-=> Chad Adams wrote to Sean Dennis <=-

 CA> To be honest, you should check out Linux Mint. If you are using it on a
 CA> desktop, it has the look and feel of Windows, with a Linux core. It is
 CA> based on Debian/Ubuntu and is extremely good.

I have used Linux Mint before.  However, I am no fan of systemd and that
killed any interest for me right there.

 CA> I use Mint for development, and I use Slack15 for servers. Slackware is
 CA> much more difficult to learn but well worth it.

Slackware is the most "UNIX-like" and the one Linux distro I like best.  It
was very easy for me to jump over to FreeBSD from using Slackware.  I've
dabbled in many Linux distros over the past 24 years but I keep coming back
to Slackware.

 CA> Everyone is hung up on Windows to play doors and while that is true,
 CA> its only a small part of the BBS experience. You can always use Linux,
 CA> and then use Door game servers for your door games. Truth is with
 CA> doors, you can do all this work to host them, and then have 1 player.
 CA> Its just not worth it. Run whatever OS you want, whatever BBS software
 CA> you want, and use a BBS Door Game server and still offer a better
 CA> experience. I get the fun is setting it up, but it gets old..

I don't need to use "door game servers" as I can run DOS doors just fine
using DOSemu.  Doors are not my primary concern anyway as people mainly call
for messages and files.  I have one 84-year-old caller that's been calling
my board for 20 years.  I don't care that I get a bunch of callers as that's
not why I run a BBS.

The main reason I still run a board is for my enjoyment, not anyone else's
these days.  In the grand scheme of things, I have several other hobbies
that bring me joy also but I am just not ready to yet.  I have the framework
in place where if I decided to quit it all tomorrow, Micronet would
continue on just fine without me as would my BBS software.

I'm not at that point yet and I don't know if I ever will be.  My BBS runs
very nicely now; it's very stable and has not crashed once on its own.  It
works for me and I'm happy with it.

I could write a "door game server" using socat, a bash script, and DOSemu 
(it's
surprisingly very easy to do) if that's what I wanted and be done with it. 
But my happy memories of BBSing's halcyon days of calling local boards are
one of the reasons why I still choose to run a hardware-based BBS stillo
even in this "modern" age.

-- Sean




... "To be happy, make other people happy." -- W. Clement Stone
--- MultiMail/Linux