My first 10 years with Linux (Linux.com)

My first 10 years with Linux (Linux.com)

Posted Oct 15, 2006 16:25 UTC (Sun) by komarek (guest, #7295)
Parent article: My first 10 years with Linux (Linux.com)

Wow, listening to this discussion about early linux brings back a lot of great memories. I started with SLS in 1993 off of (around 30-ish) 5.25" floppies downloaded through kermit at my university. Linux didn't support the serial port on my Packard Hell 386 SuX 20. I tried BSD-386 (or was that 386-BSD) as well (that is, before the split), and it wouldn't boot at all.

My goal was to have multiple telnet windows to university computers, but without a serial port I had no modem. So I gave up (and found a really nice shareware DOS terminal emulator that I should have paid for, started with T..., don't recall).

It wasn't until 1996-ish that I got back to GNU/Linux distros. Somewhere in between, I remember convincing a friend with a *fast* 486-50 to install X, and we had a great time with xroach (back when the roaches were slow enough to be fun). From 1996 to 1999, I used GNU/Linux systems for everything but games and few bits of student-edition math software. In 1999 (Win98), I gave up on Windows for everything.

Yes, I also remember archie, veronica, and what I though of as the "gopher revolution". The first time I saw a "web page" under Mosaic, my comment was "That's nice, but aren't those graphics a waste of bandwidth?" I think the web page might have been "Find The Spam", which you can still see (sometimes) at http://www.smalltime.com/findthespam.html (it's still a waste of bandwidth, but a good waste ;-)

Then there was slip, slirp, and ppp, all of which were discouraged by my university, and requried special permission. And there was X, with instructions on how to configure it "without calling the fire department" (yes, that's a quote, I still have the CD insert). Heck, I remember when I was forced to get a cdrom. I'm only 33, but I feel really old now.

-Paul

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