Lysator is an academic computer club at Linköping University, Sweden with almost 600 members. It is an independent non-profit society, separate from the students' union and the faculties of the university.
Lysator was founded on 29 March 1973. The first computer used at Lysator was a Datasaab D21, delivered to Lysator on 25 May 1973. Later in the decade, members of Lysator developed and initially built a microcomputer, the Lys-16, which was advanced for its time due to its 16-bit word size.
In February 1993, Lysator put up the first web server in Sweden, among the first 10–15 in the world.
On 30 July 2010, Lysator began migrating to a new 3U home rack, increasing their available storage space from 700GB to 13TB.
Lysator has been a starting ground for many notable projects, some of which have since become independent from the club:
I’m sniffing cigarettes in the dark again
I’m calling out your name
But I’ll pretend someone’s waiting
If you’d listen to just what I said
You might take the time to write it down
And call on me
When you’re down
I am down
All your cigarettes on the window sill
I don’t know if you were once a friend
Or just pretending
Open up that big old mouth of yours
Pills and razors
Marked the days as they were
Never-ending
When you’re down
I am down
You should not forget
Every time we met
Shaking hands like friends
Then I swore I’d never go
I’d never go alone
Then you swore you’d never go
You’d never go alone
I’ve got your phone
And now I’ll call your friends
I’ll let know them know
That it was all for real
We weren’t pretending
When you’re down
I am down, down, down, down, down!
You should not forget
Every time we met
Shaking hands like friends
Then I swore I’d never go
I’d never go alone
Then you swore you’d never go
You’d never go alone
Then I swore I had it all, I
Swore I’d go alone
You swore
You always swore