I'll bet you ten dollars that one of those votes was Bill Gates, who wishes that he was Torvalds or RMS.

The other one was probably Ballmer, trying to do whatever he can to mess up Linux statistics.

haha yeah that probably is actually the more likely scenario :P

I started with Caldera,Red Hat, and Mandrake about 10 years ago, wasn't smart enough to compile, (required on all additions) didn't get much out of Linux till it became dummy friendly. always liked it, even more now. running Mepis, Mint, xp.

I don't recall when I first started downloading the Slackware floppies over
my 300 baud connection that I was lucky to get for only $30 a month. I would
install it, try it, learn a bit and then trash it. A few weeks later I'd get
curious and install it, try it and learn a bit more.

The time I do recall is when I set up my own LAN and wanted to share my
network connection. Microsoft had a special deal where I got a day of
training and a 5 user license to NT4 Small Business for only $99. I was
sold! I set it up and was able to share files and printers. And it was
the first I was able to share the Internet connection. Only one problem.
I needed to hang up the phone manually every time the connection was dropped.
Microsoft came to the rescue...for only $200 I could buy an updated version
that would make the modem hang up properly.

I mentioned this to a friend, and he asked why I didn't use diald in Linux.
I grabbed the stack of floppies and installed Linux again. And diald did
the trick. I was able to simply sit down at any workstation and automatically
connect to the Internet with no manual intervention. I was happy, but I
missed the shared folders and printers, until I heard about Samba. It took
a couple of hours to set up, but I haven't looked back ever since. I remembered
thinking that I'll probably always have a Linux server around. Little did I
know that it wouldn't be just one.

Well, thanks everyone for the stories and votes. I admit I'm disappointed didn't hear much from very early adopters (e.g., people who were onboard at Torvalds first usenet post.) Feel free to drop in a note anytime and I'll remain subscribed to my thread.

Those guys don't usually frequent forums and IRC.

i'v use linux since 2008

My employer chose Yggdrasil and then early Red Hat linux to use as an embedded RTOS (real time OS) for an industrial instrument. Using a serial port and PPP we could make a "network connection" from something hand held and accomplish service and maintenance tasks. We could also use 10baseT to access the web server, ftp files and software updates and all manner of remote operation.

Internally, we adapted a serial port driver to operate I-squared-C device control bus for stepper motors and solenoids.

Our user interface was a touch screen and a TK/TCL gui.

I think that's all pretty good for 1994-95...
~~~ 0;-Dan

PS/ I could not discover how to vote in the poll. (grin) still learning.

POLL is closed

ohh yeah been using linux for ages the only times i use windows it's for compatibility issues....

First Linux I used was Mandrake back in 2000 after that I did not get back into it until I was working doing Microsoft support in 2002 and then I used Knoppix and then Slackware.

@exvor: that brings me back! The first linux install I used daily(when I 86ed Windows altogether) was Mandrake 7.1...I got it from a magazine, Maximum Linux, I think...now I'm using Slackware 13- it's come a long way!

I started programming in C on Unix way back in 1988 and then in 1997 I started with RedHat 4.2 Linux.

But during those days the GUI was considered to be for 'kids' who play games - and whether or not X was available or not, I hardly used it.

Windows 3.11 for workgroups was not such a great GUI anyway and so we went back to DOS 6.2 if we needed some serious work done before we got into Linux in a big way.

Same with sound card on a PC - we used to say - it is to play games.

More to the point with the 80486 PCs with a 4MB RAM was not much hardware power to run X on Linux - so X was used more on Workstations which were used for CAD stations etc.

LOL - DOS 6.2, best version ever. Prior to 6.22, the 'whoops' when they removed the stolen Stack code, right?

I am a bit surprised you were coding professionally with 4MB, though - I think most x86 type machines I administered at the time had 16MB (and the DX4-75s had even up to 32MB IIRC)

I could just be remembering wrong, since I was working with GIS (ESRI stuff) in the early 90s, and then at a huge corporation in the late 90s

In regards to the quote from the X stuff you guys need to remember that the Linux kernel is completely independent of the GNU tools. Alot of what people consider the Linux operating system is actually from the GNU people who were using the BSD kernel. This might account for why there is confusion on when Linux had a GUI as it may not have been implemented into the kernel yet at these times. Remember also that wikipedia is a resource that anyone anywhere can update and there is vandals who purposely put incorrect info (this is why you cannot use it on essays or term papers) so its not always accurate. I would check around on the XFree86 site for info on when it was started.