Years ago when Windows had a 32k address limit, a number companies (e.g. Windriver) developed Linux / QNX based database systems that exceeded that limit. Then, Apache made a slam-dunk for Linux in the Communications world. That is the environment in with I started with Linux.

A TI friend show me how to install Ubuntu 8.04 LTS and I simply fall in love with Linux.

Moved a client's ERP from SCO Unix to Mandrake or Caldera and finally to CentOS.

I'm 74, married, ham radio operator and Linux Mint 17.3 Rosa user. I had tried several Linux distros in years past, but all were difficult and unsatisfactory for me. At my age, some of this stuff does not come easily. Then one of those external hostage hacker companies took control of my old HP Omni 100 with Windows 10, and would not release it unless I paid a ransom of around $200+. At that point a ham radio friend suggested Linux Mint. I downloaded it, using a different Win 10 computer, burned a disc ... and it loaded just fine. Even got my Lexmark Wireless 710Pro printer working. LM was easy to acclimate to and use; but my printer has now stopped working on LM --- even tho' if works fine with Windows 10. I sure need some help with that. And I do wish I could use my little Flex 1500 on Linux ... but apparently there is no easy way. So thanks to all of you who have worked so hard to bring Linux to where it is today. Keep plugging awy... we appreciate you. Randy - K4LJA

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I was working in HP-UX, when someone posted a tip on the comp.os.hpux (I think) newsgroup about this kid, Linus Torvalds, and the Unix clone he was building from the ground up. I found an ftp site where I could download it, and I played with it on and off for several years as I watched it grow into what it is today.

I have been required to use Windows for most of my career, but today I am happy pounding away on an Ubuntu workstation.

I was as an IT student, a Unix user from 1985 to 1988.
After having severe problems with Windows, I shifted to Linux around 1999, as soon as a friend of mine proposed me to use it.
It is my OS for all my computers since then.

Was a Solaris sa (now Soellis?) and started playing with the early versions as a possible successor OS

Ancient history. Back in the epoch 600000000 (1989), or even the year before, I got to play with the SunOS version of Unix. In those days, before Windows was even useful, let alone had any built-in network capability, Unix was a revalation. We installed a network (10Base-T on co-ax cable) and connected all the office PCs, which were still running DOS. We were able to share files using NFS! No more sneakernet! It transformed our office. Now we could all have access to the big network connected plotters. After that I wanted Unix at home. I watched as Linux first appeared; I have had some version of Linux since the mid-1990s, starting with Slackware v3 (the first Linux I found on CD).

Now It's mostly Ubuntu in the form of CAELinux for engineering and Arch Linux for audio work on various laptops, and Raspbian and OSMC on various Raspberry Pis. My big mechanical engineering laptop dual-boots CAELinux and Windows 7; there are still a few apps that do not have such user-friendly versions under Linux as under Windows.

Like Linus, I used a Sinclair QL. Eventually that was replaced by a Q60, which came set up to double-boot Sinclair's QDOS and a Motorola port of Red Hat. I switched from the Q60 to a PC just in time to use version 1 of Fedora.

It's still Solaris but now through in an Oracle... their just missing the oh wait: https://search.oracle.com/search/?st...tor=all&q=moon
all fun aside I still run it once in awhile, rock solid like Slackware.

This one was fun: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSolaris

Had read a few articles about Linux, more reliable, faster, able to run on old equipment. So I had an old machine I was going to literally through away, put Linux on it, ran Wordperfect and it stayed alive for weeks at a time, instead of needing to be re-booted. My customer programs were written to run on Concurrent DOS, but Linux was an impressive start to our conversion. We are all Red Hat Linux now and I am so glad we made that first step.

John A. Ward

I have a copy of the July-August 1978 Bell System Technical Journal, the entire body of which describes the "UNIX TIME-SHARING SYSTEM".

As a physics major at MIT in the late 1950's, I recall being bemused by faculty complaints that too many of my colleagues were being seduced into studying (i.e. thinking about) this new activity called computer programming. I was bemused because programming struck me as intriguing, but not by any means did I, way back then when I was just in my late teens, think of it as something that would prove to be as earth-shaking as it turned out to be. Programming, back then, was done on quad-ruled pages with instructions being entered one bit at a time with front-panel switches. It took me a week to create a program to extract square roots. My physics buddies were pokng fun at me for fiddling around that way.

This was, of course, quite a bit before Linus Torvalds was fiddling around (obviously much more productively) in his basement. And quite a bit before Unix (almost 20 years before the Journal mentioned above was published).

So Linux was big news to me, and I jumped on it when it first came out. MIT preceded it quite a bit with Multics , which Wikipedia tells me was launched four years after I left. The Multics name must have prompted Bell to call their OS Unix, and that would have prompted Torvalds to call his OS "Linux".

By the mid-1990's, I was pushing my company (unsuccessfully) to adopt Linux as the operating system for our computer-based test systems.

I remained a Linux devotee until 2014, finally moving over to Apple - who had (of course) adopted Unix.

-- Burnie

about 2000?? I found a paperback book on redhat 7 with the cd in the sleeve - been with linux ever since (except for a few months with Wxp when it first came out)

I discovered Linux many years ago through using a program, whose name, I cannot remember which mimicked Linux on a Dos/Windows machine. Then I started dual booting Mandrake and Windows. This was about 1997/8

I purchased a couple installation CDs and a book-- all bundled together. It was Slackware. Took me quite a while just to get X to work.
I remember struggling trying to get the install CD to boot. I had one of those CD drives which plugged into the sound card, and had no clue that it was destined to fail. But, finally got it!

To this day, I still love Slackware. It's the only distro which hasn't gotten overly bloated, and hasn't "improved" over the years with changes for the sake of changing. Don't even get me started on the recent RedHat/CentOS6 to 7 changes/'improvements'.