Nina KalininaWhat do we have here? NEC PC-9821 laptop (non-PC compatible from Japan that can run Windows and a special MS-DOS version), running a rare variety of Linux called Plamo Linux/98. Linux 2.4.22, XFree86 4.3, and some Slackware compatibility. More screenshots - but from the screencapture device - will follow 🧵
Plamo Linux comes with an unusual window manager that is definitely not copied from Windows 9x, and doesn't have any icons from Windows 3.x. Geroware Qvwm is all animated, and thus fairly slow on a non-accelerated video.
You need to watch the video to appreciate how restless this window manager is! I don't think it's common for Japanese computing, by the way, just feels very hacker-y. "Hey I made these icons animated for fun! Also there's Oneko!"
"Netscape" button opens Wazilla - Japanese flavour of Mozilla. It can sort of open my home page, and Google.co.jp still works in it. Of course it can show Japanese characters!
The staff with kana "Mo" on the logo hints that 和ジラ might be a multi-level pun. Gecko/20030829 hints at the build date.
Of course, no modern cryptography.
Standard apps are not too strange. Emacs has a doctor that can make you feel better!
There are some games on the CD; Contrib CD has NScripter port so you could play Higurashi on Linux.
I want to install GNOME, which is done with a lovely script called 00INSTALL.sh. It reported that I miss a few packages.
It is a Japanese computer, so it allows input in Japanese. Pressing XFER will enable Canna (or something? But I only have Canna installed) that allows entering Japanese phonetically, and convert to kanji as needed. That's how you get こんにちは converted to 今日は!
The dependencies were installed, time to try the GNOME install script again! Each package is installed by feeding tgz to the `installpkg` tool, by the way - there's no centralised package manager, or I didn't find it (I did not read the fm, and I should have)
I remind you, this is a Pentium MMX computer with 64MB of RAM. All and all, it works pretty fast. I wonder if Gnome 2 will work OK on it or not. It sure takes a lot of time to install.
A few hiccups, and we have Gnome 2.2 running on this Pentium-bases PC-9821 laptop. Yay! It is a bit slow, but it feels like home.
Sending the screenshot home feels like pain. Such file or directo, much wow
Things are so slow, taking screenshots from Gnome itself is probably not a good idea. 64MB of RAM is not really enough for everything, so Nautilus regularly OOMs. Let's add 64MB of swap...
With the swap on, taking screenshots of GNOME goodness becomes a real possibility.
For whatever reason, GNOME is almost fully in English; perhaps, there wasn't a Japanese version back then? Or it is possible that my locale settings are all wrong.
Yep, my locale was broken. Now the locale is okay, but instead of metacity I'm running Gnome with twm and this is absolutely not how it should look like. 
Now this Gnome2 install feels properly PC-98 ready.
Also,it comes with TGIF?!
Any requests for software to try on the computer? Plamo/98 might not have everything, but it has SOMETHING
root42@root42 what is that! And where to find it?
Lunar 🛸 ♾
dgelessus@nina_kali_nina does it have Enigma (that GPL game with the mouse-controlled black marble)? A 2003 distro might be a little early for it, but the game already had a couple of releases by then, so I'm curious
@dgelessus there's no Lua, so no Enigma. And yes, it's a bit early unfortunately :<
wyatt@nina_kali_nina what is the cpu
@wyatt Pentium MMX 150 MHz!
@nina_kali_nina looks absolutely correct for twm. :)
Koutsie 
@nina_kali_nina I'd love to see wiby on that thing ✴️
@nina_kali_nina holy shit 🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰
@k peak computing!
@nina_kali_nina fucking love it!!
hell yeah!
i gotta make my services accessible via http....
phooky@nina_kali_nina xmms default theme 4 eva
Jez 🍞🌹
@nina_kali_nina ah, the days when Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping was a sick burn 😂
@nina_kali_nina gnome 2 still looks modern!
||| /\ |/ [ []@nina_kali_nina install XFCE on a recent Debian and you'll get almost the same default interface 😄 (disclaimer: I use XFCE uhuh)
@zabow XFCE ftw!
Chiel | خیل | Хил | Χιλ@nina_kali_nina @jwz does about:jwz work in the browser?
Inanna🇵🇸 
@nina_kali_nina FVWM95 ?
It has been a long time ago since...
You could give it a try with Enlingmenth. Back in the day, was awesome.
@FantasmitaAsex it is not fvwm, it is QV Windows, a completely different and even weirder thing! There is enlightenment 0.16 for this Linux - like in Red Hat 6. It probably could look like on the screenshot I found online, but this video card has no acceleration, so it'd be super slow
@nina_kali_nina internet search it's so broken, that I can't find anything about qv Windows. I didn't know it.
@FantasmitaAsex unfortunately yes ;( lots of information about this Linux distribution is not readily available online, either - I need to use the Internet Archive to fish for it
Abe the Honest@nina_kali_nina time to play quake
Chip@nina_kali_nina Yeah no package manager in old Slack. They eventually add slackpkg but that was a while later.
Stuart Longland (VK4MSL)@nina_kali_nina If it's a fork of mid-90s Slackware, there's no such thing as a centralised package manager.
`installpkg` would be it. Things were very simple back then.
@stuartl it's early 00's Slackware, it seems - but yeah, it is very simple
Trezzer (aka Helvedeshunden)@nina_kali_nina Since this is Slackware-based, you should also be able to use pkgtool to install sets from a menu.
@bytex64 I tried to run pkgtool from the "GNOME" directory and it just tried to install all the packages from it, asking "Yes/No" after each package. Maybe Contrib CD isn't fully supported or needs a separate command flag.
@nina_kali_nina Ah right. Maybe that’s all it did. It’s been a minute since I’ve used it. :/
Tim Hergert@nina_kali_nina behold the AWESOME POWER OF EMACS!
J3RN 
@nina_kali_nina Hell yeah, Emacs!
Federico Damián Schonborn@nina_kali_nina Wazilla sounds like one of those offbrands that show up from time to time in animes, which is... fitting (I guess?). Is it sponsored by WcDonalds by any chance?
@federicoschonborn pfft :D ahaha
Sinnamon (despicable arc 😈)@nina_kali_nina Does it come with the desktop pager (usually from Windows Resource Kit) included by default? 
Ah, no, it's a Linux desktop environment. I almost bit! 
Ah, no, it's a Linux desktop environment. I almost bit!
@cinnamon was there one for Windows 95? :) I don't think so...
@nina_kali_nina I only ever saw the Windows NT 4.0 one. But it wouldn't have been surprising if they had used the same WIN32 tricks (whatever they were) to "emulate" multiple desktops in Win95, tbh.
After all (famous last words) multiple desktops are just "hide this bunch of windows that don't belong to the currently active desktop".
After all (famous last words) multiple desktops are just "hide this bunch of windows that don't belong to the currently active desktop".
@cinnamon my ex-boss bragged to me they made a commercial tool for it for Windows 9x back in 1995 or so... So the idea is definitely not new.
Jernej Simončič �