enhanced typing speed) I bet
that the relative effort must be something on the order of
one-twentieth.  Not to mention the reduction of damage on
the right side of my xterm windows when I have single 
commands that need to be line-wrapped.  Sometimes when I use 
a block it seems bash just can't slow that thing down in time
for it to not just slam right into the side, leaving an
annoying dent.  They must build those xterm walls pretty
strong though, because I just typed stuff like:

  kajshdfkljashdfkljahsdlkfjhsakldjf

at about 800 WPM and xterm contained that cursor.  I couldn't
imagine what would happen if my cursor got out onto my
desktop somehow.  I'm sure it would probably just zip into my
modem and be gone forever.

HTH.