sinzaApr 8, 2024

What platforms were used in the 80s up to about 1993 or 1994 for Internet servers? It can be #FTP, #Gopher, #telnet, #USENET, the #OldWeb, or anything else that was on the Internet in that era.

My research indicates Solaris was very popular for web servers until Linux took over, and so I suspect it (and SunOS before it) was very popular for the Internet in general, but I'd like to hear from anyone with this sort of experience.

#retrocomputing

Show threadColin MacleodApr 8, 2024
@sinza I was sysadmin in a UK university CS dept back then. We didn't get any kind of internet connection until about 1992-3. The first generally-available web browser, NCSA Mosaic, was only launched in 1993 and took a few more years to become widespread - https://home.cern/science/computing/birth-web/short-history-web . So I would say that period was not so much "oldweb" as pre-web. Even usenet, which existed before the internet, was still very slow and limited.
#retrocomputing
A short history of the Web

CERN
Show threadJosh Justice
@CGM @sinza I date the origin of the web by Marathon, the Mac FPS game. It was released in December 1994, and I know in 1995 I was browsing rudimentary web pages to download Marathon maps, texture packs, etc.
Apr 8, 2024 at 1:53pmWeb
Show threadvga256Apr 8, 2024
@CodingItWrong haha i have a similar world wide web dating system - for me, it was Ultima VIII: Pagan in 1994. the first thing i did was use lynx to find a text walkthrough for the game, which progressed to searching for Ultima IX screenshots in Mosaic and Netscape a few months later.